Kim Baker was once a tall, lanky girl with high cheekbones living in Newark’s Brick Towers. At the age of nine, Baker would admire her grandmother’s beauty while also watching black women such as Diahnn Carroll on Dynasty.
By 13, Baker says her mother found a photographer and organized a photoshoot. The photos landed Baker with model representation. By the time she graduated from Newark Arts High School, she had regular modeling work and had appeared in Essence magazine.
It seemed that Baker was on the rise in the fashion world and then a quick turn of events almost derailed it all. In 1988, Baker was arrested as a result of her relationship with William “Akbar” Pray, a drug kingpin based out of Essex County who is still serving a life sentence in prison. She recounts that she was in her early 20s with a six month old baby with Pray and facing 65 years in prison herself.
“People judge you by the company you keep. Not until I was locked up did I believe that,” she said. “But everything that you want to be is within you.”
KIM BAKER
Grateful she received 800 hours of community service instead of prison time, Baker committed to being a Newark success story. But by then, she had had her first daughter and was no longer the size of a traditional model. She then became a plus-size model and began shooting for retailers such as Lane Bryant and JCPenney.
While on shoots she recognized that makeup artists didn’t know how to blend her Black skin, which led to her becoming a makeup artist and ultimately launching Glamazon Beauty in 2016. In 2021, Baker rebranded Glamazon Beauty with sharp, edgier packaging. The decision paid off as she was able to land a lucrative deal with Shop HQ as the first Black-owned brand on the home shopping platform. According to Baker, within 30 minutes of being promoted on the Shop HQ website, Glamazon Beauty sold out nearly 2000 units of makeup.
Glamazon Beauty has also been featured on “Good Morning America’s Deals and Steals” segment, and actress Tiffany Haddish has taken to social media raving over the products. Glamazon Beauty is also available in several retail shops such as eighth+kin, Melanin Grace, and Omorphia–all which are dedicated to promoting BIPOC brands.
All of Glamazon Beauty’s products–from the popular Mystical Veil Primer and Second Skin Foundation to an assortment of lip glosses, lipsticks, and eyeshadows–are vegan, plant-based and non-toxic.
“I care about what goes in my products,” she said. “The skin is the largest organ and we have to take care of it.” —Femi Lewis
