Our Story
Two people from Ukraine, one island in the middle of the Atlantic, and a slightly unreasonable love for lasers.
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Anastasiia
- August 31, 2026
- 2:31 pm
Hello, we're Kirill and Anastasia
We’re a family from Ukraine, and we’re the two people behind Madeira Beauty.
We didn’t just want to call Madeira home — we wanted to actually become part of it. We believe you should contribute something to the place you live in, and that work is one of the most honest ways to do it. This studio is our way of contributing.
Calling it a “business” still feels like a stretch. We work with our own hands, every day. Our only team member is Tatiana, Anastasia’s mum, who takes care of massage, waxing, sugaring and body wraps. Everything else — the treatments, the training, the research, the endless decisions — is the two of us, step by step.
One day we’d love to have the studio of our dreams: a big space, several treatment rooms, a proper team, and, of course, far too many machines. For now, we’re investing in something else first — our knowledge, our skills, and the quality of what happens in the room with you.
How we ended up here
We’re asked this almost every week, usually somewhere between the consultation and the first treatment.
The honest answer: we never planned to move. Although, if we’re being completely honest, we always quietly wanted to. Anastasia has a habit of trying countries on — every time we travelled somewhere, she’d catch herself thinking, could I live here?
Then life made the decision for us.
We flew to Madeira for a holiday. Two days later, the war started at home. We were here with two backpacks and no plan at all.
That’s how our life in Madeira began.
Why we stayed
Very quickly, this stopped feeling like an accident.
We love the people here — the local warmth, the way strangers greet you on a hiking trail. We love the culture, the food, the ocean, the mountains that change their mind about the weather four times a day.
But the thing we love most is something less photogenic: the balance between work and life.
That balance matters more than it sounds. We’ve been in the beauty industry for over ten years, and back in Ukraine we never quite managed it. There were seasons when we worked ourselves into the ground and simply waited for the day to be over.
Here, that doesn’t happen. And it isn’t only good for us — it’s the reason your appointment feels the way it does. You’ll never meet us exhausted or rushing you out of the door. We genuinely believe you can’t do precise, careful work when you’re running on empty. We want you to leave with a great result and with a bit of our energy.
The honest part: what was hardest
Starting again in another country is never simple, and we’d rather not pretend otherwise.
The biggest challenge was language. We had to build everything — consultations, texts, marketing, paperwork — in languages we barely spoke at the time. When we reread some of the things we wrote back then, we still quietly wince. On top of that, we had to work out how everything functions here: which tools work, where clients actually look for a specialist, how the local market thinks.
But we won’t tell a dramatic story of starting from zero, because that wouldn’t be true. We had savings from our years of work in Ukraine, and that made an enormous difference. It allowed us to invest properly from the beginning: to buy couches, equipment and materials, and to bring some of our tools with us from home. We started simply, but we never started empty-handed — and we’re genuinely grateful for that. Building this from absolute zero would have been a completely different story.
Learning the island (and its coffee culture)
We speak English, Ukrainian and Russian — and Portuguese, um pouco, improving slowly but stubbornly.
Something that surprised us early on: how differently time works here. Portuguese clients are busy people who take both work and rest seriously, and appointments sometimes move around more than we were used to. It took us a little while to adjust — and now we simply build our schedule around it.
And then there’s coffee. We had several clients arrive exactly on time, sit down and say, quite reasonably: “I’m here — I’ll just have my coffee first, then we can start.” Others would tell us, “I’m going to my favourite café first, and I’ll come straight after.” Now we understand it perfectly: coffee isn’t a delay here, it’s part of the day. So we’ve made sure there’s always some waiting for you at the studio.
From a tiny rented room to our own studio
We started small. Very small.
Our first workspace was a little room rented inside a Portuguese salon, where we did what we already knew how to do well: lashes, brows and tattoo work. At the same time, we began learning Portuguese — and, honestly, English too. In Ukraine, languages are taught as if they were dead: plenty of grammar, almost no conversation. So we learned the way everyone eventually does — by talking to people and getting it wrong.
Then came a second room, a little bigger and a little better.
The studio you visit today is our third home, and the first one that’s entirely ours. No sharing, no compromising. A space we could finally design the way we wanted it — our style, our equipment, our atmosphere. We spend so much time here that it genuinely feels like a second home.
About the lasers (this is where we get carried away)
We should warn you: we’re perfectionists, and we’re nerds.
Before we buy a single machine, we research for years. We read, we compare, we travel to conferences, we talk to specialists, we test in person. Only then do we buy — and we always choose the best option available, not the most affordable one.
That’s partly for our clients, but honestly, it’s for us too. Working on outstanding equipment is a genuine pleasure. There’s a certain joy in a machine that does exactly what it promises.
Our friends have a running joke: when someone loves something a lot, they say they love it “the way Nastya and Kirill love lasers.” We can talk about wavelengths for hours. At home, our debates are about whether the next investment should be another laser or a new recovery device.
So yes — you can probably guess what our plans for the next few years look like. We’d love a Range Rover one day, but the studio needs upgrading first, and there’s always a machine we’ve had our eye on. Priorities.
Why skin is personal for us
Both of us grew up with problematic skin. Years of acne, years of trying everything, years of that very specific feeling when you don’t want to be photographed. Today we’re treating our own post-acne marks — with our own lasers, on ourselves.
So when you sit down and tell us about your skin, we’re not listening politely. We know exactly what you mean.
Skin is the largest organ in the body, and looking after it isn’t vanity. It affects how you feel, how you carry yourself, how you show up. That deserves proper attention, proper technology and proper products — which is why we work with Swiss professional skincare and world-leading medical-grade machines from Lutronic, Cynosure and Storz Medical.
We’re also the kind of people who never stop studying: new protocols, new research, international courses, endless analysis. We believe the truth usually hides in the details, so we pay attention to them — the settings, the sequence, the aftercare, the small adjustments that separate a decent result from an excellent one.
What this means for you
Everything above comes down to one thing: whatever you book with us, you get 100% of us.
The best equipment we could find. Products we’d use on ourselves — and do. Protocols we’ve studied properly rather than copied. Honest advice, including when the answer is “you don’t need this treatment.”
And an hour that belongs entirely to you — no rush, no pressure, and a good coffee if you’d like one.
We know that becoming part of a place you didn’t grow up in takes time, and we don’t take it lightly. We’d like to earn it properly — through our work, through the people we look after, and through showing up every day. So far, Madeira has been generous with us.
We'd love to meet you in our studio
Contact us
+351 911 936 117
info@madeirabeauty.com