When British makeup artist Pat McGrath launched her own cosmetics line two years ago, few would have predicted that her self-financed company would so swiftly overtakeestablished beauty brands. But this month Pat McGrath Labs became a billion-dollar beauty behemoth, valued at an astronomical 17 times retail sales – and it wasn’t the only one.
On the cover of Forbes in the same week, 20-year-old Kylie Jenner was audaciously declared a “self-made” billionaire, propelled by Kylie Cosmetics, which generated sales of $420m (£360m) in its first 18 months. Neither is available to buy on the high street, but both are among a handful of personality-driven “indie” brands – including Huda Kattan, Rihanna’s Fenty and Charlotte Tilbury – that have transformed the beauty industry in the past decade. So where did the likes of Estée Lauder, L’Oréal, Revlon et al go wrong?
