Cosmetics Made “Avec Amour”: Backing Violette’s Vision for Clean Beauty

Female Founders Fund
Female Founders Fund
9 min readMar 30, 2021

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We are thrilled to back Parisian makeup artist Violette’s first line of cosmetics, VIOLETTE_FR, made “avec amour” for people and the planet, and designed with the purpose of helping people celebrate their natural beauty. “We’re incorporating a lot of education on how to take care of your skin and how to apply makeup in a way that’s not ‘fixing’ anything, but celebrating yourself and making you feel good about yourself,” Violette says.

In a recent interview with Violette, we discussed her background at Dior and Estée Lauder, what inspired her to start VIOLETTE_FR, her commitment to clean beauty and sustainability, and how the pandemic disrupted the beauty industry. Read it below.

Can you share a bit about your experience prior to founding VIOLETTE_FR? How do you think your background has prepared you for this journey?

I’ve always been passionate about art; it was my way of communicating as a child because I was so shy. When I was a teenager, I told my dad that my dream was to move to New York, get an MBA and become a businesswoman. He was surprised because I’d been obsessed with art all my life. I think there’s something very creative about business, because you get to create something for people and put it out into the world.

First, as a makeup artist, I learned the creative side of the beauty industry. Then I started working on creative direction and managing photo shoots, so those were my first steps towards building my own business culture and learning what kind of leader I wanted to be. When I joined Dior as a makeup designer, I spent most of my time liaising between the communication department and the marketing department. I was working very closely with the CMO and the director of communication, which was extremely interesting. I also started to understand how product development works.

At Dior, we had such a great welcome from the press, and I learned that people wanted products that had a soul, or had a storytelling element. All these things helped me create the DNA of my own company. I’ve wanted to build a brand for 17 years, and it’s almost like I took notes on everything. The most impactful experience was launching my YouTube channel, because I started building and engaging with my community. As a makeup artist, I had so many people reaching out on social media asking how to recreate my editorial looks that were in the press. When I launched on YouTube, I had a platform to explain my philosophy of not changing yourself, not fixing yourself, and using makeup to celebrate your natural beauty — it’s created a sort of movement.

What inspired you to create your own brand? Why did you decide to launch it now?

I always knew that I wanted to launch a brand. When I started out as a makeup artist, I had no money, so I couldn’t buy products. Instead, I would buy cosmetic raw materials and I would create my own products on set, and that’s when I realized that the beauty industry was really behind on product innovation. Over the years, I’ve had several offers to launch a brand, but it was really important to me to wait for the perfect timing. I thought about launching a brand after I moved to New York and started my YouTube channel, but then the Lauder offer arrived. Working with Estée Lauder as Global Beauty Director is such a dream for a makeup artist; it’s an honor, and also it allowed me to gain amazing experience before building VIOLETTE_FR. After a couple of years of working with them I thought, “okay, I’m ready, I see my brand, I’m able to sell products.”

I got pregnant, so I developed VIOLETTE_FR during pregnancy. There were some challenges along the way — not because of the pregnancy, even though people told me not to fundraise while pregnant, which shocked me — but due to the pandemic, so we had a bumpy road.

That’s crazy — why were you told not to fundraise while pregnant?

People told me that most investors are men who might think I’d backtrack on building my brand after giving birth, or that I might want to stay home and take care of my kid. But the opposite was true. While pregnant, I thought, “this child inside of me right now is my fire. It’s my passion, it makes me want to be creative.” I remember being pregnant running around the city, flying to L.A.… I never felt so energized. After my daughter was born, I took her to L.A. to start fundraising. I was feeling so empowered; I was a mom, and I wanted to support my child’s future and show her that the sky’s the limit.

This month, you’re launching not only makeup products like a highlighter, eyeshadow, lipstick — but also a dry shampoo and perfume. Why did you want to cover this full scope of the beauty experience? How did you choose these as the final launch products?

VIOLETTE_FR is a multi-category brand, which really surprised people. In my culture, we see beauty holistically. As a makeup artist and creative director, it’s hard for me to tell you, “just wear this red lipstick.” Instead, I’ll approach the entire look, and say “don’t wear too much foundation, wear this eyeliner, and have beautiful, healthy hair, but don’t blow-dry it.” In France, everything is about the entire vibe you create with your makeup and your clothes. It’s a whole style.

Personally, I have crazy-sensitive skin. Skin is so important to me, so that’s why I wanted to include skincare in the line. People told me that since I’m a makeup artist I’m not expected to create amazing skincare, but I set out to create the brand of my dreams, so I made products I’d want to use.

The beauty industry is so crowded right now. Where do you see the opportunity to disrupt the industry? What sets VIOLETTE_FR apart?

My goal is to focus on products that don’t exist on the market. (If there’s already a good foundation out there, I’ll use that one. Why would I try to make a better version if it’s good enough?) For example, our skincare product Boum-Boum Milk is a liquid cream in a spray bottle, and you can use it on your face, hair, scalp and body. The active ingredient is fermented birch sap, and there’s only 50 farms in the world that produce it, with harvests once a year. (We didn’t try to make the product “interesting” — birch sap is the best ingredient for reducing inflammation in the skin.) Since Boum-Boum Milk is a toner, serum, and moisturizer in one, it reduces your skincare routine, but it also works. We’re now starting clinical trials to prove how well it works.

We’re also making a dry shampoo powder locked in a brush, so you don’t have to spray and brush your hair. There’s an oil-based perfume in a roll-on, and a lipstick that took me a year and a half just to develop because I wanted to replicate the color of a rose petal. Every product we create is made “avec amour” (or “with love”) for people and for the planet.

How have you leveraged the power of your network when creating this first line of products? What was your product development process?

Over the last 17 years, I’ve worked with so many different vendors and learned which labs were the best at making each type of product. For example, the best eyeshadow lab is different from the best mascara lab. Thanks to my work developing products for other brands, I had relationships with these labs and they opened their doors to me with a warm welcome. They also allowed me to work with them to create products from scratch. Usually, a brand will approach them to work from a formula that already exists, but for me, since I wanted to create products that didn’t exist, I pitched them the ideas and then we worked together — it was a lot of hand-holding — to develop each formula. Color-matching took even longer because I’m really precise. To give you an idea of the timeline, our skincare product Boum-Boum Milk took three years of development.

Earlier, you mentioned that your line is considered “clean beauty.” Can you explain what “clean beauty” actually means?

That’s exactly what I’m working on this week. We already had everything reviewed because we are E.U.-regulated, but I wanted to hire a consultant to sit down with my formulas and my ingredients and help us figure out how to communicate what’s inside. We’re also doing additional toxicology testing for Boum-Boum Milk because I want to follow the highest-possible standards of testing. In France, we never used to talk about clean beauty, because we buy all our skincare products at French pharmacies. Most of the products sold at French pharmacies are considered “clean” by U.S. standards, because the E.U. is stricter when it comes to regulation.

I really don’t want the clean claim to be a marketing statement for us, because the term “clean beauty” is absolutely not regulated. It’s really up to brands to define their “clean” label themselves. So we’re producing a page for the website with full transparency about our ingredients, so people can make their own judgements.

That’s so important. I feel like “clean beauty” has become the beauty industry’s equivalent of “sustainable fashion.”

Exactly. Speaking of sustainability, when I started to develop my packaging, I wanted to make packaging that was sustainable. I approached the vendors who made “sustainable” packaging for other brands, and was told that their packaging wasn’t actually sustainable. They told me to look more closely at other brands’ marketing statements, because the secondary packaging — the box — was the sustainable part. It’s really not clear! If I thought everything they produced was sustainable, I’m sure other people thought the same thing. It’s such a fog. That’s why I want to be extremely transparent about packaging, too.

We have a section on our website that explains how the packaging was made, and what consumers need to do to recycle it in order to keep the circularity loop closed. My goal is to use post-consumer resin (PCR) as much as we can, because I want to use waste instead of making more waste. We’ll need to do a lot of hand-holding with consumers to make sure they do their part to dispose of the products correctly, so it truly stays sustainable.

The packaging is beautiful. What influenced you as you were designing it?

I always wanted to build a brand that felt like “Vintage Chanel meets Apple,” or in other words, a brand that felt antique and super-modern at the same time. Every product has a logomark on it, almost like a stamp to use on love letters. I sketched the logomark myself and sent it to Helena Soubeyrand, and asked her to make her own. It’s an angel face with the phrase “avec amour” written on the side.

How have you seen the pandemic and quarantine affect people’s appetite for beauty tutorials and new makeup products? Do you think it changed people’s perspectives on beauty?

I think self-care has become a way for people to support their mental health. One thing I’ve noticed is how people have become really educated about skincare ingredients. Thanks to creators like Hyram, who make educational, accessible skincare content, consumers are making better choices for themselves. Plus, the pandemic gave people time to do research and learn how to do things like hair, nails, and facials themselves — if you’re staying at home, you don’t have a hair stylist, you can’t go to your nail place, and you don’t have a facialist.

There’s also the masks, which hide half of your face. People have been doing eye makeup a little bit more. We were supposed to launch with more lip colors, but I cancelled them because I wanted to focus on eyes and provide something to make people feel better about the current situation.

Thank you for this, Violette! Final question — what are the top products you can’t live without?

Aveda Lip Saver is the best lip balm ever. Of course, my Boum-Boum Milk and my Petal Bouche lipstick. SuperGoop sunscreen, and Bobbi Brown blush in Nectar, which is a pink color.

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