Cult Beauty
Protecting a founder's authority as the brand scaled toward sale.
→ Culture
Online beauty was becoming a race to the bottom. Aggregators, discount codes and comparison shopping were training customers to buy on price, which is fatal for any brand whose value is judgment.
Cult Beauty had built its name on the opposite. The editor who finds the good thing first. The retailer stocking Korean beauty and the next cult product while the rest of the market was still catching up. That authority was founder-shaped. It came from Alexia Inge's frustration as a model, the gap between what the industry advertised and what it actually used. And it was the thing most at risk as the business scaled toward a sale, and away from her.
→ Creativity
We built the identity around an editor you trust because their standards aren't for sale. Provenance became a principle the brand was built on rather than a claim it made, so a customer could always see why something had earned its place in the edit.
The design made that literal. The hand of the editor, red pen, crayon on a contact sheet, an expressive and deliberately feminine illustration style running through every touchpoint. Against a category drifting toward the muted and interchangeable, we gave Cult real conviction. Bold, and unmistakably its own.
→ Commerce
Acquired by THG in 2021 for £275 million, with brand vision cited as a key factor in the sale. Now trading across 22 markets.
