Thanks to a bout of flu Maya Jama has turned off her video on Zoom. “Why bother doing a full hair and makeup look when I’m ill in bed?”, she says. I couldn’t agree more. Video Call Fatigue™ is very much a thing in 2020 and I’m all here for Jama admitting that she feels rubbish and would rather not turn on her camera. It’s this honesty that’s part of Jama’s charm—I hesitate to use the word relatable but that’s really the only way to describe her.
If you’re not already in love with Jama, you’re probably the last person who isn’t. It might sound sycophantic but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Just go over to the TV and radio presenter’s Instagram page, click on any image and you’ll see plenty of people professing their love for her. Yes, we go to her page to see what she’s wearing and where she’s going out but she’s also notoriously good at not taking herself too seriously—she’ll just as happily post pictures of herself with a swollen neck (such as when she thought she had mumps), as well as those sassy red carpet looks she’s perfected.
It’s her Instagram account and her followers (almost 2 million of them) that partly inspired Jama’s decision to launch her own brand of face masks, which is why I’m talking to her today. Longtime fans will remember how she often posted herself using sheet masks on planes or on the way to work. In fact, it started to become a bit of thing with her fans on Instagram, she tells me, with her followers posting up similar selfies of themselves using sheet masks and tagging in Jama. So she decided to create her own as she was trying on so many and promoting so many other brands that it made sense to take the best bits out of the ones she’d tried and create her own.
“If I’ve just had two hours sleep I’ll put on a face mask and it’ll feel like everything’s OK, even when it’s not,” she tells me. I’m sure everyone in the world right now relates to wanting to feel like everything’s OK, even if it’s just for 10 minutes. The MIJ masks launch today, and from the reviews doing the rounds on Instagram already, I’m in no doubt that they’ll sell out very quickly. Here, I spoke to Jama on everything to do with face masks, beauty and fashion. Keep scrolling for more…
