Siobhan McCarthy, 44, and Caroline Breen, 49, are founders of Living M (wearelivingm.com), and share why they set up their skincare range in lockdown.
CAROLINE: We launched Living M in September 2021, in lockdown, after realising we were both in perimenopause. In our 40’s, menopause wasn’t on our radar. We hadn’t even heard of perimenopause; the psychological and physical changes we were experiencing we simply put down to “life” until they became so disruptive, we knew we had to do something. So, our mission now is to raise awareness of and education around perimenopause and menopause so women do not have the experience we had.
SIOBHAN: Prior to Living M Ihad worked in the beauty industry for more than 20 years in London and New York. What I see being presented by brands is not how my friends and I want to be seen, and Living M is here to change that.
CAROLINE: The inspiration for the brand came from a personal pain point. My skin was changing as I went through perimenopause, but I couldn’t find products or solutions designed to target these hormonal changes. Siobhan was having a similar experience and we decided to go for it and create our own skincare range.
SIOBHAN: As a society we accept hormonal skin changes in puberty and pregnancy but when it comes to midlife we are expected to “anti-age”. Menopause is so intrinsically linked with ageing that the road to accepting perimenopause can be a challenging one, as I experienced.
CAROLINE: Siobhan and I developed the range from scratch to production entirely over Zoom, and only once met in person!
We have a great history of working together closely so this part was pretty seamless, but dealing with supply chain and logistics was challenging at times because of the restrictions during the pandemic.
SIOBHAN: There used to be a not so funny joke that all the women in marketing disappeared after 30 years old and that it was a young per
