‘I became myself again’: makeup guru Bobbi Brown on a lifetime perfecting the natural look
In 1991, as a riposte to red lipstick, Bobbi Brown, a then 30-something makeup artist, launched her eponymous brand with a handful of nude lipsticks. It marked the world’s introduction to the no-makeup makeup look, the antithesis of the more-ismore aesthetic that reigned in women’s makeup bags long after the 80s had made its exit.
As a jobbing makeup artist, she initially sold it directly to friends and clients and then, fortuitously, met a buyer from Bergdorf Goodman in New York, where it officially launched. Brown expected to sell 100 lipsticks a month. The new brand sold 100 a day. It outperformed all the establishment beauty brands in the store and very quickly other retailers, such as Neiman Marcus, asked to stock the brand across the country. “I wanted women to look like they weren’t really wearing makeup,” Brown said.
Four years later, Estée Lauder Companies
(owner of Estée Lauder, Jo Malone London, MAC Cosmetics, Clinique and more) came calling. Brown sold her company (for a reported $75m), stayed on as the captain of the now global Bobbi Brown ship, steering it towards becoming a billion-dollar company. And then, in 2016, she walked away. No one saw it coming.
“Burnt,” is how she describes how she felt at the time. “I was done. I thought, ‘I’ve done it, I’ve succeeded, I’ve built a billion-dollar brand, I’m done with beauty.’” Fashion and beauty history is filled with designers and founders who have put their names on a label, only for them to then have to give up them up when they sell to a conglomerate. Typically, the designer themselves disappears, never to be seen again.
But not Brown. Weeks in, she realised she was not quite done. There were a number of false starts, including a short-lived supplements line (“I thought I was going to be this natural wellness guru. It didn’t happen,” she deadpans) and a futile attempt to go back to being a freelance makeup artist (“No agent wanted to represent me,” she says with a shrug.) But then she hit the jackpot – again. In October 2020, on the day her 25-year noncompete with Estée Lauder Companies ended, Brown launched Jones Road Beauty, a modern line of makeup that champions a clean minimalism.
“My philosophy with beauty,” she explains, “is about confidence and just loving what’s on your face, whether