and invent rs Entrepreneurs

Camille Coton

WHAT? Skincare products

WHERE? camillecoton.com

HOW MUCH? $34-$85

Even though Lisa Cohorn has worked in the beauty industry for upwards of 17 years, she has always been on the losing end of a battle with acne.

“I’ve always had oily skin and acne my whole life,” she says. “It’s like I was in the industry, and I had the problem, but I wasn’t really addressing it for myself. I was busy working on it for other people.”

She knew she needed more exfoliation

Button the Bride

WHAT? Buttonhook

WHERE? Buttonthebride.com

HOW MUCH? $50 as she aged, so for a while she cycled though various products, trying to find something that worked for her. She tried products with microbeads, products with aluminum oxide crystals and products with fruit enzymes, but they caused even more breakouts and redness.

Hand surgery ended up being both the best and worst thing for East Dallas neighbor Susie Gray Uphues.

After working as a makeup artist for more than 30 years, Uphues developed arthritis in her right thumb and she was forced to undergo surgery to fix it.

The cast she had to wear allowed her to use only two fingers, but despite that she continued to do makeup for celebrities, models and brides in Dallas.

However, there was one thing she wasn’t able to do.

Over the years, she had become skilled at hooking the tiny buttons that dot the backs of many classic wedding dresses, and helped many a bride get into her gown. But that simply wasn’t going to happen without the use of her right thumb, and she was forced to watch brides’ friends and family members struggle with the tedious chore.

“I went to the dermatologist and he was like, ‘What are you doing to your skin?’” Cohorn recalls. ”It was like my skin was revolting against it.”

One day she used a cold cream her mom and grandma had used for years. “They get it from some little lady who gets it from some other little lady. That kind of thing,” she says. “But it’s just a basic cold cream.”

She left it on for a few minutes, and when she washed it off her dead skin started coming off.

“I was like, ‘This is bizarre,’” Cohorn says. “So I just kept rubbing it all off, and my skin looked so much better without that dead lay- er of skin that’s just sitting there that can’t get off, and my skin was so moisturized.”

That wasn’t how the product was intended to work, but it started her thinking: Could she create a product that strips the layer of dead skin off the top and moistures the skin underneath?

She called up her chemist friend and ran the idea past him. She decided she wanted to create a product that’s easy on the skin and uses a lot of natural elements to remove the dead layer, exposing fresh skin underneath.

After a lot of research, she launched a skincare line called Camille Coton in June that features two products: Soft Microdermabrasion Cream and BB Bloom Balm Oil Serum, which are used in tandem and available on her website and Amazon.

“I just wanted it to be as gentle on the skin as possible, and to remove dead skin,” she explains. “So it is an exfoliation product, but it has no acids, no crystals, clays or beads.”

One day a bride remarked that she couldn’t believe someone had not designed a tool to make buttoning wedding dresses easier.

“I thought, ‘That’s it! That’s what I need to do,’” Uphues recalls.

That night she pulled out her crafting supplies and started experimenting, and she soon came up with a makeshift hook that easily grabs onto the loop and slip it over the button.

To make it cute, she had the handle designed to look like a bridal gown. She eventually decided the sell the hooks in sets of two — one to button the dress and one to unbutton the dress, with the second tool designed to look like a tuxedo.

After receiving a patent for her idea, she officially launched her business, Button the Bride, at New York’s International Bridal Week recently; brides in Dallas are already using her product.

“If I hadn’t had hand surgery I never would have thought of this idea,” she muses. “It’s kind of interesting that out of one of the worst times of my life, that’s how all of this came about.”