Browns Beauty launch comes with curated edit and themed campaigns

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Apr 21, 2022

News of Farfetch’s big-league move into beauty dominated the headlines this week, but with its Browns unit also taking a deep dive into the category, the developments here are just as interesting.

Browns has now officially launched the category with a “highly curated” selection of skincare, make-up, hair, fragrance, and men’s grooming products, as well as accessories, from a range of established and emerging brands.

And in some ways the Browns launch is even more interesting because it focuses less on the big, established brands seen on Farfetch (such as Chanel and YSL Beauté), and more on a quirkier mix of some of the most disruptive beauty labels out there.

They include Augustinus Bader, Natura Bissé, Dr Barbara Sturm, Medik8, Allies of Skin, Bread, Mount Sapo, Epara, Melyon, Kjaer Weis, Viseart, Off White, 19/99, La Bouche Rouge, The Unseen, Surratt, Lanshin, Face Halo, Virtue, Haeckels, and The Grey.

This edit takes “a holistic and luxury approach to the category, offering effective, conscious and inclusive brands and rituals to our audience, taking the Browns community on a beauty journey that’s as unique and ‘boutique’ as our fashion offering”. 

In total, the omnichannel retailer has over 90 brands already available to shop, “with more to come as part of a phased approach”.

The company will accompany this with quarterly themes, “which will be explored in a 360-degree manner; always inspiring, unquestionably memorable, and distinctly Browns”. 

At launch, that means the ‘Big Little Rituals’ theme that “celebrates community, joining forces with the newly-established Browns Beauty Community — an eclectic, creative beauty network comprising talent from across the beauty industry and beyond — to test-drive product, share recommendations, collaborate on events, and create inspiring content, engaging product testimonials, and much, much more”.

Browns Buying Director Ida Petersson said that “fashion and beauty as inextricably entwined, and as Browns continues our journey to constantly inspire and excite our customer, adding this category was the natural next step”.

Apart from the quarterly themes, all of the products the retailer stocks have also been selected for certain over-arching themes such as “their conscious, clean, iconic, inclusive or innovative credentials”. The brands are all “results-driven and ritual-enhancing” too.

While many consumers will interact with them online, the company is also focusing heavily on the experience in physical stores and at its Browns East branch in London there’s a Beauty Pod that’s “home to a regularly-rotating edit of the best in beauty centred around our quarterly themes”.

The company said it “isn’t a traditional beauty hall” and product won’t be merchandised by brand. “Instead, expect the perfect pairing of established and emerging brands seamlessly blended to promote discovery, inspire trial and always delight our customer”.

At the same location, the Beauty Studio is its “destination for creative beauty” and is a curated multi-brand “shopping, treatment and hang-out experience, designed to engage and delight our Browns Beauty Community".