When her empire crashed, Poppy King fled to New York. After 23 years, she’s back home

At 19, Poppy King changed how the world viewed lipstick. Now 54, she’s ready to do it again.

To the teenage fans of Poppy King’s groundbreaking lipsticks in the 1990s, myself included, their creator was larger than life – alabaster skin, big eyes, platinum blonde hair that fell in waves around her shoulders, and a red pout. Always red.

The Poppy King before me today, now 54, looks totally different. She arrives, head shrouded in a red scarf, her petite frame wrapped in an animal-print cardigan, red leggings and tan suede fringed boots. Her hair is short. But the pout – that unmistakable calling card – is still there. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she’d stepped straight off the pages of a storybook.

But every fairy tale has its dark chapter, and the story of the younger King’s rise and fall is largely known. In 1992, after struggling to find a suitable matt red lipstick for herself, the then 19-year-old started her own brand. Her lipsticks, in colours named after the seven deadly sins – indolence, avarice, envy, vanity etc – celebrated a darker, less stereotypical vision of beauty and became an overnight hit. By 1995, the Poppy brand was turning over $6 million and available in New York’s Barneys department store. That same year, King was named Young Australian of the Year.

The success, while stratospheric, did not last. An investor dispute precipitated Poppy Industries’ slide into receivership, before it was ultimately bought by the Estée Lauder corporation and closed in 2002. The headlines at the time were unkind – “Tall Poppy”, “King loses her crown”, and so on. But one label stuck more than most: failed lipstick queen.

“That early success was a double-edged sword,” King says. “It meant I also learnt very quickly what it’s like to lose status – to be exalted and then pulled down – because I didn’t fit the standard corporate mould. But the crucial thing was knowing inside myself that I hadn’t failed on my terms.”

Chastened and broke, King left for New York City, where beauty baron Leonard Lauder, of the Estée Lauder empire, hand-picked her for several senior creative roles before the company helped finance her comeback brand, Lipstick Queen, which launched in 2006. (King left the brand in 2017, after it was sold to new owners.)

“I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years reflecting on how we define a successful life,” she says. “The traditional markers are a big house, luxury – and I don’t have those things [now]. But to me, the most important thing is that I have kept my integrity intact.”

After Lipstick Queen, King spent a few years