Gucci Westman interview: The face of ‘clean beauty’
Gucci Westman, who lands in Sydney this week, has had a stellar career as a make-up artist, and she wants her products to do the talking.
One thing to know about Gucci Westman, founder of the Westman Atelier make-up brand, and with the kind of stellar make-up artistry career that means she was asked to do Gwyneth Paltrow’s make-up on her wedding day, is that her name has nothing to do with the luxury Italian fashion house.
Westman spent part of her childhood in an ashram in California and her given spiritual name was Gurucharan (Gucci for short). The values instilled by her parents here remain entwined with her world-renowned products.
“My parents always questioned every ingredient. They made their own cheese, they got the milk from the farmer. There was no white flour, no white sugar ever in our kitchen. I wasn’t allowed to have sugar, really, but of course I rebelled. But I went back to living that way because it makes you feel better, it makes you more energised. And it’s just the consistency of that applies … it’s a lifestyle brand, we’re a different brand to other make-up artists’ brands,” she says.
“Skincare that does your make-up,” is how Westman, who still works as a make-up artist for major campaigns and with celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Aniston and Anne Hathaway (with whom she was heading off on a trip shortly after the Zoom call) describes it.
“I still love it. I get my rocks off creatively,” she says of her make-up artist career, which has also included stints as artistic director of powerhouse cosmetics brands such as Lancôme and Revlon. Her range is luxurious, but formulated without additives such as parabens. The packaging looks fancy but is made from such things as the waste from sugarcane. Each product is infused with efficacious skincare elements such as antioxidants.
Later this week Westman and her husband and business partner, David Neville, a co-founder and former co-CEO of fashion brand rag & bone, will be in Australia to launch one of the brand’s best-selling products – Vital Skincare Complexion Drops – into Mecca, where it is stocked exclusively.
The brand fits with the philosophy of “clean beauty” – a buzzword (along with “natural”, “organic” and “vegan”) that Westman agrees has become undeniably murky.
“I think the word ‘clean’, when we launched this brand, we were actually debating whether we should bring that to the table because for us it should be the norm. It shouldn’t even be something you have to shout about, you know?
“It’s so diluted, that word, and what does it even mean since every brand and their brothers are just adding ‘clean’ or ‘serum’ to the end of a make-up product now. It’s always going to be something like that, or a trend, but for us it’s not a trend. It’s how I grew up,” she says.
Clean or not, beauty and personal care – projected by Statista to hit global revenues of $US571.10bn ($812bn) in 2023 – is a crowded market. Not least because it seems every celebrity from Brad Pitt to Hailey Bieber now has a beauty line – not to mention “clean” ones from the likes of Miranda Kerr (Kora Organics), Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop empire and Stella McCartney’s new venture.
Neville, the co-founder and chief executive, says Westman Atelier, which has doubled its growth year on year since it launched almost five years ago, stands out in a saturated market because it centres on Westman’s intuition, experience and core beliefs.
“It really starts from Gucci’s vision to marry natural and luxury. This is before clean beauty was a buzzword and was sold in Whole Foods and the products didn’t work. But that was something that was so authentic to her and what would be a real pillar of her brand,” he says.
“When we decided that we were going to build a brand for Gucci, it had to sort of represent her, her taste, her philosophy, her credibility, you know, herself.”
The company didn’t take on outside investment until a year in, allowing for time and space to grow in ways that felt meaningful – working with a green chemist on alternative ingredients, testing packaging options and moving carefully into new markets (North America remains its strongest, with Australia doing well in partnership with Mecca).
“It wasn’t like, ‘how are we going to do something and grow really quick and build a big company?’ It was much more like, ‘let’s make something that is beautiful’ … and I think has actually (stood) us in such good (stead) now. I think it ultimately shows through in the product and in everything that we do. There’s a lot of integrity in our process, there’s a lot of integrity in our organisation, in the way that we want to deal with our retail relationships, how we want to deal with each other, you know, in our company,” says Neville, who adds he found moving into beauty from fashion a “refreshing” experience.
Speaking of good company, the couple, who have three children together (“a lot more difficult” than running a beauty brand, jokes Neville), make marriage and business work.
“I mean, it is a risky proposition to work with your wife, but in the way that stars aligned and given my previous role and experience with building the rag & bone brand, I had very sort of acute specific experience of building a brand and a company and an organisation from basically the same thing. You know, two people are sitting in a room saying, ‘What’s it going to be called? How are we going to do it? What’s it going to be?’. And then building out a company and everything that goes with that and understanding the different phases,” he says.
“David has so much intuition and savvy when it comes to how that should play out. And I never question anything that he does. I mean, sometimes he might just try to speed me up a little with decisions … the fact that we can do this and still love each other is really nice,” adds Westman with a laugh.
In a career working on magazine editorials, runways and on films such as Being John Malkovich and French Exit, having incredibly big-name celebrities in her make-up chair is not something Westman takes lightly.
“I learned to be incredibly sensitive to people’s needs and how they trust you implicitly. You need to show up and be prepared. I’ve learned that each of them are so different. I treat each of them as a friend, and I care about each of them deeply. I always want to surprise and delight them and show them a new version of themselves each time we have the opportunity to work together,” she says.
To borrow a marketing term, the brand’s unique selling point is the dewy skin Westman is known for creating for her clients. It’s something she learnt to use to her advantage, even though it meant sometimes being typecast.
“The skin has always been the thing where a journalist says, ‘oh, so Gucci, you’re known for this amazing skin’. And it always used to irritate me because I would think ‘I can do so many other things. Don’t put me in the corner’,” says Westman, laughing.
“But then I decided it was time for our own brand. I really wanted to dial in on that concept and really own it and be the brand that people would go to for the ultimate skin.”
The growth of the beauty industry has also meant customers are more educated about products, ingredients and efficacy. Westman believes this is a good thing.
“There is a lot more transparency, expectations and general awareness. The consumer is so educated today and they expect much more, which is great,” she says.
When thinking about adding new products, Westman considers what she, as a 52-year-old woman, is missing. “I am a woman who has real needs as someone who does her own make-up, who needs to be fast, who is looking for this part of her day that’s a nice routine that makes me feel more confident,” she says.
It’s the feedback that other people have this same experience that Westman relishes.
“I think what feels so rewarding is the messaging and the feedback that we get from our customers. It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced. People really are coming up to me all over the place. I have to be careful when I’m yelling at my daughter and someone’s like, ‘I love your product!’ … people love our brand and that feels super rewarding because as challenging as it is at times, it makes everything worth it,” she says.
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