009. Off the Shelf Vol. 1: Stila

This show is called Off the Shelf for a reason! In this episode, Susannah Dellinger officially launches the mini-series at the heart of it all — taking iconic beauty brands off the shelf and examining the stories behind the story. First up: Stila.

In this episode:

• The story of Stila: how makeup artist Janine LaBelle built one of the coolest beauty brands of the late 90s — accidentally pioneering sustainable packaging before anyone called it that
• Why Kitten became one of the most iconic product names in beauty history
• What happened when Stila sold to Estée Lauder — and what Janine is building now with Neen
• Pat McGrath's Chapter 11 filing: what it actually means, why it's not necessarily the end, and what it has in common with the Ami Kolé story
• There is no Rhodes Blueprint — it was Hailey Bieber, full stop. Here's why that matters.
• Why Rare Beauty and Selena Gomez represent something we haven't seen since Fenty — and what $100M for mental health says about the power of beauty
• 00:00 There Is No Rhodes Blueprint. Here's the Truth.
• 00:36 Welcome to Off the Shelf
• 01:15 Introducing the Mini-Series: Taking Brands Off the Shelf
• 01:45 Stila: The Brand That Made You Want to Be a Kitten
• 03:20 How Janine LaBelle Accidentally Pioneered Sustainable Packaging
• 04:45 Why Stila Sold to Estée Lauder — And What Janine Built Next With Neen
• 06:21 Pat McGrath's Brand Goes Up for Auction. Here's What Actually Happened.
• 07:18 Why Chapter 11 Isn't the End — And What It Could Mean for Pat McGrath
• 08:00 The Ami Kolé Story: When Performative Investment Kills a Great Brand
• 09:30 How Private Equity Turned Off the Tap on Black Founded Beauty Brands
• 11:00 There Is No Rhodes Blueprint. It Was Hailey Bieber. Period.
• 12:47 Why 15 Years of Public Life Is What Actually Built Rhodes
• 13:15 Why e.l.f. Buying Rhodes Was the Smartest Move in Beauty Right Now
• 13:43 Rare Beauty: The First Celebrity Brand Since Fenty That Actually Means Something
• 14:38 The Roadkill Headline That Should Never Have Been Written
• 15:29 Why Rare Beauty Blush Changed Everything
• 16:00 $100 Million for Mental Health — That's the Power of Beauty
• 16:26 Let's Talk About It

Off the Shelf is a podcast about the people, brands, and behind-the-scenes forces shaping the beauty industry — money, relationships, risk, and what it really takes to scale.

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Instagram: @brightbeautyconnect

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/susannah-dellinger

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

It's not about one person versus the other person. There's so much room in this beauty industry and it was such a cheap shop. There is no Rhodes blueprint. It was Hailey Beaver. Period. The end. End of story. If you have one of Pat McCraft's palettes that you know, you can see that from like far Selena Gomez in the background and Hailey Beaver in the foreground about how Hailey Beaver was coming to take something from Selena again. Are you kidding me? That is not what this industry is about. This is Off the Shelf, where we take the most iconic beauty brands, products, and people in the beauty industry off the shelf and examine the stories behind the story. It's where beauty is treated like the economic, cultural, and power-building force it really is. I'm Susanna Dillinger, and here we're going to talk about what really shapes the industry, who holds the power, how the decisions get made, and what it actually takes to build, scale, and quite frankly, survive in beauty. These are the conversations happening behind closed doors about money, relationships, risks, and cult moments. If you're building, breaking through, or trying to understand how beauty really works, or just love a really good story, you're in the right place. If you were a beauty lover back in the late 90s, early 2000s, you knew what it meant to be a Stila girl. And I'm gonna say one word, and it's an animal, and you can see a color when I say it, if you're a beauty girl. Kitten. If I say kitten and you see the most beautiful champagne taupe colored eyeshadow that then became the most beautiful champagne-colored highlighter and lip glaze, and and and kitten launched an entire subcategory in Stila. So for those that don't know, Stila was founded by Janine Labelle, who I adore. Fun fact, I consider Janine now a friend. But when I was a beauty girl on the cosmetic floor of Nordstrom, I was working for a skincare and color brand called Shiseito. And it wasn't at the time nearly as cool as Stila. And Stila had an opening. And oh my goodness, how everybody wanted to be a Stila girl if you worked in beauty, let alone wanted to buy it. So I applied and I was told in no uncertain circumstances to my face, you're just not cool enough to be a Stila girl. And here's the hysterical part. I wasn't Stila girls were so cool. They even had this iconic sketch charicature that they used on their packaging. One was London, one was New York, one was Tokyo. And it was like the height of cool at the time. What's fascinating to me about Stila and Janine is when she started out and she was doing her packaging, which became renowned for its not using plastic. She used this really cool kind of recycled paper material that was in refillable pans. So you could buy these single refillables, or you could buy these six pans or three pans, and you could customize. You could do a blush and a bronzer and an eyeshadow. You could do whatever you wanted in these pans. It was truly customizable. And Janine would later go on because people were like, oh my gosh, you must like really have cared about the environment and to do all this. And she was like, I just wanted to do something different and cool. And she found this amazing manufacturer of this product that was used years and decades ago. And she was like, What if this type of material could be used in cosmetic packaging? And nowadays, in like the 2020s, having different types of renewable resources used in cosmetic packaging is a huge, huge industry. This was simply a makeup artist who was normally working on set on amazing films and TV shows, who got her chance to do her own product launch, being like, could it be cooler? And it was. It was so much cooler. And this is beyond any type of green, clean, whatever movements that have come about since then, right? This is when it was just making great product in cool colors for fun people. And she did it in a way that was just inherently sustainable because that's how her mind worked. Stila represented a sense of play and self-expression in a way that brands like Mac previously had and that other artistry brands would go on to do. Whereas some contemporary makeup artists at the time, like Bobby Brown and Laura Mercier, had also launched their namesake brands into retail, those brands were a little bit more, I'm just gonna say, boring, right? Bobby Brown launched with five shades of brown lipstick famously and did amazingly well, but it was five shades of brown lipstick. Laura Mercier was known for her invisible looking tinted moisturizers. None of that is really play or expression. Stila was one of the first to be like, what if you had blue mermaid eyeshadow, right? What if you were a kitten? Meow. That was such a fun moment. Stila would then go on to exit to Estee Lauder. Janine herself has been on podcasts talking about the story of the choice that she made in the last minute to sell to Lauder. And she now is back with a second brand called Mean, which is like Stila 2.0 from the sense of play. She has subscription cards with Neen, where you can literally subscribe and you get a card that has different colors and they have that little seal over it. And you have a QR code on the back and you scan the code, and it's a video of people applying the really fun colors that are sent and teaching you how to be your own makeup artist. Clearly, Janine LaBelle has always been about artistry, self-exploration, self-expression, and play, and is one of my favorite brands to take off the shelf and talk about. Next, we're going to talk about Pat McGrath. Pat McGrath has been in the news recently. At the time that we're filming it, they had stunned the world because they had announced previously that Pat McGrath's namesake brand was going up for auction. The company was distressed and they were going to go to a public auction. Like you and I could pull together our piggy bank and go buy literal Dom Pat McGrath. She is a Dom. Okay. You can go buy literal Pat McGrath's brand for X amount of money at an auction. That is wild that this brand had been so financially distressed despite its amazing artistry and heritage. To put it in perspective, Pat McGrath is such a revered makeup artist that she was tapped to be the creative director of no less than Louis Vuitton's namesake brand. Now, could it have been a signal and sign when she accepted that while still owning her own brand that she was going to go do this? Sure. But also, like, we can have 10 jobs, right? Like in this economy, sign us up, right? We didn't necessarily think that that meant Pat McGrath was going to close down her own brand. Now, 24 hours before Pat McGrath went up for public auction, the company pulled it back from auction and announced it was filing for Chapter 11 instead. Here's why this is fascinating. Well, most of the Beauty World mourned and said, oh no, this is horrible because people interpreted Chapter 11 as closing. When Chapter 11 historically allows you to restructure your internal finances right off your bad debt and start anew, could this be a signal that there is a potential very interested buyer or reinvestment into funds? Pat McGrath's story of her own brand feels almost similar to what happened with Ame Kole. Ame Kole was a beautiful, beautiful African-American artistry-led brand. It had a ton of investment. And the founder of it has come up publicly and talked about what happened. That at Ame Kole, it was right after the George Floyd horrible murder, that suddenly there was this sense from PE and investors, we want to show up and invest in black founded brands. And that sounds amazing and wonderful. But as she went on to tell her story, it became almost a performative investment that when push came to shove and that there was a need to really look at a reallocatement and a second round of investment, the attitude was kind of changed. And she was taken by surprise at how little fun she actually had to work with. And she was now in a situation where she'd been pushed to be in all of these retailers, which is wildly expensive to distribute in all of these Sephores. It takes a ton of money, millions and millions of dollars to do this, millions and millions of dollars to produce the product, to be able to be on shelf to sell, millions and millions of dollars to have the end caps, the displays in the retailer, millions and millions of dollars in marketing, meta advertising, you know, anything that you can think about, you know, influencer, all of the stuff that you have to pour in money as a brand. And suddenly the tap had been turned off. And Ami Collet was beloved by her community, but the finances just weren't there. Pat McGrath, beloved with a capital B by her community. And the pigment, the quality, like, ooh, if you have one of Pat McGrath's palettes, like you know, you can see that from like Mars, that highlight. Okay. This is just gorgeous, artistry level. This is what she was using backstage. She's setting down these iconic looks on runway after runway couture shows. How did it happen that suddenly this brand is so distressed? She also was pushed to do distribution at several retailers across the country. You add that together. It looks from the outside like a very similar story where suddenly that money had just been turned off and the reinvestment wasn't there. Could this chapter 11 mean that there is investment coming to this beautiful brand? One can only hope. Now we're gonna switch and we're gonna talk about a little bit of a controversial one because some people are like, oh, we've heard it enough. Rhodes. Let's talk about roads. What makes Rhodes Beauty such an iconic brand? What has made them such a powerhouse? So many hosts on LinkedIn and the beauty community are like, let's talk about the Rhodes blueprint. I'm just gonna like disburst that bubble for one second. There is no Rhodes blueprint. It was Haley Bieber. Period, the end, end of story. And people come back and say, oh, well, no, it's not celebrity brands. There's so many celebrity brands that go under, right? Like, why isn't Goop Gwenneth Paucho's brand just printing money? Right? Why is Gwen Stefani's brand not printing money? Haley Bieber created such a world that she brought in her audience through her socials and they were a part of her life. She was vulnerable. She would cry on live streams. She would talk about the ups and downs of her own mental health journey. She would talk about her skin when it wasn't feeling great. She would talk about the products she was using. She was clearly a beauty lover and she would talk about it naturally in her daily life. She created such a world around her. There's even a Hailey Bieber smoothie at Erwan. People will literally go and be like, here's five million dollars for a smoothie, right? I mean, I kid it's what, like $24? Like that's still kind of ridiculous that we're spending that much for a smoothie. But people loved how she looks. She's one of the most gorgeous, arguably, young women out there. Whether or not we like her, we don't like her, would we like to look like her? She's she's gorgeous. And she knew what she was talking about in beauty. And so when she launched her own products, people already saw her as an expert and then add to it that you feel like you're supporting your friend because people have parasocial relationships with influencers, especially at the level of what Hailey Bieber is. That they feel if I buy this product, I'm supporting my girl. And I'm also getting a little dose of her in my daily life, right? This whole glazing milk or this, you know, lip balm or that. It feels like you're part of something that she built. It's very hard to replicate that unless you have spent the time, the years Hailey Bieber has been building community on social in every aspect for over 15 years. She publicly gets dragged for having taken Selena Gomez's boyfriend. Still after having been married and children. Like she opened herself up to that, willingly or not willingly. She lived it publicly out there. And so is it, oh my gosh, she has the best products? Yeah, she actually does have extraordinary products, so she's very smart. She partnered with one of the best cosmetic chemists out there, Ron Robinson. If you know Beauty, you know. Also, Ron Robinson is the founder of BeautyStat, is respected in the industry for skincare. He is a legend. She then got purchased by Elf, right? You're off to the races at that point because that is one of the most impressive, well-known, regarded CEOs to rang out there is Elf. They knew what they were doing when they bought Rhodes. They knew what they had in Hailey Bieber and they bought it because of Hailey Bieber. There is no blueprint. We probably will not see it again in quite some time. So now let's quickly talk about her counterpart, Selena Gomez, Rare Beauty. Selena McGomez and Rare Beauty was something that we have probably not seen since Fenty, which is another one that we'll probably unpack on a different episode because that one should have its own full thing, the Fenty effect. That was such a moment. Selena Gomez's Rare Beauty was when we saw a celebrity not just put her name on a brand. She was involved in almost every single formulation. She is also somebody who has lived in the public eye since she was on the Disney Channel, right? She's been doing this since she was almost 10 years old, openly. Again, life centered around a boy by the media, right? To the point that when Rhodes launched in Sephora, Puck, a well-known retail news outlet, ran the very unfortunate title on social called Roadkill, spelled R-H-O-D-E, with a picture of Selena Gomez in the background and Haley Bieber in the foreground about how Hailey Bieber was coming to take something from Selena again. Are you kidding me? That is not what this industry is about. I wished when I read that with every fiber of my being that the absolute impossible would happen, which is that Selena's people and Haley's people would say, we have the opportunity to absolutely break something in this industry that needs to be broken and do a collab launch together. If they had done that or do that, like please, if you guys are listening, like, oh my gosh, that would be amazing. It's not about one person versus the other person. There's so much room in this beauty industry, and it was such a cheap shot. But again, it shows you how open these types of founders are to living their life in the public eye that you feel again that you're supporting a friend. Also, Rare Beauty again had one of the best cosmetic formulators behind them. You cannot tell me that you've never heard of Rare Beauty Blush. If you haven't, you're listening to the wrong podcast. Like, I don't know what else to tell you, right? If you don't know what happy means in Sense of a Blush, probably the this episode is not the right podcast. It was one of the most iconic launches out there. To this day, Rare Beauty remains one of the most impactful beauty brands out there. And what's amazing about Selena Gomez's journey is that she's also been so transparent with her own mental health struggles to the point that when she launched her brand, she committed over $100 million to be donated to mental health resources. We all know that she participates in World Mental Health Day, but over $100 million of her own money from Rare Beauty goes back to supporting mental health. And that is the power of beauty. That is how beauty continues to be a source of good. And those are just a few of the stories behind some of the hottest brands on retail today. These conversations matter because who gets to speak shapes who gets to win. If this episode challenged how you see beauty, business, or the power behind the industry, share it with someone who needs to hear it. To connect or explore more, check the show notes. I'm Susanna Dellinger, and this has been off the show.