On a private Zoom call with some of her (second) beauty brand’s most loyal customers, makeup artist Bobbi Brown fields questions, previews new products and doles out blunt beauty advice.

“What is your best eye makeup advice for someone who hates mascara?” Brown reads from a chat window.

“The only tip I have is: get over your hate for mascara,” Brown said aloud.

Brown, who founded Jones Road at 63, some 25 years after selling her eponymous makeup brand to the Estée Lauder Companies, has the firm yet jocular manner of an older sister among fans. She has ample reason to be self-assured – she’s proved naysayers wrong and successfully made lightning strike twice with her sophomore brand.

Retail sales this year are forecast to be upwards of $140 million, a seven-fold increase since its debut in 2020. Aside from a small presence in London’s upmarket Liberty department store – the retailer confirmed the label’s Miracle Balm in Dusty Rose is the store’s best-selling makeup product – the brand is entirely direct-to-consumer, with five stores and an e-commerce site. A sixth store in Brooklyn, New York, is slated to open this summer.

Part of the brand’s success comes down to Brown’s close connection with her customers, who are affectionately referred to as “Roadies.” The Zoom call hosted by Brown this month was the first of its kind – arranged to celebrate the two-year-old Facebook group hitting the milestone of 50,000 members.

It’s the kind of close connectivity many buzzy brands would want – and ones such as Glossier – arguably set out to create. Saie, the premium cosmetics line has a Facebook group called The Clean Beauty Crew with over 6,000 members, while Geneva, a group chat app, has attracted the likes of Everyday Humans and Bubble. More recently, many beauty brands are sending out hopeful requests to Instagram followers to entice them to join their broadcast channels.

Given quasi facetime (participants’ microphones and cameras were turned off) with their beauty hero, Roadies came ready with questions and requests. Stevie, from Silver Springs, MD, wanted a blue-toned red nail polish, like the one Brown was wearing. Shelly from northern Illinois suggested a product testing panel made up of Roadies. Robin from the Bay Area, CA wanted an exfoliating product, and a store to open up near her. But despite ardent affection, customers don’t necessarily understand what’s best for a business’s overall health and trajectory.

Brown’s job is to sift through all that always-on and now live feedback, and work out which ideas will help Jones Road grow.

How Much Is Too Much?

The Facebook group where the Roadies found each other is perhaps one of the last wholesome spaces left on the internet. Compliments abound – “72 looks good on you!” “You look very fresh and natural!!!” “So gorgeous! I love your smile!” – as do offers to ship one another excess or unwanted products.

But Brown has to sometimes say no to requests that don’t fit with her vision.

“If someone asked me [for something], I’m not going to lie to them and say, ‘Oh, yeah, no problem’ and turn around and say, ‘That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard’,” said Brown following the Roadies Zoom chat. “Not all ideas make sense, and not all of them are possible. If it’s not practical, don’t do it.”

A few examples? On the call, participants were keen to form some kind of product testing panel, something that’s both logistically complex and costly, explained Brown, as are freebies for members.

“It’s like, ‘Guys, I’d love to send you a thank you product, but there’s 50,000 people here, so that’s not going to happen’ ...i f I sent everyone a discount code, you know, [my team’s] brains would blow up,” said Brown.

One way that Brown is able to appease demand whilst also sticking to her guns is through their limited edition kits of products that launch eight to 10 times per year, often timed to holidays and the brand’s birthday in October. ”90 percent of the time we put something new [in it] so that the fans will say, ‘Oh, I have to have it’,” said Brown. Mini versions, new colourways or otherwise limited edition products are often reserved for special edition kits.

A comment under a post from June announcing two travel kits reads “‘I don’t need this’ as I click add to cart. Then added a brow gel. Then checked out.”

But perhaps nothing generates as much as excitement for Roadies than the reveal of some new merchandise.

To great fanfare, Brown turned her back to the camera to show off the slogan emblazoned across the shoulders of her sweatshirt: Roadie. Requests for sizing and colours immediately fired off in the chat.

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Sometimes you don’t know whether to laugh or cry. In a week that brought us a crushing far right wave in France, and the United States Supreme Court giving the former commander-in-chief (now convicted felon) unprecedented immunity, designer Marc Jacobs argued forcefully in favour of raging against the dying of the light.

“Joy, Period” was the title of his show notes, and despite our collective feeling that there is no way out of the abyss into which we are sinking, it was a beautiful balmy night in Manhattan, and Jacob’s off-schedule presentation took place again in the soaring main hall of the New York Public Library. It lasted a full five minutes — six, maybe, if you were seated at the far end of the runway. (The show began exactly at 7:30pm, and if you lived nearby, you could get home by 7:45 to hear President Biden excoriating the Supreme Court ruling.)

But as it turns out, you can cover a lot of ground in five minutes. The show began with enormous white sundresses with almost humorously distended bustlines, that managed to exhibit the will to stand up on their own, and yet also evinced a surprising lightness. It was the first of many looks that seemed to argue that perhaps we could escape — not to Canada! — but to a cartoon universe where the inhabitants would greet us wearing ginormous eyelashes glued to their heads by neon-bright strips shaped like fruit slices. (Because, why not?) Furthering this comical comic strip vibe were shoes with toes curved like Smurf hats.

Giant polka dot frocks brought to mind the wardrobe of Minnie Mouse; a tailleur owed its colour scheme — bright red big-buttoned jacket on top; swirly royal blue on the bottom — to Olive Oyl from “Popeye.” The ball gowns that closed the show had the air of Cinderella’s iconic periwinkle evening dress, here rendered in, among other combos, purple-and-fire engine red, accompanied by gargantuan white gloves that might have been purloined from a Toon Town surgical theatre.

If there was a whiff of Rei Kawakubo in the odd proportions, the sometimes ungainly silhouettes that relied paradoxically on rigorous construction, this was probably no accident. “Everyone is influenced by Comme des Garçons,” Jacobs once alleged. “Anybody who is aware of what life is in a contemporary world is influenced [by Kawakubo’s brand].”

Then again, the collection may have been militantly cheerful, but the clothes were far from ridiculous. Skip the eyelashes, junk the elf shoes, and you would be perfectly happy in a pale full-skirted suit or a neat pullover or even a checked pink-and-white puffy-sleeved square-necked cropped top, a garment worthy of a latter-day Brigitte Bardot, lolling around on the beach without a care in her pretty little head.

Or maybe not. Maybe all the dots and checks in the world won’t distract her from the gravity of the matters at hand. “While the future remains unwritten, I am steadfast in my daily practice of choosing love over hate… I believe in living with authenticity — free from validation and permission of absurd conservatism and societal norms,” Jacobs wrote in his notes, a sentiment no less fierce than the hugest flapping eyelash, shielding what just might be a tear.

Vigneron led Cartier for eight years and boosted sales by reducing model lines and focusing on the storied brand’s best-selling jewelery collections and watch designs. That strategy, which cemented Cartier’s position as the top global jewelry house and second-biggest luxury watchmaker, isn’t expected to change under the leadership of Ferla, who previously spent 11 years with Cartier beginning in 2006.

The change marks “a very smooth transition at Richemont, which should reassure investors,” Vontobel analyst Jean-Philippe Bertschy said. The two brands are Richemont’s “sales and profit drivers,” with Cartier accounting for about 10 billion euros ($10.7 billion) in annual sales and Vacheron Constantin about 1 billion euros, Bertschy said.

Richemont shares were little changed in early Zurich trading Tuesday. They’ve fallen about 6% over the past 12 months.

Since his 2017 move to the top job at Vacheron — one of the so-called holy trinity of Swiss watchmakers along with Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet — Ferla has vaulted the watch maker into the top 10 Swiss brands by revenue. Sales at the brand, best known for its Overseas sports watch collection and the recent reissue of the 222 model in gold, increased by about 18% in 2023, according to estimates by Morgan Stanley.

Under Ferla’s leadership, Vacheron has reduced its dependence on sales to China, increased its presence in the top US market and sold more watches direct to consumers through its own boutiques.

The change announced Tuesday marks the latest executive shakeup at Richemont. The company in May named Nicolas Bos, previously head of Van Cleef & Arpels, its second-biggest jewelry brand behind Cartier, to be the new group CEO. That appointment clarified some succession questions at the company controlled by South African billionaire and Executive Chairman Johann Rupert.

Cartier is the crown jewel of the Richemont empire, and the brand’s watch and jewelry sales are the biggest single contributor to the company’s sales and profit.

Richemont’s stable of jewelry maisons, which also include Italian brands Buccellati and the recently acquired Vhernier SpA, account for about 70% of Richemont’s overall sales, according to UBS analyst estimates.

Richemont said Vigneron will retire and assume the position of chairman of Cartier’s culture and philanthropy arm while working with Ferla on the transition.

Vigneron was once considered a potential CEO candidate at Richemont before the May appointment of Bos, to whom the jewelry brands’ top executives will report.

The company has yet to name a new CEO for Vacheron or for Van Cleef & Arpels.

By Andy Hoffman