'I've done my crying here': How Lipstick queen Poppy King bounced back

Australian lipstick entrepreneur Poppy King. Photo / Babiche Martens

As her cosmetics empire and reputation crumbled around her, it wasn't one of her cult-followed matt lip colours Poppy King used to help her put on a brave face.

The Australian lipstick queen's pick-me up of choice became the humble lemonade icy pole.

As the lipstick empire she'd launched at just 19 and nurtured into a business with annual profits of $6.5 million went down the tubes, King would fight for it by day, then mourn its loss at night.

Behind closed doors, she'd sometimes succumb to the tears.

"I had these lemonade icy poles in the freezer in my apartment and when things were really tough I would often cry at night, and I used to put these lemonade icy poles on my eyes so that my eyes wouldn't be swollen," King, now 44, tells Liz Hayes in an interview to air on 60 Minutes on Sunday night.

"The day that I threw those icy poles out, it was a day of realising 'I've done my crying here. I'm out. I'd rather go somewhere where I can just let go and start again.'"

Fast forward 15 years, and King is again the Lipstick Queen, having carved out a new brand of that name, as well as a new life and new niche in New York.

She's moved on. One day, she hopes to return to Australia and see that those who believed the worst of her as the former Young Australian of the Year's business crumbled will too.

King has had a lifetime love affair with lipstick, which she turned into a career as a teenager when she realised her "vintage" face didn't fit with the look of the day, and embraced her own love, and look, of all things 1940s.

Disliking the coral-coloured lipsticks of the time, she developed her own range of matt lipsticks in deep red and brown hues.

The first range, launched in 1992 and named after the seven deadly sins in shades including Greed, Lust and Envy, were a runaway success.

Poppy Industries and its young founder, with her trademark smash of deep red always in place, became the name, literally, that women wanted on their lips.

Expansion into the US, and overseas investors beckoned.

But in 1998 in all started to unravel.

Amid a clash with new investors, Poppy Industries slid into receivership, then liquidation.

King battled on until 2002, staving off the critics and the nay-sayers, weathering the damage as the Australian Securities and Investments Commission investigated allegations the company had traded while insolvent.

The commission would later release a statement clearing the company of that.

By then, King had been pilloried in the press, and lost millions, along with her investors. The tall Poppy had been cut down.

When the company was bought by cosmetic giant Estee Lauder, King went with the deal, to New York, to rebuild.

As well as Estee Lauder, King worked as a cosmetics consultant for other major firms, penned a book, and five years ago, launched another brand, Lipstick Queen, of which she remains part-owner, creative director and face of.

She's happy in New York, tougher than she thought, but essentially, the same.

"When and if I do come back (to Australia) and whatever role I play in the future I am exactly the same," King grins.

"And I'm probably going to make a hell of a lot more mistakes."