

So I had a little taste of that and that experience in itself really helped me to push and design even more."

"I was able to sit down at one of the technical stations and actually like, play with how they're building, I guess coding, which I knew nothing about. "What happened was, we're in this meeting and we have all the colors in front of us and I'm basically saying to them, 'this one blue eyeshadow is going to read the same on a light skin tone, a medium skin tone and a deep.' So we wanted to make sure that it translated that way in the game," Jennings said. Jennings said that his intimate knowledge of MAC's product base, which is already inclusive of those darker skin tones, made teaching the development team how to be more inclusive with their makeup easy for him. On all of the darker skin tones, there's at least one shade of blush, lipstick and eyeshadow that looks natural, or even pretty, on dark skin. The MAC collaboration makes this pre-update ritual less of a heartbreaker, though. The modded makeup, like the matte lipsticks from modder Kotcat or the vibrant, I-wish-these-were-real eyeshadow mods from Crypticsim, weren't necessarily made to solve The Sims 4's issue with makeup on dark skin tones, but they get the job done, and I'm sad every time I have to uninstall them. I have dozens of mods installed that already look better on dark skin tones than what comes in game, but after an update, it's safer to take all your mods out so they don't conflict with the update itself. After the update went live last week, I had to remove all my modded-in makeup. The looks range from subtle splashes of color to bold, editorial looks. He worked closely with The Sims 4's development team for the makeup included in the free update. So what's great and something that keeps me getting up and going to work every day is that fact, that diversity, that we're for everyone." I love my work because I really love people. I can tell you every day I get up, I love what I do. "I know many companies are claiming diversity now," MAC director of makeup Romero Jennings said over the phone.

As a champion of diversity and inclusion in the fashion industry, the collaboration with The Sims, which has strived to become more and more inclusive over its 20 year tenure. Black women have always been able to rely on the brand for makeup that's pigmented enough to show up on their skin. When I first started wearing makeup and couldn't find my foundation shade in any department store brands, MAC was the first place I turned to. From the beginning, MAC is a cosmetics company that has focused on creating a diverse range of highly pigmented shades of makeup that fit every skin tone, even when it wasn't popular in the fashion industry.
