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WESTPORT — Eight years ago, Liz McKay never would have thought she could have owned Feather and Fringe, the new lash and brow bar on Post Road, but after years of perseverance and building a loyal customer base, she’s opened a shop of her own.
“It’s nice to be real with these people so they don’t feel alone,” said McKay, of Stratford. “My clients have been through everything with me.”
She went through an eight-year journey, which started when she left her jobs in retail to go to school to become an esthetician while raising two children.
Feather and Fringe officially opened in Westport on Oct. 30 and is McKay’s latest step in trials of becoming an esthetician and business owner.
McKay said she has always had an interest in the world of beauty and fashion.
In August 2015, she left a bad relationship and took her two children with her, moving into her parents’ house while she finished school, she said.
“I had left my whole life, everything that I had ever had,” she said, adding she needed state assistance to support her family at that time.
When she graduated in October 2015, she got a job with Benefit Cosmetics, which used to be located in Westport, doing waxing, face threading, lash and brow tinting, spray tans and makeup.
She said she didn’t know if she could work there forever, as there was a cap on how far she could advance her career. So, she decided to go to school full-time through the University of Phoenix, studying business. She thought she was going to get a corporate job, but plans changed.
The COVID-19 pandemic hit right after she graduated, and nobody was hiring.
She then decided to get her master’s since she was home and had to make a business plan for a class.
“A bell went off,” McKay said, and she realized she could actually make her own business.
She found a business in Westport called Sola Studios who had a room available for her to work as an esthetician. She quit the Benefit Cosmetics job, and started working there with her business called Bare A Skincare Experience in April 2021.
“I immediately hit the ground running,” McKay said.
Benefit Cosmetics closed in January 2022, and she inherited many of its clients. She had 2,500 appointments in her first 16 months with Bare A, she said.
McKay added lash lifting and brow lamination to what Benefit offered.
“I’m fully booked every week,” she said.
After two and a half years there, she wanted to expand to her own storefront and become better known.
McKay found the 252 Post Road East spot, and closed Bare A a few weeks ago.
She knows Westport, having worked there at various businesses and once living there with her mother, so she wanted to stay.
She has an employee named Allyson Lee as well as a booth renter, Tracey Duarte, who are all estheticians who worked together at Benefit. Between her and Duarte, whose business is called Bossy Brows by Tracey, they have 2,300 clients.
McKay said she is an open book with her clients, and likes to build personal relationships with them.
Though McKay has about 1,300 clients, with more than 700 who come back regularly, she said she takes about 12 new clients a week, and would never turn somebody away.
“I’ve stayed late. I’ve gone to peoples’ houses on Christmas Eve. I try to make it work for everybody, within reason,” McKay said
McKay said she came up with the name Feather and Fringe after asking people some opinions on one. Her mom helped her come up with “fringe” because it’s a synonym for “eyelashes.” One day, she was driving around with her boyfriend and she came up with the other word “feather” because it’s an eyebrow style.
“So, it technically means ‘brow and lashes,'” she said.
Clients can receive full-body waxing, full-face threading, lash and brow tinting, lash lifting, brow lamination, makeup and spray tans at Feather and Fringe.
She said finally having her own business is emotional.
“Eight years ago, I was at the lowest point in my life and I didn’t think that any of this would be possible,” she said. “To go from struggling to thriving in eight years is really exciting.”
McKay said it was difficult to do this with two children while going to school, but she is thankful for the support system she had behind her.
In the future, she hopes to one day open another business. But in the near future, about the next six months, she’s opening a cosmetic line, but she’s still working on the name.
She said anybody who wants to start a business should try.
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