Burn Survivor launches beauty brand

For Basma Hameed, a burn survivor, makeup is a secret weapon — and it’s also the birthplace of her own professional beauty brand.

Hameed, who suffered third degree burns at the age of two, started experimenting with different types of makeup from a young age as it gave her confidence after being bullied.

“My burn was so red and it’s something I couldn’t really hide. It’s the first thing anyone would see,” Hameed told CTV’s Your Morning on Wednesday.

Little did she know she was working with techniques such as color correction to counteract her red discoloration.

“I found myself mixing my own colors and then trying to figure out the right shade and formulas,” Hameed said.

At the age of 14, Hameed turned to her plastic surgeon in Toronto, but was told that no next steps were available in her treatment path.

Hameed took matters into her own hands and customized pigments to match her skin tone and implanted them as scar tissue. The technique, called scar camouflage, was a rare idea at the time and motivated her to practice on herself.

“I was my first patient,” Hameed said. “I’ve been able to treat all types of surgical scars, burns, and birthmarks.”

Hameed went on to open her own scar camouflage clinics in Toronto and LA

She also launched her own professional beauty brand, called BASMA Beauty, with a foundation that has received praise from a makeup artist for Kourtney Kardashian.

With her beauty line, Hameed is now giving others what she hasn’t been given: hope.

“It was the help of understanding pigments so well at a young age that really helped me,” she said.

Click on the video at the top of this article to watch the full interview.