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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Since launching in 2018, Westman Atelier has become one of the most covetable brands in luxury beauty. From the $68 foundation sticks that introduced the brand to the market to newer launches like the Lip Suede Matte Lipstick ($50) and, most recently, the Suprême C serum ($325), the brand’s products are the kind that people like to show off on their vanities or pull out of their handbags. The Suprême C serum is its second skin care product — the brand will be leaning more heavily into the category in the months ahead, with plans to grow it to 10% of its business in the next year.
Westman Atelier was founded by husband-and-wife Gucci Westman, the celebrity makeup artist, and David Neville, co-founder of Rag & Bone. Before founding the brand, Westman had stints as Lancôme’s international artistic director and Revlon’s global artistic director. She is known for her clean, you-but-better aesthetic and has worked with actors including Nicole Kidman, Anne Hathaway and Jennifer Aniston.
On this week’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, Westman and Neville come together to discuss the start of their careers, the brand’s first true lipstick and new serum, and the reason Westman has remained the brand’s most powerful marketing tool. The excerpts below have been slightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Rejecting licensing deals and starting out self-funded
Neville: “We funded the brand ourselves until a couple of years after we launched it. There was definitely this moment where Gucci had some offers to license her name, and it dawned on us that if we were going to create a brand around Gucci for Gucci, we really needed to do it ourselves and to fund it ourselves [for it be] something that we could be really proud of. … We didn’t set this up as, ‘Let’s just try and do something that’s really commercial.’ It was completely the opposite. It was, ‘Let’s do something that has a lot of integrity and a lot of investment and time into developing the products, and not worry about much else apart from doing something that was differentiated and that we can look at and be proud of.’ … That has [been] a strong philosophy within the company, [and] ultimately has continued to differentiate us: that the customer can see the attention to detail in our products.”
Expanding into skin care with confidence
Westman: “People want skin care. … There’s a level of trust, because I’m also really honest about my own skin care, [my] skin frustrations. … [We] include active ingredients at [high] efficacy levels in each and every one of our products. … Our labs were like, ‘Oh, it’s OK if you just add a drop of this. You can say you did it, and it’s much cheaper for you.’ But we wanted things that would actually make a difference — that we could be honest about and proud of, because that’s something that stands out to me. … There’s marketing levels of ingredients in skin care, and we don’t do anything like that. … We always do meaningful, real expensive levels.”
Why Westman is the brand’s best marketing tool
Neville: “From the beginning, we’ve kind of known that a lot of our marketing dollars should really go to Gucci, be around Gucci, and creating content around Gucci. Obviously, having a founder like Gucci, who has such credibility and speaks so passionately about why she does what she does is very rare in the category. Within the luxury category, a lot of those luxury brands don’t have Gucci; they don’t have a living founder that is so engaging and so authentic about what she’s talking about.”
