Feature Friday: Savannah Allen

Morning y’all and welcome back! I am excited to share a bit about the lovely and talented Savannah Brooklyn Allen for today’s Feature Friday post. Now Savannah is very special to me because not only is she my cousin, but she’s my youngest cousin from my mom’s side. So I feel extra loving and protective over her for that reason alone.

Seeing that I am 5 years older than Savannah, we weren’t super close growing up. I was actually much closer with her older sister, Jordan, who is less than a year younger than me. But Savannah and I always had a very loving relationship. She puts it that we’ve always had a “soft, fuzzy and fun relationship,” which I 100% agree with! Needless to say, I am excited to share a bit about my sweet baby cousin with y’all.

Savannah is 26 years old and lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. She was born and raised in Asheville, but lived in Greeneville, Tennessee with our grandfather for about two years when she was 7 and 8 years old. Savannah had some family issues going on at the time, and it was suggested that she stay with our grandfather for a bit. He owns a huge farm and has lots of farm animals, and it turns out Savannah liked being there. So she ended up staying with him for almost two years. Not to say Savannah’s younger life wasn’t interesting, but I find her adult life and, mainly, her career to be super interesting. So let’s dive into it more of that y’all!

Currently Savannah manages the Tom Ford counter at a mall in Charlotte as a fragrance and cosmetic specialist. She found her way to this job by first getting a degree for business and marketing. She then got a job working as a server and bartender, but started noticing that she wasn’t making the same type of money as the other bartenders she worked with. Whoops! She felt really stressed when bartending and that’s when she decided it just wasn’t for her. Lol! So she thought she might dive more into the makeup world as this was her passion.

She quit bartending and got a job at Clinique at Ulta, which is beauty salon store. This was considered a bottom base level job in the makeup world. Savannah heard people talk about working at a luxury counter, like Chanel, and how you could make more money that way. So working at Chanel at the mall was her next goal. She technically needed four years of experience with makeup and sales to get hired by Chanel, but she wasn’t about to work at Ulta for four years just to take the next step. So she did lots of research about what all she needed to know and set up an interview with Chanel. She said it was a good ol’ case of fake it till you make it, and luckily for her it paid off! She got hired and then quickly learned everything the needed to know to be successful at her new job. As she puts it, “hustler mentality” is what got her there.

She eventually switched jobs from working at the Chanel counter to managing the Tom Ford counter. A typical work week for her includes about 35 hours a week working mid-shits from around 11am-7pm. She also works a side job for a promotional liquor company where she represents certain brands each gig. This company has different events along the east coast. Savannah signs up for several gigs a month and will work the event if she gets chosen to do so. She basically makes little samples of drinks for people to try. She says its fun because she gets to meet a lot of people and it’s pretty easy work. 

When I asked Savannah why she likes makeup, she said it’s because there are so many avenues to makeup. People use it to enhance natural features or to even create new features and looks. She likes that it’s used as a confidence booster, and that it’s a cool freedom we all have because you can represent yourself however you want.

I don’t know about y’all, but I have always wondered if makeup artists apply makeup everyday. So that was my next question for her! While Savannah doesn’t put on makeup every day, she does most days. If she isn’t working her every day look consists of a little bit of concealer, bronzer, eyeliner, mascara and lip balm. If she is going to work or out she will apply a bit more and potentially add a popped lip.

Her favorite makeup to apply is mascara and eyebrow gel. She loves her eyebrows and likes them to be wild and big and make a big statement. In fact, her eyebrows are her favorite feature. She has been blessed with good eyebrows, so the maintenance of them is relatively minimal. She will tweeze a bit herself, but she doesn’t need to get them threaded or waxed as they are naturally in pretty good shape. If she wants to add a bit more shape and depth to them, she will first fill them in with a pencil. Then she uses a Tom Ford eyebrow gel that has color in it, and this provides her with the eyebrow look she loves.

When I asked her about skin care, she said she LOVES it and thinks it is so much fun. This is partly because she struggled with hormonal acne in the past, so having a good skin care routine has really helped her. Also, she just loves that it provides her with some self care time. To help with her hormonal acne, she went on spironolactone and birth control. Both of these medications helped get the acne under control as did her skin care routine. Currently she uses the mega-mushroom line from Origins for her mask, cleanser and toner. She also uses an Origin’s moisturizer with SPF 25 for the day time and their A Perfect World night cream at night. Sometimes she will add in a serum, like ARCONA hydrating serum or an oil based serum. And she occasionally likes to use an Aztec clay mask that you mix with apple cider vinegar. I had never heard of this, but basically it’s a powder that you mix with equal parts apple cider vinegar to make a mask. Savannah says it’s a really good at home treatment that a lot of esthetician love for cleaning out pores.

I asked Savannah who her top three makeup artists are and she said Desi Perkins, Sarah Tanno and Jackie Wyers. She likes Sarah Tanno, who is Lady Gaga’s makeup artist, because she does Gaga’s makeup without any sharp lines. She is a fan of Jackie Wyers because she does a lot of celebrity look-a-like looks, which Savannah says is true artistry. And she didn’t say why she likes Desi Perkins, but if I had to guess I bet it’s because of her eyebrow tutorials like in one in this video (and maybe a few other things 😉). 

Savannah’s passions and hobbies consist of working out, hiking, being outside in nature, buying, repotting and caring for her plants and going to crystal shops and buying new crystals. She has three cats (can somebody say cat lady?!?! Hehe jkjkjk) and loves chillin’ with them. She also likes to read a lot. She likes to read about different types of religions and deities as well as poetry. Currently she is reading Green Light by Matthew McConaughey.

Savannah also enjoys getting tattoos and has about 26 at the moment. She got her first one in high school when she turned 18. Apparently there was this random dude that would tattoo people out of his house. So that’s where Savannah went, and as she puts it, “It was a hood baby tattoo”. Lol! Although it is a funny story, it also carries meaning for Savannah. It says, “There is always hope” and it is a matching tattoo with one of her friends. In fact, she has about five different matching tattoos with various people.

When I asked her about her favorite tattoo, she mentioned a poem on her arm that reads, “When you come to me horizontally and with bread for my heart who has grown teeth”. She interprets this to mean that when you level with someone (come to me horizontally) and you come with an offering (like bread) and your heart is mature (hence the teeth), then we can all connect and understand each other. Her other favorite tattoo is a skeleton-like hand, and it is on her wrist like it is grabbing her. There are stars in it which represents the feminine within something that looks scary and represents death. The hand essentially represents her own hand, and she interprets it all to mean that we shouldn’t let challenges, like death, hold you back in life or change you. This is her favorite tattoo because it represents Mike.

Mike was Savannah’s long term boyfriend for about five years. They met in high school on the bus. Savannah said he would sit behind her and they kept checkin’ each other out until one day they started dating. They were in a very serious relationship, and Mike even lived with Savannah and her mom for about two years. Mike was tragically shot and killed in a nightclub at the age of 24. This unfortunate event happened on May 24, 2015. 

It pains me to even type this and I am sure it will be hard for Savannah and others to read. Mike was such a loving and kind human. He was the type of person that always made you smile and greeted you with warmth. Savannah says that grieving his death is a process that she is still dealing with six years later, and maybe a process she will always deal with. She went through an angry stage, but also learned a lot from it. When it happened she was only 20 years old. She felt like she was too young to understand the severity of the emotions she was feeling. And all of her friends were young too, so she had a lot of obstacles connecting with them at the time because she saw things so different. She learned to be more compassionate and emotional through it all. Now that she is older, she has been able to take the positives from it, which is to appreciate everyone in your life and being able to understand the time frame of the world and the people around you. 

Savannah hasn’t had a relationship like the one she had with Mike since his passing, but she is open to one. She has connected with people for several months at a time, but hasn’t found anyone quite like Mike. My heart breaks for Savannah and those close to Mike, but I am so incredibly proud of her. As I’ve mentioned, Savannah and I haven’t spent a lot of time together growing up, but I feel like we have been able to connect on an emotional level at times. I can only imagine the amount of strength is has taken her to become a better person through such a heartbreak.

Her closing thoughts are that she wishes people lived life with more compassion. She says its one of the things that takes the most strength and patients, but she feels like it’s one of the most beneficial actions and traits people can have. She ended our interview by saying, “Everybody should find a little more compassion… and Ricky Bobby.” And then of course she quoted, ‘And if ya ain’t first ya last! That’s it boys!'” Haha! Just one of the many reasons why I love Savannah. 🙂

If you or anyone you know might be a good fit for my Feature Friday series, please leave a comment below or message me on Instagram. As always, thank you so much for reading, and happy day y’all!