“I’m so obsessed with this… Do you see my lips?” Georgina Wilson holds her phone camera up to her lips, now lusciously smothered in a new shade of Sunnies Face’s viral Lip Glaze peptide treatment. She’s sitting at her desk in the Sunnies headquarters in Manila, wearing a brown Sunnies jumper and lounging back on a leather office chair fit for a boss lady—after all, she is brand director and one of the co-founders of the brand. “Okay this is my favourite too, the Lifebrow Grooming Gel.” She swipes the product on, using our Google Meets call as a mirror. “I love how my brows look after this since [the gel] is tinted. It looks like my brows, but better!”
There is both a sense of genuine excitement and composed pride in Wilson’s voice as she does an impromptu “get ready with me” segment during the interview. It feels as though an old friend is dialling in and we’re updating each other on our latest beauty finds, yet Wilson’s occasional insights into the actual production of those “finds” are a constant reminder that she is indeed behind one of the most globally renowned Filipino-owned brands of today.
Sunnies came to life in 2013 with the launch of Sunnies Studios, an eyewear label that has eventually found its way into the wardrobe of global It-girls like Le Sserafim’s Huh Yunjin. Since then, it has grown into a lifestyle behemoth that encompasses cruelty-free cosmetics line Sunnies Face, Sunnies Coffee, Sunnies Cafe and, the most recent of the bunch, Sunnies Flask. Some might ponder at the evolution of the brand, wondering just how all these concepts fit together under one umbrella. But for Wilson, the answer has never been simpler.
“Our vision for Sunnies is to create beauty in everyday things,” she says. “Not just your precious—I don’t know—jewellery that you keep in a safe. We wanted it to be stuff that is a part of your everyday life. It doesn’t matter what the category or what the object is, so long as we make it the best it can be.”
Often an arbitrary measure of success, “best”, in Wilson’s book, has clear deliverables. They are uncompromisable criteria for which all Sunnies products are scored against. “It’s not just how it looks but it’s how it functions,” she explains. “It’s how the experience of buying it feels, it’s also the price with the quality. It’s just everything that encompasses something. I think things are beautiful if they’re functional; they are beautiful if they are designed well.”
“All our products are designed to be put using the car mirror when you’re rushing—because that’s me. I literally put my makeup on in the car and if it’s too much of a hassle, I just won’t use it. Our Blush On is one of the best-selling products in the Philippines and I think it’s so beautiful because it doesn’t even look like you’re wearing makeup. It’s like a luminous kind of glow [from] within.”
Whether it’s the beauty in functionality or the beauty in simplicity, Wilson speaks passionately about its place at the core of the Sunnies brand. But this comes as no surprise, given that a life in beauty seemed to be written in the stars for her. Born to a British father and Filipino mother, Wilson is also niece to the Philippines’ first ever Miss Universe, Gloria Diaz. With a family background in show business, expectations for Wilson to face the world in front of a camera were extremely high. She recalls being constantly pestered about pursuing a career in modelling despite the rules of her Catholic high school preventing such work, which at the time she felt grateful for. She was a shy kid. But as fate would have it, she gave modelling a chance and quickly became one of the most coveted faces in Filipino beauty and fashion. Avid watchers of “America’s Next Top Model” might even remember her appearance as guest stylist on Cycle 17, a few years before she would eventually become the host of “Asia’s Next Top Model”.
Now twenty years into the modelling biz and a mother to three, Wilson’s notions of beauty have transformed with her. “When you’re younger, you’re much more impressionable about what beauty is. I don’t know what I thought to be beautiful back in the day, but I guess perfect symmetry of the face and all those things,” she muses. “Now when I think about beauty, I think about someone that’s so happy and comfortable in their own skin. I think about someone that’s at peace.”
As I watch Wilson through my laptop screen and listen to her reflect on a life that continues to fulfil her every day, it’s clear to me that this is a woman that is steady in herself. She flips through the chapters of her own story and speaks fondly of the past, yet is entirely certain that there’s nowhere she’d rather be than now. “If someone asked me to be 18 again, I’d be like, ‘No thanks, I’m good’. I had a great time but I think what you don’t realise is that there’s so much to getting older and ageing as a woman is actually one of the best things that you can do.”
She tells me that she’s enjoying her new home in Shanghai (“there’s so many subcultures and Shanghai has room for it all”!) and that she’s in the best shape of her life thanks to pilates, strength-training, consuming more whole foods, and completing 15,000 steps a day—a habit she picked up from living near Bowen Road in Hong Kong, a “dream paradise” she hopes to move back to one day. But most importantly, she’s immensely proud of herself.
“I always think that if entrepreneurs knew how much it would change their life and how much it would take of them, I wonder how many people would actually endeavour into a business,” she says. “I mean, we now have nearly 1,500 employees but it started with four—and those four did everything. When we used to shoots I was the model, the producer, the financer. I was also the driver when we’d do long shoots, I’d style myself. It was just insane. You have to be so passionate about what you do that it makes up for all the tough times. You have to be so resilient. You have to be so sure of yourself.”
Wilson calls Sunnies a “thoughtful edit” of beautiful things, but it is also a thriving reflection of all the times she has shown up for herself. All the times she has chosen her vision and nobody else’s—and what’s more beautiful than that?
Photography: BJ Pascual
Styling: Foxla Chiu
Executive Producer: Marina Fairfax
Makeup Artist: Zid
Hair Stylist: Carlo Roblico
Fashion Assistant: MJ Benitez
Editor
Alyanna Raissa J. PayosCredit
Lead image: BJ Pascual for Vogue Hong Kong's September 2024 issue
