There was a Dwight, and a Monesh, a Mary, a Lee, and don't forget about sweet Adelaide.
Makeup lines don't usually begin their pretty lives named after real people, but Cover FX isn't your average cosmetics line. The CosMedic clinic at Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Science Centre (a makeup consultation service) developed Cover FX's more than 40 shades of foundation for patients who have had disfiguring accidents or suffer from severe skin problems.
But the products are now fast becoming a cult favourite at Shoppers Drug Mart, Jean Coutu and Racine pharmacies in Canada and the high-end department store Nordstrom in the United States.
"For years I used all the makeup that was out there," says Cover FX president and founder Lee Graff, who started the Cosmedic Clinic with Sunnybrook dermatology chief Neil Shear in 1985. "I ended up mixing all these products, and the poor patient had to go out and try and find all these different brands. It was messy, it was expensive and it was too complicated. I had a dream product in mind, but I couldn't find it."
The patients included a woman whose former fiancé had thrown acid in her face; children born with birthmarks; a pilot with 70 per cent of her body burned in a crash; and a girl whose scalp had been torn off in an industrial accident.
In exasperation, Graff often sent clients for a one-on-one with Victor Casale, a chemist and product developer at M.A.C cosmetics.
"Here he is making a zillion lipsticks a day," she says. "and he would take the time to make a colour for them."
One day, Casale put Graff together with another M.A.C product developer, now Cover F/X vice-president Jenny Frankel, and they decided to make their own line.
They needed a product that had a wide range of colours, had an SPF, stayed on all day, had no fragrance or oil, didn't look cakey and was easy on sensitive skin.
When the line launched in 2002, it was available only through a dermatologist's referral to Graff at the Sunnybrook clinic, but after she did a segment on CITY-TV demonstrating the product on a rosacea patient, that all changed.
"The goal was just to be able to have colours for my patients," Graff says, "but literally seconds after that aired my cellphone did not stop ringing and suddenly I was booked for a year. I thought, 'Oh my goodness, we can't do this here!' So I walked up the street to Shoppers Drug Mart."
The Cover FX line is now available over the counter in cream, liquid and powder formulations that range in price from $35 to $37. "You don't need to have a skin disorder to use it," Graff says, "we cover tattoos, we cover under-eye circles, you name it -- we can cover it."
FX walk-in consultations are available Wednesdays from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at CosMedic's foyer clinic, M wing at Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, http://www.coverfx.com.