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And now, notes on Bobbi Brown’s revenge tour…

Earlier this week, the O.G. makeup artist turned founder, Bobbi Brown, appeared on her first-ever TikTok Live to showcase her newest product for Jones Road—the brand she launched in 2020 on the very day that her 25-year noncompete with Estée Lauder expired. For two hours, the youthful 69-year-old faced the camera and demonstrated her innate ability to connect with beauty shoppers—many of them, in this case, one-third her age. That magnetism has fueled her wildly successful career, which now spans four decades, and helped her original namesake brand achieve mainstream fame and a $74.5 million acquisition by The Estée Lauder Companies in 1995.

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Brown exited that line in 2016, and many observers credit her departure as the catalyst for its nearly decade-long identity crisis. In April, I reported that the brand’s business had dropped to a fraction of its $1 billion peak, and would exit almost every U.S. department store this month. While it’s a necessary pivot, it’s also a remarkable fall from grace for what used to be one of Lauder’s most consequential lines. The symmetry between Bobbi Brown’s decline and Jones Road’s meteoric rise is surely not lost on Lauder leadership.

Jones Road’s distribution model was also, in many ways, a refutation of the Lauder Way. For her second act, Brown rapidly built a profitable, high-revenue, direct-to-consumer business—much like the other major beauty launch of its era, Hailey Bieber’s Rhode. Last year, of course, Rhode abandoned D.T.C. for a Sephora partnership that wound up being the retailer’s most successful launch of all time. But whereas Bieber rewrote the celebrity brand playbook with her spin on a streamlined assortment and the scarcity drop model, Brown leaned on her credibility. From its early days, Jones Road offered a fully realized product lineup before opening intentional retail stores that, as many insiders I speak to like to point out, always have people inside. I’m told the brand will do well over $200 million in revenue this year.

While Jones Road and Bobbi Brown have never been sold alongside one another, the former seems to have cannibalized the latter’s business. “It’s very confusing,” said a person close to E.L.C. “What happens is Bobbi Brown’s name and brand looks like old stuff. It’s like, That was then, that was the year 2000. I’m not interested in that anymore.” In other words: What customers want from Bobbi Brown, the brand, is what Brown, the entrepreneur, is now selling at Jones Road.

Intriguingly, Jones Road appears uniquely disinterested in selling at Sephora, which could presumably grow the business. Brown declined to chat with me for this piece, but I know from previous conversations that she, along with Jones Road C.E.O. Cody Plofker (the middle of Brown’s three sons with the entrepreneur and real estate mogul Steven Plofker), has made a deliberate decision to keep the operation almost entirely direct-to-consumer, with the exception of Liberty London, where I’ve heard that Jones Road is the top-selling beauty brand. Both Sephora and Ulta have reached out multiple times about a potential partnership over the years, I’m told, but Brown is simply not interested.

It’s a bold decision in a world where almost every other brand in the category is dying for a partnership with the LVMH-owned beauty giant. But a person familiar with the business put it bluntly: Brown doesn’t need Sephora at this point. In fact, some have argued that Sephora probably needs Jones Road more than the other way around. “They need an anchor for Gen X that is actually meaningful,” a person close to the retailer told me. I’ve heard that Sarah Creal’s makeup and YSE Beauty, Molly Sims’ skincare line, have both done a decent job catering to this demographic, but the retailer has yet to bag the Millennial and Gen X version of Rhode.

I also know that big private equity has been eager to get involved with Jones Road—most notably Blackstone and the LVMH-affiliated P.E. firm L Catterton. While flattering, the person familiar with the business told me that Brown has no need for these kinds of investors. The company isn’t seeking to raise outside capital right now, and it’s not trying to open stores faster. The brand already operates 12 locations, a number I’ve heard could hit 20 by the end of the year, including several new doors in California.

When consumers enter the new stores, they’ll find plenty of new and popular items, from the line’s bestseller, Miracle Balm, to a handful of modern interpretations of products Brown originally conceptualized for Bobbi Brown, like a gel eyeliner. (I still can’t believe Lauder sunsetted Shimmer Bricks, but I’m holding out hope that Brown will introduce her own Jones Road version.) As one person who knows Brown intimately put it to me: “What’s ‘Bobbi Brown’ without Bobbi Brown? It’s called Jones Road.”

Condé Nast C.E.O. Roger Lynch said that Met Gala content reached 3.1 billion video views, up 60 percent year over year, in the week following the fundraiser for a public institution. I believe it, but how much money did Condé Nast actually make? If you know, call me. [TBPN]

The former C.E.O. of J.W. Anderson shares some intel on how it all went down the first years in business. [1 Granary]

On Tuesday, Victoria’s Secret inflamed its proxy war with Brett Blundy, founder of BBRC, which owns a 13 percent stake in the intimates giant, when it published a statement outlining why the board denied Blundy a seat—including an accusation that he routinely hired known sexual harassers. On Wednesday, Blundy redoubled his calls to oust longtime board chair Donna James at the forthcoming annual shareholder meeting, citing years of stock declines, management turnover, and James’ alleged oversight failure regarding Les Wexner’s ties with Jeffrey Epstein. We’ll have more on all this soon! [BBRC]

Rent the Runway co-founder Jenn Hyman is stepping down as C.E.O. [LinkedIn]

The new Issey Miyake store opened in New York and it is pretty special. This is destination shopping. [New York]

And finally… I want the Ralph Lauren stamps to be actual Ralph Lauren stamps! As a former stamp collector (from ages 5 to 5.5), I care about stamps! We need a stamp with Ralph on it, a Polo pony stamp, a ranch stamp, etcetera. U.S.P.S., let’s go.

Until tomorrow,
Lauren

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