Bantry sisters are raising eyebrows and wooing celebs with new salon

By Kevin O’Brien

TWO sisters from Bantry have taken Dublin by storm with their make-up skills, to such an extent, that the pair have been nominated in the Creative Industry Category for the 2015 Image Business Woman of the Year Awards.

Lorna and Liz Farrelly are make-up artists from Bantry and  their business ‘The Brow Artist’ in Ranelagh has been going from strength to strength. They specialise in complete brow re-design.

Among their top celebrity clients are the stunning Seoige sisters – Grainne and Síle – well known through their TV and radio appearances, and famous for their dark and beautifully shaped brows.

Lorna and Liz are also well known in the Bantry area, as their parents previously owned ‘Pete’s Steakhouse’ in Bantry. 

‘My parents ran the restaurant for 25 years and we were well known around the area,’ Lorna told The Southern Star. 

‘In fact, our amazing dad Peter Farrelly, originally a chef and the man behind the famous steakhouse, designed and created all our amazingly glamorous mirrored work stations and helped design the whole interior of our fabulous Georgian building in Ranelagh,’ pointed out Lorna.

The two sisters have plenty of experience in the beauty business as they owned The Powder Room beauticians in Bantry for 10 years. 

They chose the busy southside Dublin area for setting up their latest business venture, and had an official launch of their business in Dublin recently. ‘The business is designed to be a chain and it wasn’t possible to do that from a place as remote as Bantry, even though I developed the business idea down there,’ said Lorna. 

‘I had to go to Dublin which is the beauty and fashion media centre of Ireland, and create enough attention from the media there so it could be recognised and expand it,’ explained the West Cork woman. 

In developing their new venture, the sisters had to choose between it and The Powder Room. 

‘The Powder Room was a great success and we tried to split our time between the two places, but it was too difficult driving up and down so we had to let The Powder Room go,’ said Lorna.  

‘I couldn’t find anyone to take over the service that my sister and I did, so we had to come to an executive decision about it’.

For more on the sisters’ new venture, see ‘The Brow Artist’ on Facebook.