Makeup Mogul Bobbi Brown on Reinventing Herself in Her 60s

On with Kara Swisher

New York Magazine

Society & Culture

4.2 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 October 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the late 80s and early 90s, makeup artist Bobbi Brown made a name for herself by pioneering a more natural look long before it became the dominant trend. She eventually turned her side hustle selling lipstick out of her house in suburban New Jersey into a billion-dollar eponymous makeup brand that changed the beauty industry. But her unceremonious exit from parent company Esteé Lauder, with approximately four years left on a 25-year noncompete clause, stripped her of the company she had built over decades and sidelined her from the industry. Now in her 60s, Brown has started over with a new makeup line called Jones Road, and she’s telling her story in a memoir, “Still Bobbi: A Master Class in Resilience and Reinvention.” Kara and Brown talk about how she changed the makeup industry and founded a second successful company, plus where she sees the beauty industry headed in the era of influencers and social media. Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, is she here?
0:01.2	I'm here.
0:02.1	She is.
0:03.0	Oh, there you are, Bobby.
0:03.9	How you doing?
0:04.3	Hi, everyone.
0:19.9	Hi, everyone, from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is on with Kara Swisher, and I'm
0:21.2	Kara Swisher. My guest today is makeup mogul Bobby Brown. Brown first made a name for herself
0:26.8	as a makeup artist in New York City in the 1980s and 1990s. She favored a natural look long
0:32.8	before it became the dominant trend in makeup, and she eventually started selling her own
0:36.9	line of lipstick from her house in Montclair, New Jersey. She then grew it into a billion-dollar global brand,
0:43.3	Bobby Brown, Cosmetics. But in 2016, after 20 years of building her namesake company under the
0:49.2	beauty conglomerate Estee Lauder, she left under less than ideal terms. And because of her existing non-compete agreement
0:55.9	with the company, she had to avoid the industry for four years. But now at 68, Brown is heading
1:01.7	another successful makeup company she started called Jones Road. She also has a new memoir that just
1:07.2	came out called Still Bobby, a master class in resilience and reinvention.
1:12.3	I actually use Bobby Brown products because I'm kind of her target audience because they're really
1:16.5	simple and easy to use. I don't use that much makeup, to be honest with you, but my wife loves it,
1:21.6	especially the main product, Miracle Bomb. I think that's her bestselling product and some others,
1:26.0	because it's really simple and very easy to use and not fancy. I'm more interested as an entrepreneur and how she built her business.
1:32.9	I often focus on tech people or media people, but cosmetics is a really interesting industry
1:38.2	because it's been sort of rocked by social media and other changes, ends of department stores
	...

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