Napoleon Perdis

Pictured: Napoleon Perdis and Liana Perdis

His career in the makeup industry started from humble beginnings in suburban Sydney, as the son of hard-working immigrants. Today, with more than eighty-five of his Napoleon Perdis concept stores dotted around the globe, this boy from Paramatta says it all began when he made-up his mum’s face before a night out at the local Greek dance.

When he was happy with her, Dad used to call her ‘my Elizabeth Taylor’. Mum would always wear lipstick, mascara, blush – everything. She was stunning. I used to be completely mesmerised when I watched her getting ready – the way she turned into this glamorous creature. It was so fun to watch. But when Dad was in a hurry and he just wanted her to be ready? He’d say: ‘Operation Christmas tree – come on!’

Mum was born on an island called Kythira, which was both Italian- and English-occupied and wasn’t given to Greece until the early part of last century. Mum and Dad didn’t believe in arranged marriages, which was something a lot of other people in their family did. In fact, their relationship was considered evil by my mum’s family and my grandmother. They didn’t want my dad at all. He wasn’t from the same island. Back in Greece, Dad had actually been part of the socialist, enlightened movement and during the civil war, when he was nineteen, Queen Frederica saved his life and exiled him to an island called Leros. He was educated and given his degree then left to come to Australia because things were tough in Greece in those days.

The only reason my parents met is because, in Dad’s shop that he’d opened in Paramatta in Sydney, he had the very first TV in the area. He used to invite Mum over to watch it and afterwards, he walked her home. After three or four walks, he asked if he could kiss her, and her mother saw them. His experiences made him very different from the other men my mum had met and they both fell in love. Three months later, they had to get married – their parents were so embarrassed about their relationship that they put the pressure on.

Mum’s family had come to Australia before Dad, and she had been exposed to more Western culture than he had. She demanded that he get her a ring when she got married. She was also very into make-up. Her auntie had been her mentor and had taught her how to put on lipstick and use face cream, and it was something Mum always cared about a lot. It made her feel special. She liked looking good.

One of the only reasons Dad would get angry at her was because of her make-up. To open up the shop at 6 a.m., they had to leave home at about 5.15 a.m. Mum would get up so early, just because she wanted extra time to do her hair and all her make-up. She would spend ages.

It was a very modest three-bedroom, one bathroom home. My two grandmothers were in one room, my mother and father were in another and my brother and I were in the other one. In the morning, you could hear the rustling of her getting ready to leave with Dad.

I remember her coming in to our room – coming over the bed just to give us a little kiss on our foreheads – and you felt that comfort. Everything was more glamorous and beautiful when Mum was around. It was something that I really longed for and I wanted to see her at the end of the day.

She would go in and set up that sandwich bar and serve the customers and whenever we went there after school, it was so wonderful to see her and she would always smell wonderful – not of the traditional sort of cheap hamburger smell that most of those shops had.

Mum was always very nurturing. She would be working in the cafe with us by her side and she would be so busy serving customers and cooking, but she would still always listen to our stories about what we did at school that day. She had this way of making us feel like we had her whole attention.

There are times that I remember feeling a bit lonely. Mum and Dad had to open the shop early and we wouldn’t see her until the afternoon. Our grandmothers were there to make sure everything was running well but, you know, when you’re a little kid, sometimes it’s just your mum’s face you want to see most. And the times when she was there – oh my God, it was like Christmas. She would want to spoil us and look after us and cook for us and do all these special things because she knew that we missed her – and she missed us.

My parents ran that shop seven days and seven nights, probably up until I was sixteen years old. On the weekends it was different, because Mum would go in and help Dad open up but she would finish at twelve o’clock, just before lunchtime, and she would come home to us, just as we were finishing Greek school. Then she would take us to do Greek dancing and we’d have the whole Saturday afternoon with her. Dad was never really around until a lot later – and by that time I was almost married – so that time spent with Mum was always really precious.

She was one of those ladies who took a real pride in her home. Every season, she’d change pillows, or she’d change the couch around, or change the decorations that went with the table. On weekends, she would cook Greek pastries and on special occasions, like Easter and Christmas, there was always something home-baked.

Being involved with the Greek community was really important to both my parents and at the end of the day on Saturday, we would take a change of clothes down to my dad at the shop and he would change and we’d all go out. Saturdays were always really glam days to be with Mum – she would dress up and do her hair and make-up and put jewellery on. She looked so beautiful. We would be with our cousins, our friends – lots of people from the Greek community – dancing, eating and just celebrating life.

And then Sunday? That was work. We’d all go in to the shop together and my brother and I would both help out serving so Mum and Dad might have a little rest.

They used to have these special cocktail party functions in the Greek community for people who had just arrived from Greece. One night, Mum had a beautiful new dress that she had made and she was going to do her make-up. I was reading this magazine with tips on how to do mascara and eyelashes, so I said to Mum: ‘Can I do your make-up?’ And she said ‘Okay.’

It definitely wasn’t my best work. She looked a little bit like a drag queen. The brow was overdrawn and she had a bit too much shadow but to this day, I’ll never forget that she never discouraged me. She wore it out just the way I did it.

I remember, specifically, that a couple of women actually said something to her about it. Some of them would turn up their noses at Mum because she always wore make-up and was a bit freer with her Western ways – Mum was always the one who would tell dirty jokes – and also because she had married Dad and it wasn’t an arranged marriage. They said to her that night: ‘Your make-up looks very strong,’ but she still didn’t say anything about me doing it and she didn’t wipe it off. I think it was her way of being very proud that I did her make-up and it really gave me such a sense of confidence. I remember every detail of that function: the blue dress she wore, the patent leather shoes, her stockings – everything. One of her accessories was a little necklace that Dad had bought for her and the whole thing made such a special impact on me.

I thought: ‘You can do your hair, you can do your dress, you can have your shoes and your jewellery, but the whole story only comes together when you do the make-up.’ I could see her being complete.

To Dad’s credit he didn’t say one thing about it. He probably thought to himself that her make-up was too heavy but he kept quiet. He didn’t say: ‘Oh don’t do that, boys don’t do that,’ or any of that stuff. It was really the turning point that set the pace for me – a turning point that would set the pace for my whole career.

When I decided to do make-up professionally, Mum was supportive. I had finished university and had met my wife and I told my mum my plans and all she said was: ‘That’s a good idea.’ The next questions were about how I was going to set it all up. Being Greek, she wanted to know how I was going to turn it into a business – making sure it would also become an income-earner for me.

You know, wives have a very strategic role in creating a balance with their husbands, as long as it is a reasonable, loving marriage. When I wanted to start my own business, my mother basically said to my father: ‘I don’t think this is one of those fleeting moments for Napoleon – I think this is a moment that is important to him.’

Mum always had a strong influence over Dad. I think he was quite infatuated by her glamour. She was thirteen years younger than him, as well. She just said to him that she thought it was one of those things that I really needed to explore and that I was passionate about it. Mum was there to give me the emotional support, and my wife, Soula-Marie, was there to give me all the structural and logistical support that was so critical. I had two special people who believed in me and that was really important.

Mum was a catalyst for Dad being pacified and allowing it to happen. It was amazing and I’m always so grateful for that. If she believed in what I was doing, she would always help and she would just make sure Dad understood. It was like her magic spell. She communicated with Dad in a way that bridged the gap between being in Australia and the old ways from Greece.

I started door-knocking, from florists to beauty parlours with bridal salons, and I would ask if I could do a complimentary make-over for them, next time they had a bride coming in for a trial. By the time I had knocked on five doors, someone said yes. That’s how my business started.

Most Italian or Greek or Lebanese immigrants from that generation – they always helped their children set up a business, if they could. My parents had saved to do that too but the whole idea of me starting a make-up business was a lot for my dad to get his head around and invest in. Mum said: ‘Let’s just give him a chance,’ and so, instead of giving me the $60,000 they had planned to give me, they cut that sum in half and gave me $30,000. Mum negotiated that with Dad. I was a bit scared of the risk but I used that moment to launch internationally and that was the beginning of Napoleon Perdis as it is today.

I think Mum always wanted to be an accessory or fashion designer but in Greece, when she was a young girl, her father committed suicide. He had emphysema and he thought he was going to be a burden on the family. My mum and her own mother found him and that was something that tormented her. She was just a young girl, seven years old, and basically, she did what the family wanted her to do – immigrate to Australia when she was seventeen and just survive. I think she lost a lot of her dreams.

As Mum became more upwardly mobile as an immigrant, she was passionate about being more glamorous and that was how she expressed herself. She was happy to be a housewife or a business partner to Dad but she’d said goodbye to any other real ambitions. The only goals she really had were for her kids to go to school and do well and go to university. She didn’t get those same chances to be educated and she really loved the fact that Dad was so smart. It wasn’t that he was smarter than her – she was smart in a different way – he’d just had different opportunities to gain formal, intellectual knowledge.

It wasn’t always perfect between us – me and my mum. Like any teenager, I did things that my mother didn’t like. I started smoking quite early and that was a rebellious moment for me. She was not happy. She didn’t like a couple of the girls I had dated earlier on, either, because she thought they were taking me away from my studies. Generally, though, Mum and I had a very similar philosophy about what sort of things we liked in life and what sort of things we didn’t, so we always got along much better than I did with my father. My relationship with him took a long time to become mature and to reach a level of real understanding – I think because he was always very confronted by me.

I am probably stricter than my parents were with me. I’ve moved my family from Australia to Los Angeles, and then to Greece. My girls having spent so much of their childhood in LA, we’ve done whatever we could to protect our family values. My wife and I had to work to protect our Australian cultural values. My wife was always the one to bring in sandwiches or Anzac biscuits on Australia Day or Anzac Day to the school in Beverly Hills where they were. Really, they resented our push to make them so Australian because, to them, they were California girls.

Because I didn’t want to lose those values I cared about, I was ruthlessly strict in many ways. My wife was brought up in Athens until she was fourteen, when she came to Australia, so for us, with our own children, it was a case of honouring our own Australian-ness, and our culture as Greek Australians. I guess I remind myself more of my father in that respect, because he was the one who was very strict about making sure we respected our Greek cultural heritage when we were being raised in Sydney. Dad was strict about lots of things and I suppose, because he worked so much, it was a way for him to have an influence on our lives, even when time restrictions meant he wasn’t always able to be physically with us. My mum used to give me a lot more freedom.

As a father of four daughters, a really important thing for me was to make sure that my girls understand their value as women. No one can actually tell them what to do or control them. My wife is a strong woman and I think my mother has been a good role model for them in that regard, too.

I can’t speak for everyone’s relationship and I don’t want to generalise, but I do think daughters-in-law connect more with mothers-in-law once they become mothers themselves. At first, Soula-Marie had to really set the boundaries – she didn’t want my mother coming over to cook for us and clean for us and do all that. Her attitude was that she and I would share the tasks of our home, which I found quite challenging because I had a mother who was always spoiling me at home and doing everything for me.

My mother ended up really respecting her. Then, when we had our first child, they bonded in a new, deeper way. My wife really believed in the Greek tradition of naming the first daughter after the husband’s mother and because she stuck to those traditional beliefs, my mother saw her as a woman of real values. Today, my mother would call my wife for advice – even though we live overseas and Mum is still back in Sydney – much more than she would call me.

Mum has a very important role in my daughters’ lives. When the girls were developing breasts, they were kind of hunching over and all embarrassed and my mother would be the one who would help them feel proud. She’d say: ‘It’s natural, don’t be ashamed – you’ve got to wear a bra you can feel comfortable with.’

Mum has all these little philosophies about how she thinks the girls should be. When she was here in Greece for five months, they kind of loved that she still cares about her appearance and doesn’t let herself go. They love that she’s accessorising, wearing beautiful necklaces, and how her bag matches her shoes. They always say to her: ‘You look so beautiful,’ and she basks in that because, as a mother to two boys, I think she is really loving the chance to be more feminine and talk about things that she couldn’t discuss with us.

My girls like her because she is not coming from a traditional Greek grandma perspective – Mum has a modern outlook. She would never say to them: ‘Don’t wear those shorts.’ Instead, she says things like: ‘You have beautiful legs, you show them.’

Because Dad never restricted her being beautiful and sexy around him, she feels that her granddaughters should absolutely embrace their looks, know their value and make it part of their strength – not something that takes away from other aspects of them, and not something to feel embarrassed by either. That’s been interesting for me to watch because it’s something only a woman of experience can pass on to young women.

When she’s angry with me, Mum might complain that she sees me all the time in photos but she doesn’t ever see me in person. She tells me that she wants to hear my voice. She’s torn between accepting me as an adult male who’s making his own decisions and moving around the world in his own way, and still seeing me as her little boy who will always be there for her. We have that little struggle every now and then – I love her and she loves me but she can cut me down. Once, when she was being a bit nasty and angry, she said: ‘It doesn’t matter who you are – at the end of the day, we’re just village goat-herders and I don’t want you to forget that.’ And I’m, like: ‘Sure Mum, but I don’t need to be out buying goats to appreciate those village values.’

I know it’s hard for her, having us all so far away from her, but for us, really, Australia is still always home. My girls already have a foundation of being Australians through me and my wife, and it is important for us that they have a connection with being Greek too. They will always be Australian, just like I am, but with a global outlook.

Australia is a great country. I mean, it’s a place where my grandmother first came and could only sign her name with a circle. My family went from that to putting us through tertiary education and giving us support and encouragement to follow our dreams and be successful and happy.

I love that Mum can now spend all the time she wants with us here in Greece and that she doesn’t have to work anymore. If I had one wish, it would probably be that Mum didn’t have to work seven days and seven nights for twenty-five to thirty years. She’s got terrible varicose veins because of standing for so many hours behind a counter, and she’s had three operations on them. In those days, the immigrants did everything themselves – they mopped, they cleaned, they set up shop and they did it day in, day out. If Mum just had a few years where she was able to rest her legs and not have to be standing from so early in the morning to so late in the evening, she probably would’ve had much better health.

I chose to be very ambitious and a couple of my daughters may also be very ambitious – and a couple of them may not be – but if there was one main thing I learned from watching my mother, it’s to try to create that balance and not allow my ambition to take over everything when it comes to children and my personal family life. Life is so short. You can’t get those years back again.