In 1991, Bobbi Brown, then a makeup artist in her 30s, launched her eponymous brand with a handful of nude lipsticks as a reaction to red lipstick. It was the world’s introduction to the no-makeup makeup look, the antithesis of the “more is more” aesthetic that reigned in women’s makeup bags long after its ’80s debut.
A working makeup artist, she initially sold it directly to friends and clients, and then coincidentally met a buyer from Bergdorf Goodman in New York, where it was officially launched. Brown expected to sell 100 lipsticks a month. The new brand was selling 100 units a day. It outgrew all established beauty brands in the store, and very quickly other retailers like Neiman Marcus wanted to stock the brand nationwide. “I wanted the women to look like they weren’t actually wearing makeup,” Brown said.
Four years later, the Estée Lauder Companies (owners of Estée Lauder, Jo Malone London, MAC Cosmetics, Clinique and more) came calling. Brown sold her company (for $75 million), remaining captain of the now-global Bobbi Brown ship and steering it toward becoming a billion-dollar company. And then he walked away in 2016. Nobody saw it coming.
“Burnt” is how he describes how he felt at the time. “I am done. “I thought, ‘I did it, I did it, I created a billion-dollar brand, I’m done with beauty.'” The history of fashion and beauty is full of eponymous designers and founders. but they will have to give them up when they sell to a holding company. Typically the designer himself disappears, never to be seen again.
But not Brown. Weeks later, he realized his work wasn’t quite done. There were a number of false starts, including a short-lived supplement line (“I thought I was going to be a natural health guru. That didn’t happen,” she deadpans) and a futile attempt to return to freelancing as a makeup artist (“No agents wanted to represent me,” she deadpans). (shrugs.) But then he hit the jackpot again. In October 2020, the same day her 25-year run with Estée Lauder Companies ended, Brown launched Jones Road Beauty, a modern makeup line that champions clean minimalism.
“My philosophy on beauty,” she explains, “is about confidence and loving what’s on your face, whether it’s lines or something else. Just go with it, it’s easier. Like its predecessor, the brand is fully inclusive because, Brown emphasizes, “It’s so important to wear makeup that suits everyone’s skin.” The timing of its launch was bold. The world was in the middle of a pandemic and makeup sales globally dropped significantly.
Still, Jones Road tapped into the spirit of what women, from TikTokers to Boomers, really want. “It’s common sense,” Brown shrugs. He does not disclose the figures: “We have been completely profitable since day one,” he says only. But judging by rumored global daily sales (seven figures and counting), Bobbi Brown is on track to create another billion-dollar brand.
born in 1957 Brown describes her mother as “beautiful and very attractive” to middle-class parents in the Chicago suburbs, but she also confides in Ali MacGraw. love story for helping her see that there was “another kind of beauty.” He studied theater makeup at Emerson College in Boston and moved to New York after graduating in 1979. She contacted a makeup artist agency and began working in the fashion industry. Finally made the cover of America Vogue And by hand and became famous for the minimal, girl-next-door aesthetic that would make Brown a very wealthy woman, so New York Times he called him “The Neighboring Mongolian”.
This no-makeup makeup look (which has been criticized over the years for, among other things, obscuring the work that goes into meeting Eurocentric beauty standards) involves putting on quite a bit of makeup to look as if you’ve just come out of yoga. class – young, fit and rich. This oxymoronic fashion evolved with Brown’s success; its most recent iteration was “clean” beauty or the “five-minute facial”; a minimalist beauty aesthetic that promises users to look like themselves but better.
Editors liked me when we talked about our kids and how tired we were
Brown’s confidence is light years away from the intense, anxious, blazer-and-high-heeled woman I first met at the Bobbi Brown launch in 2015. Today she’s sitting on a banquette in Claridges, legs folded, yoga style. She’s wearing a plain black sweater and jeans and she’s not wearing any make-up. She was tiny – “I’m like 5 feet of nothing” – but she looked so tall and a little scary that day. “Yeah,” she giggled, “there was a lot going on back then. There were PR people looking at me all the time; There were always marketers around me. Yes, I was in charge, but…” he adds pointedly: “I was constantly fighting for what I wanted. When I left the brand, I took off my heels and became myself again.” Leaving and becoming herself again meant that, at age 63 and in a business still riddled with misogyny and ageism, Brown had to start over. “No,” he says, correcting me, “I didn’t need to start over, I chose to start over.” And instead of being afraid of the potential customer, she took it as an opportunity to do things differently. “I like a clean slate. You get rid of everything and think: ‘What would I do now?’”
What he did was to start a new company that was the exact opposite of the previous one. No one on her team has a background in beauty. Unlike most corporate corporate structures, they do not have a CEO or COO. “We tried, it didn’t work, we got rid of them.” The senior team is very much a family affair. There is himself (“I don’t have a title. I don’t need a title”); her husband, real estate entrepreneur Stephen Plofker; his son, Cody Plofker, who is in charge of marketing; and daughter-in-law Payal Patel Plofker, director of branding and marketing. (“I actually can’t wait to get home and see my 13-month-old grandson,” Brown says, adding with a chuckle. “He’s the kid of the people who work for me, so I have an extra reason not to do it to piss them off.”)
She and her husband live three minutes away from the office, and the rest of the family is nearby, too.
Mixing family with work seems to work well. Brown was the makeup artist for both of his brides on their wedding days. She said it was scarier than being asked to do Michelle Obama’s makeup because “I really wanted to please them.”
An openly self-confessed Anglophile, Brown cites Soho Farmhouse in Oxfordshire, Grays Antiques Market and Anya Hindmarch’s café in London as some of her favorite hangouts, and recently joined the British Beauty Council as an ambassador. “I love the British aesthetic.” He even chose the name Jones Road, he says, because: “It seemed like a bespoke British brand that they wanted me to reinvent and make more modern.”
Brown himself is a mixture of modern and old-fashioned pragmatism. “Even early in my career,” she recalls, “I would tell people how they should wear make-up to take their kids to school. I would tell them to stick to just a few things and do them in the car at stoplights…”
Brown reveals that many at the eponymous brand find her approach to the day-to-day too “motherly” or narrow-minded. “Once, someone very senior at the old company sat me down and said: ‘I think you should buy a pied-à-terre in New York. That way you can invite the editors and they might think you’re a city girl.’ Another person said that since I was so small, I needed something like a furry hat that would make people notice me when I walked in. Then I was told I had to dress ‘cool’ so someone took me to buy leather pants [trousers]”.
Brown couldn’t help the mocking laughter that escaped him at the absurdity of it all. “You know, I tried all these things, everything you have to do to be a flashy businessman, but nothing made sense to me. Finally I thought, ‘I guess the editors liked me because we talked about normal things like our kids and how tired we were.'”
Although he says he loves New York, he does not consider himself a “New Yorker” and continues to live in Montclair, New Jersey, where he and his wife moved in the late 80s.
His originality may explain his popularity on TikTok at a time when the perfection of social media is slowly starting to lose its luster. In 2022, when beauty influencer Meredith Duxbury, known for her full-coverage makeup looks, gave Jones Road’s What The Foundation a bad review, Brown lightheartedly parodied the influencer’s video. It went viral and caused a huge increase in sales. He belittles himself for being a social media hit. “The joke is that afterwards I find my hair sticking out and I am covered in dog hair and dust. ‘Guys, you have to tell me!’ I said.” But fans still seem to get it.
Despite turning down numerous requests, Brown has no plans to sell Jones Road in other London stores other than Liberty. His clear stance sheds light on his success as an entrepreneur. He exudes warmth, but his eye contact is serious and unwavering; his tone was clear and his vision was clear. “I only launch a product when I see a need,” he says. He jokes that there is no “real strategy,” but clearly there is. He says sales have “tripled” in the past year, and while company growth always means rising expenses, he cautions, “We’re not wasting money.”
And perhaps this is a clue to his success. Even his own tailoring stance has a relatively frugal approach. “I really like normal things.” He laughs at my raised eyebrow and adds: “Okay, yeah I like Celine [fashion designer Phoebe Philo era]. They are items in my wardrobe that I would never give up. But I will pair it with my Uniqlo jeans.” Philo’s penchant for Celine – effortless, pared-back luxury (“It would be my dream to do makeup for her next campaign”) set the tone for the Jones Road aesthetic.
The week we met, the launch of Philo’s highly anticipated eponymous collection marks his return to the industry after running a brand that was hugely successful under his management and stepping away from it at the height of its success. Sound familiar? “I was waiting with bated breath to see what he would come back with, because,” says Brown, “I love a good comeback story.”
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