Nudestix: The Easy-to-Use New Makeup Brand
Established beauty companies have been scrambling in recent years to figure out how to woo Internet-savvy millennials who are perceived as having well-honed BS-o-meters and short attention spans. Estée Lauder’s recent signing of 19-year-old Kendall Jenner, who has almost 16 million Instagram followers, is one such ploy. But maybe someone should just ask millennials what they want when it comes to beauty.
Jenny Frankel, a Toronto-based chemical engineer with 20 years of beauty industry experience at MAC, and then as a co-founder of CoverFX, did just this when she decided to take time off in 2011 from her harried work life to spend more time with her daughters. She made a lot of observations about Ally and Taylor, then 12 and 15, about how to best communicate with them. “In order for me to connect with them, I literally needed to connect. I needed to be on social platforms,” Jenny said. “I was noticing that everything they did was about lifestyle. They looked at beauty as a part of their lifestyle. And they weren’t following brands. If they’re not following brands, they don’t know what the brands are doing.”
Related: Tom Ford’s New Lipsticks are Inspired by Men
When it came to makeup, Jenny also discovered that the girls couldn’t be bothered with elaborate routines. “This generation is a very messy generation. They barely brush their hair, they do messy buns, t-shirts are wrinkled, jeans are ripped,” she said. “They’re messy and fast and smart. Everything needs to be easy and relaxed. They don’t like precision or structure, and even for beauty that holds true.” Ally, now 15, totally agrees with her mom’s assessment of her generation. (Big sister Taylor, 18, is at university and was unable to chat for this interview.) “It’s completely accurate. We’d actually rather sleep an extra five minutes or go on social media for five minutes than do our makeup,” she said.
After a trip to Europe, Jenny brought back some lab samples of makeup in pencil form, and Ally and Taylor were fascinated by the ease of just drawing and smudging with the products. “Brushes are super intimidating and there are so many of them,” Ally said. “The application process is against our natural instinct. Pencils are intuitive and we’ve been using pencils forever.” About the same time, Jenny realized that her daughters were also drawn to nude colors; they weren’t really responding to the “color stories” that are the seasonal mainstay of many traditional beauty brands. Ally said she and her sister like Urban Decay’s Naked palette, but even then they only used two colors from it. And thus a seed for Nudestix, the cosmetics company the trio launched this past May, was planted.
Related: 5 Multitasking Beauty Products That Do It All
Nudestix takes a concept that’s been around for a while—makeup in pencil form—and simplifies it even further. Yes, the Frankels realize fat pencils aren’t new in the beauty world. Clinique arguably kicked off the craze when it launched its Chubby Sticks in the ‘90s, and now many brands offer thick eye shadow pencils and lip crayons. Tyra Banks also just launched an entire beauty range in stick form. But the difference is that pencils are all Nudestix offers, and the colors skew neutral. It’s one-stop shopping for a generation that would clearly welcome not having to shift through the multiple offerings out there to get what they want: easy makeup. Jenny calls the concept “Chanel meets Crayola.”
Right now, it’s a small collection, but one that could easily replace most things you’re already using. The line launched at specialty beauty retailer Space NK, where it quickly gained buzz, and you can now get it at Sephora as well, where it sold in a week the amount it hoped the brand would sell in a month. A big part of the buzz has come from blogs and social media. Ally and Taylor personally run Nudestix’s various social media feeds, so the voice is genuinely theirs. A shout-out from Danielle Peazer, a dancer-turned-blogger who also happened to date Liam Payne from One Direction, helped.
Related: Shop the Drugstore with Makeup Artist Daniel Martin
There are eight lip/cheek pencils and eight concealer pencils, eight brilliant eye liner/shadow/highlighter combo pencils, eight lip pens, four shadow pencils, and one mascara, which is the only thing that doesn’t come in pencil/pen form. Each piece costs $24, and comes with a sharpener in a mirrored tin. Foundation is the only category conspicuously absent, but the girls are adamant about not wanting to cover up their skin too much, so foundation doesn’t seem to make sense for the brand right now.
The whole concept of easy, simple beauty routines is appealing, but Ally and Taylor are also part of the generation that has popularized and made stars out of YouTube vloggers, many of whom have channels that present elaborate beauty looks and tutorials. How does that jibe with this “messy” beauty routine they embrace on a daily basis? “I’ve met some people who are into them, but I think it depends on your personality. [Tutorials] are too many steps,” Ally said. “On some of those YouTube videos, you look one way at the beginning and then you look like Kim Kardashian. You’re not real. We are not trying to mask who we actually are.”
Related: Should You Really Put Quinoa on Your Skin?
The brand also seems to be resonating with another surprising audience: millennials’ moms. “[My friends] bring it home and their moms use it,” Ally said. “I even have teachers at my school who say, ‘Oh my god, when am I going to get the new Nudestix?’” Mandy Moore, 30, recently recommended the products, and I can tell you that beauty writers of all ages – including this non-millennial mom of two – are pretty excited about the line. It feels luxe and it’s easy.
To be frank, I would also prefer an extra five minutes in bed over elaborate eyelid contouring. Sometimes it’s the simplest things that are the most genius, and that’s a concept that transcends age.
