By Simona Siad

30: number of years Mikki Taylor, beauty and cover director, worked at Essence

After three decades at Essence magazine, beauty and cover director Mikki Taylor is retiring.

While the magazine states that she will continue contributing as editor-at-large, Taylor says she will mainly focus on her companies and family. News of the veteran beauty director’s departure from Essence flew across Twitter, the blog world and the internet.

Bloggers commented that to fully understand her impact on the beauty world, you must consider the time and context surrounding her career. Taylor covered all things beauty and style before Black women were considered icons of beauty in mainstream media. At the time, makeup and beauty lines geared for women of colour were still in their infancy.

Taylor is the author of Self-Seduction: Your Ultimate Plan to Inner and Outer Beauty and has been a guest instructor at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa.