This is an episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, which features candid conversations about how today’s trends are shaping the future of the beauty and wellness industries. More from the series →
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Though actor, podcaster, investor and brand founder Sara Foster never intended to launch a clothing line, it turns out she’s quite good at it. Four-year-old Favorite Daughter, which she and her sister Erin Foster created in partnership with Centric Brands, was profitable by year two, she said. In 2023, the brand tiptoed into beauty, launching a duo of lip oils with Saint Jane, the “clean” beauty brand founded by Casey Georgeson. Now, with Georgeson’s help, Favorite Daughter is launching its first two fragrances — one for each sister. Sara Foster’s signature is called “Grecian Nights,” while Erin Foster’s is “Italian Summers.”
“We knew we wanted the packaging to be a beautiful moment. And we knew we wanted the fragrance to be the cleanest, but with real efficacy — that’s a problem with clean fragrances; they don’t last,” Sara Foster said, regarding the fragrance development process.
On this week’s episode of The Glossy Beauty Podcast, Sara Foster discusses the road to launching a brand, the brand’s expansion into beauty, the type of partners she wants to work with and the reason she prefers a customer event over an influencer blowout. According to Foster, beauty isn’t the last new category you’ll see from the brand. “I think, eventually, Favorite Daughter will be providing everything for you,” she said.
The excerpts below have been slightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Favorite Daughter’s origin story
“The brand wasn’t born out of thin air. … In 2018, this company came to Erin and I .… and they were like, ‘You guys are so funny on Instagram. … Would you guys ever do a capsule collection with us, where you take your favorite Instagram sayings and we put them on T-shirts and sweatshirts?’ And Erin and I were like, ‘Yeah, that sounds fine.’ We didn’t even have our lawyer look at the deal. … One of the sweatshirts said, ‘Favorite Daughter,’ and it ended up outselling that [viral] ‘Kale’ sweatshirt. It ended up being this massive success that just sold out and sold out. … And through that, Centric Brands … reached out to us and they said, ‘We’d love to take you guys to lunch. We see something bigger here.’ And I was like, ‘No, there’s nothing bigger here. … I’m not I’m a fashion girl.’ … And it turns out that that that mentality is why Favorite Daughter is doing well: Our brand is for the girl who isn’t the fashion girl. Our brand is for the girl who is a working woman. She’s a mom, maybe she’s just getting started in her career. She wants to feel good about herself. She wants to look stylish. But she’s not trying to dress that over the top. And she’s not trying to spend $1,000 on a blazer.”
Expanding beyond fashion
“We see ourselves going into multiple categories, but fragrance was the obvious first big other vertical to launch. The lip oils were just a nice, sort of, dip of our toes into the beauty pond. We had a perfect partner in Saint Jane. … We always knew that we had to be clean. We preach clean living on our podcast and on our socials, so it would have been super hypocritical to not align with an extremely thoughtful, clean brand. And Saint Jane is that. Their standards are some of the best, if not the best — and their packaging is next-level beautiful. … We talk a lot about how we look, but [it’s also about how] we feel. And, for me, [putting on a] fragrance has always been a part of getting dressed. I will never leave the house without obviously being dressed, [plus I always wear] deodorant and a spray of fragrance.”
Favoring customer events over influencer events
“A lot of brands do celebrity dinners and influencer dinners … but we don’t. We don’t find that to be a good use of our funds. … We’d rather spend that money somewhere else. We prefer to do events with our customers, where we can talk to them, see them, take pictures with them. … We have some customers who have placed over 65 orders. We know who our top customers are. We have a relationship with them. We email them, we send them gift cards on their birthdays, and I’ll DM them, saying, ‘I just saw that you placed your 50th order. I love you, I see you, I’m so grateful for you.’ We have a direct relationship with our top customers, and I would way rather have dinner with them.”
