What Lies Beneath...  Arieta Mujay

Arieta Mujay has spent more than 25 years shaping how fashion, beauty and culture are seen. As a  brand and communications leader, stylist and cultural connector, her career has taken her from New Look, River Island and Boohoo to Feelunique and Sephora UK, with more than a few pretty stand out chapters along the way, including working and travelling with Rihanna!

But headlines only tell a part of her story.

Born in London and shaped by her Nigerian heritage, Arieta was raised by women who instilled in her strong foundations of faith, generosity, good work and the importance of knowing how to have grit, when picking yourself up and beginning again. We see her story as one of reinvention, standing on one’s distinct identity,and an enduring desire to balance ambition with softness.

For this season of What Lies Beneath, Arieta speaks with warmth, candour and very little care for pretending. She reflects on redefining success, making room for herself in midlife, the hair that has “kept the receipts” through every incarnation, and the women who taught her that beauty is ultimately about fully occupying your own decisions.

Or, as she boldly puts it:low tolerance for bullshit, high tolerance for becoming.

TSB: What does perfect happiness look and feel like to you at this stage of your life, and how different is it from what you once thought you wanted?

Arieta: I used to think happiness was arriving somewhere. The title, the campaign, the room where everyone already knew your name.

These days, it’s a lot less cinematic: work I actually respect, people I don’t have to perform for, and projects that are genuinely cool rather than just good for the CV.

I am still ambitious; that hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s just that my definition of self and success has quietly rewritten itself somewhere along the way.

TSB: Which quality inherited from your family or your upbringing in Nigeria do you recognise most strongly in yourself today?

Arieta: Pride and resilience, alongside the culture itself, because that’s non-negotiable.

I was raised in something close to a matriarchal household. My dad was there, other men were there, but it was my mum and my aunties who actually raised me in faith, hard work, generosity and, yes, with a sense of style.

They were the first women who taught me how to dust myself off and try again. That’s not a metaphor I picked up later from an Aaliyah song or in a book. That’s simply what I watched them do, on repeat.

TSB: You have lived and worked across different cultures. Where do you feel most entirely yourself, and what is it about that place that allows you to exhale?

Arieta: London. There is genuinely no place like the endz. NORTHWEEZY, STAND UP!

Growing up there in the 90s and 00s, off the back of everything our parents endured from the 60s through to the 80s, there was, and still is, a real pride in being Black and British. Nigerian British, if we’re being properly specific about it these days.

London didn’t just shape me. It’s essential to who I became, full stop.

TSB: What is your earliest memory of understanding that your appearance could influence how the world treated you? How has that awareness shaped the way you choose to express yourself?

Arieta: My mum and aunties always looked good; that was a given. But it was my dad who drilled the real lesson into us: neat. Not casually neat, but dressed correctly for whatever the occasion demanded.

He instilled the importance of presentation and first impressions in us early, on the logic that you only get to make one. That has stayed with me longer than most of what I learned professionally in this industry.

TSB: What do you consider your greatest extravagance, not necessarily in money, but in time, pleasure or personal style, and what does it reveal about you?

Arieta: Supplements, honestly. Going through perimenopause is teaching me very quickly that health is wealth. One morning it’s this joint, the next it’s something else entirely.

The one thing I won’t cut corners on anymore is my supplements, and they have to come from a good place. Not necessarily the cheapest, the flashiest or the most on-trend. Just properly sourced.

That’s the extravagance now. Not the styling, not the handbag. My body.

TSB: Which expectation of how a woman should look, behave or live would you most like to see disappear?

Arieta: Honestly, all of them. But if I have to pick one, it would be the idea that ambition and softness can’t coexist, or that a woman has to choose a lane and defend it for life.

I want the boardroom and the sweat-your-weave-out cocktail-bar shenanigans with my people to count as the same woman. We should be allowed to work hard and play just as hard, with zero judgement attached to either.

TSB: Has entering midlife changed what you are willing to accommodate?

Arieta: Myself, mostly. I accommodate myself more now.

There’s less shrinking to make a room comfortable and less over-explaining decisions I’ve already made peace with. Midlife has made the explanation optional.

TSB: If you had to choose one chapter of your hair story that revealed something important about who you were becoming, which would it be?

Arieta: All chapters. Every one of them.

Weaves, braids, wash and sets, relaxers, dye, buzz cuts, hi-top fades and wigs. I’ve done it all, and I still do.

Reinvention isn’t a phase for me; it’s a constant, and my hair has been keeping the receipts the whole time.

TSB: What does caring for your hair look like in this chapter of your life? Of the products you’ve tried from The Steam Bar, which has become a favourite, and what do you enjoy about using it?

Arieta: The Microbiome Scalp Serum. I have traction alopecia and, for me, it has felt genuinely life-changing. Massaging it into my scalp has become a properly soothing part of my routine, particularly when my scalp feels irritated.

This chapter of hair care isn’t about the look anymore. It’s about actually taking care of what’s underneath it.

TSB: Who are your heroines in everyday life, and what have they taught you about beauty that you could never have learned from working in the industry?

Arieta: Not the women on my moodboards, whatever people might assume. It’s the women in my family and friendship group who never had a beauty industry telling them who to be and were magnetic regardless.

They taught me that beauty was never really about the product. It was about a woman fully occupying her own decisions. Beauty genuinely comes from within.

I’ve watched people go through product after product and age faster than the ones who barely do anything, who simply mind their peace and their own business. Those are the ones with the healthiest skin I’ve ever seen.

Twenty-five years in this industry, and that’s still the best brief anyone has ever given me.

TSB: You have spent years helping brands shape how they are seen. When you set professional titles and public recognition aside, what do you consider your greatest personal achievement?

Arieta: Staying true to myself and my values through every version of the career. The corporate years, the consulting years and the years when I genuinely wasn’t sure which version of myself I was.

Nobody hands you an award for that. It’s just the actual work.

And forever, getting to work and travel with Rihanna. That was so special. It’s only now that I truly realise how spectacular and once-in-a-lifetime that experience was.

TSB: What is your personal motto today?

Arieta: Low tolerance for bullshit, high tolerance for becoming.