If Pat McGrath is makeup’s mother, then she recently taught her children a valuable lesson about delayed gratification.
The Maison Margiela couture show on Jan. 25, 2024, held beneath the Pont Alexandre III and inspired by Brassaï’s photographs of Paris, was a feast of textures — John Galliano’s dusty, gauzy and wooly silhouettes, of course, but also the models’ otherworldly skin, which reflected a pearlescent, plasticine sheen crafted by McGrath.
Plenty of McGrath’s looks had gone viral pre- and post-Instagram, like her era-defining i-D covers of the 1990s or the African-inspired masks she crafted in jewels for Givenchy in 2013. All of them paled in comparison to the response to the Margiela show. Google searches for McGrath spiked, and speculation mounted about an upcoming product launch that would allow anyone to replicate what was quickly becoming known as McGrath’s “glass skin.”
This was news to the team at McGrath’s brand, which hadn’t been working on one.
After the show, a team scrambled to put together an online masterclass with McGrath breaking down the look in February. But they were scooped by the makeup artist and beauty historian Erin Parsons, who posted a TikTok on the following Sunday explaining the theatrical trick (a drugstore peel-off face mask administered via airbrush).
According to three former employees, McGrath was annoyed about Parsons’ video, not least because Parsons had once worked as her first assistant. Still, five days passed before she appeared live on TikTok and Instagram to share her no-longer-secret technique.
“I’ve never seen a makeup look go so viral,” she told the tens of thousands who had gathered to watch. The tens of thousands, in turn, wondered when they might be able to try it for themselves.
But it would be another year almost to the day before those wishes would be granted. Skin Fetish: Glass 001 Artistry Mask went on sale on Pat McGrath Labs’ website on Jan. 30 of this year, promising not only to replicate the Margiela show look, but to provide skincare benefits as well.
It arrived to a chorus of “THANK YOU MOTHER” and “GIVE IT TO ME!!” from McGrath’s children on Instagram. (In a turn of phrase borrowed from the queer ballroom scene, her friends took to calling her Mother in the 1990s; now her fans do too). But some in her flock couldn’t help but wonder why they were being asked to buy a $38 version of a peel-off mask, its perfect sheen prone to bubbling if the wearer opens their mouth.
And most importantly, what took so long?
The episode is the latest example of the difficulty Pat McGrath Labs has had translating its founder’s artistic genius into commercial success. The brand set the template for the current makeup artist-driven beauty moment, securing a wall at Sephora and a $1 billion valuation with an investment from French firm Eurazeo within three years of its 2015 launch.
Maintaining that momentum proved difficult almost from the moment Pat McGrath Labs received its unicorn valuation. A permanent collection designed for the brand’s Sephora entrance, heavy on the eyes and complexion, developed a cult following, but produced few hits, particularly as the minimal “clean girl” trend took hold early in the pandemic.
McGrath’s famously private persona also started to feel of another era in a time when brand founders are constantly interacting with fans online. Since the pandemic, her line has struggled to compete with a host of celebrity and influencer-fronted brands, including makeup artist offerings such as Charlotte Tilbury and Bobbi Brown’s Jones Road. Both regularly make themselves available for social posts and customer meet and greets.
McGrath declined through a spokesperson to comment for this story.
Eurazeo quietly exited the brand in 2021. The same year, Sienna Investment Managers, the alternative investment arm of Belgian holding firm GBL, purchased a 14.4 percent stake for €168 million ($183 million), valuing the company at €1.2 billion. One year later, it wrote down that investment by 88 percent, and in 2024 estimated its stake was worth €21.5 million, implying a total company valuation of €149 million, according to GBL’s annual reports. Whereas Eurazeo executives touted Pat McGrath Labs in interviews as forming the foundation of a global beauty empire, GBL has never spoken about its investment publicly, referring to it in documents as an unnamed “cosmetics company.”
Meanwhile, the brand’s door count at Sephora has fallen steadily since 2019, and when Ulta Beauty picked up the line in 2023, it did so in just 200 of its 1,400 North American stores, Puck News reported. Some fans have recently spotted Pat McGrath Labs products at discount retailers like Ross Dress for Less. According to a Pat McGrath Labs spokesperson, the brand is carried in over 700 retail doors worldwide.
In 2024, the company held three rounds of layoffs. Last month, senior executive Rabih Hamdan announced his departure after less than a year at the company in a letter to staff that suggested turbulence behind the scenes.
“The environment that I had stepped into was not exactly what was depicted to me (and in all fairness I think no one really had the proper grip of the full situation),” wrote Hamdan, who joined the company from the Italian mass cosmetics label Kiko Milano. Though Hamdan identified himself as CEO of Pat McGrath Labs on his LinkedIn page, the brand spokesperson said “Pat McGrath is and has always been the only CEO of Pat McGrath Labs.”
In order to secure its future, Pat McGrath Labs will need to do much more than recalibrate its launch strategy; it will also need to meaningfully address a fractured company culture. The Business of Beauty spoke with eight former employees and collaborators who described an at times chaotic working atmosphere where verbal — and allegedly in at least one instance, physical — altercations were common, campaign planning was erratic, secrecy was everything and McGrath was always right, no matter the cost.
“It really is the Wild West,” said one former employee, an industry veteran. “And no one has any checks or balances.”
A Working Makeup Artist Like No Other
McGrath is, without hyperbole, an industry legend; her signature black turtleneck and headband, almost nunlike, make her the avatar of the working makeup artist. Her career was made backstage at fashion shows, where she has painted faces just about every season since the early 1990s. She still does about 50 shows annually.
She is also the go-to makeup artist for luxury brands looking to make a splash in the beauty category, having helped designer labels craft best-selling products, like Armani’s Luminous Silk Foundation and Diorshow Mascara. Last week, she was named the creative director of Louis Vuitton’s forthcoming makeup line.
The launch of her own makeup line in 2015 was both long-awaited and perfectly timed. It was the golden hour for direct-to-consumer beauty businesses, just before the dawn of the celebrity and makeup artist boom. McGrath, the most famous artist of her kind, was ready to level up.
She was a trailblazer in other ways. McGrath is a Black woman in a mostly white industry that, despite its liberal bona fides, has deeply entrenched power dynamics. McGrath propped open the door for brands like Rihanna’s Fenty, which arrived with its standard-setting 40 shade foundation range two years after Labs. McGrath also paved the way for makeup artist-led labels, like those from Gucci Westman, Patrick Ta and Mario Dedivanovic.
In 2015, however, much of the initial excitement around Pat McGrath Labs was the promise of a direct pipeline between runway artistry and the mainstream cosmetics market. Her first product, Gold 001, was a gold pigment that when mixed with an included solution produced a foil-effect on the skin. Its initial run of 1,000 sold out in six minutes. Just months after McGrath created red glitter lips at Versace’s 2016 couture show, she released Lust 004, a kit to recreate the look.
For all of her bombastic Instagram captions — which favour all-caps exclamations like MAJOR or DIVINE GODDESS — and general flair for runway dramatics, McGrath, the person, is famously reserved. She often declines interviews, and recently turned down an appearance in Vogue’s Hulu docuseries about the 1990s — an era whose look she helped define — according to a former employee. The artist has made more of an effort in the past year to meet her audience IRL, hosting live masterclasses and appearing at Allure’s Best of Beauty event.
Backstage at her eponymous company, the exacting standards and mercurial tendencies that facilitated strokes of genius at fashion weeks made Pat McGrath Labs a difficult place to work, six former employees told The Business of Beauty.
Several described waiting until hours after sunset for McGrath’s approvals, a gruelling routine which was a point of pride for the brand and its supporters. Alison Hahn, the Sephora merchandiser who helped launch Pat McGrath Labs into the retailer in 2017, once told Allure that the artist would start meetings at midnight.
“Everything’s done at the last minute. That’s how she works,” Hahn told the magazine in 2021, adding “it’s worth it.”
The long hours may have also been indicative of deeper problems in the company’s culture, and its executive leadership in particular.
In interviews, former employees’ complaints tend to coalesce around a single figure: Andrew Weir, whose official title is senior vice president of marketing but who is better known as McGrath’s “chief of staff.” Weir, a former casting agent who worked out of the company’s New York headquarters, is often the go-between between employees, collaborators and McGrath.
“He was aggressive, abusive, and inappropriate,” one longtime employee said. Anything that made Weir feel out of the loop — such as edits to an Instagram video he didn’t see, or an email he was left off of — could provoke his rage, which was sometimes unleashed on the brand’s predominantly young, female workplace, said six former employees.
Several former employees said that in a number of instances, an incensed Weir got so close-up to employees as he vented his anger towards them that bystanders physically restrained him. Once, Weir shoved a female junior employee in the office, according to one former employee who said they witnessed the incident, and two who were told about it at the time by others who were there.
Two employees said they made McGrath aware of Weir’s behaviour on separate occasions, and one said they filed a complaint with human resources at the founder’s recommendation. That employee said that when he later checked on the status of the complaint, HR had no record of it.
A spokesperson for the brand said, “The company takes any allegation of aggression or misconduct in the workplace very seriously and will be investigating immediately.”
Weir and Robert Barr, a West Coast-based copywriter and marketer who helped with editorial projects like naming, formed part of an advisory team around McGrath that, one former senior employee said, functioned as an echo chamber for the artist’s ideas. This delivered, in theory, a purer version of her vision — but also a culture that obstructed constructive conversations. Another longtime employee added that the arrangement helped create a stifling atmosphere of secrecy at the business.
Employees were discouraged from sharing information about what they were working on, even with others at the company not in their immediate circle, four employees said. One employee recalled members of leadership assigning multiple teams of creatives, marketers or product developers to unknowingly “compete” on the same project.
“We were pitted against each other,” the employee said.
The brand declined to comment on “personnel matters.” Weir did not respond to multiple requests for comment made via the company, his email, LinkedIn and personal Instagram account.
The Glow Down
The high-pressure working environments that powered a bygone fashion era have triggered intense burnout in this one. At Pat McGrath Labs, late nights and mad dashes contributed to quick employee turnover, which may help explain why the brand has never lived up to the expectations set by that $1 billion valuation.
The brand became known for doing things at the last minute, sometimes relying on airlifting its Mothership palettes from China to be filled in Italy before arriving at stores at enormous cost. Glass 001’s rollout indicates the brand continues to struggle with its supply chain: According to Puck News, around 100 units were available for sale on launch day; after this run sold out, the mask was again made available on the brand’s website, and has had “subsequent sales of many thousands of units,” the company said.)
Using product launches to drive sales is a fragile strategy for any beauty business, but especially one prone to as much change as Pat McGrath Labs. This risk was amplified by the brand’s taste for Vogue-tier production in its marketing. Multiple employees brought up, by way of example, a Steven Meisel campaign that was planned in 2022 to promote the brand’s first skincare launch, the Divine Skin rose essence.
McGrath had wanted to enter the category with a bang, biding her time until Estée Lauder released the patent on the formula she wanted and celebrating with a AAA-talent photo shoot.
Starring Naomi Campbell, sources say the shoot cost over $1 million, but enjoyed limited returns. A 20-second ad spot on YouTube has just over 3,000 views.
“Nobody saw it,” one employee said. (The brand said that Campbell “participated in multiple global press events, content shoots, broadcast appearances, including CNN and Access Hollywood, as well as live streams across social media.”)
The essence, which retails for $86, is available at Bergdorf Goodman, Ulta Beauty and Revolve. According to the brand, it will launch at Sephora online this month and in stores in the second quarter. Sephora did not respond to requests for comment.
Facing Forward
Even employees who said they felt sure in their decision to leave the company still felt uneasy about their departure, unable to neatly pack and stow a key item of baggage: their love for Mother.
“Everyone who’s left has always been in awe of seeing Pat do her job,” one employee said. “They want her to be a success.”
Many employees, even those who had negative experiences with the company, expressed sympathy for McGrath, who they see as an artist, not an operator.
“She’s a creative,” said another employee. “What’s happened is the people who she had come on to help her create a business have failed her.”
The respect and admiration that McGrath has cultivated over three decades in the fashion and beauty industries, as well as her famous work ethic, ensure her individual longevity — the proof is in her Louis Vuitton appointment. As for her namesake business, four former employees recommended that McGrath and her inner circle cede operational control to more capable businesspeople who can help her more effectively do what she does best; the art of makeup.
Pat McGrath Labs is plugging ahead with its 2025 launch pipeline, following Glass Skin with a limited collection in partnership with the mobile game Candy Crush.
In his farewell email, Hamdan, the outgoing senior executive, alluded to a recent course correction, writing that “it required many hard decisions to be taken promptly to set the fundamentals for a swift and sustainable turnaround,” before thanking McGrath “for her involvement and endorsement of all the actions that needed to be taken.”
“As we all know,” he wrote, “nothing has happened since the inception of this brand nor happens now without her approval.”
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