Ilia Beauty Founder on Creating a Brand for Everyone

Hello everyone! For today’s newsletter, I had the pleasure of speaking with Ilia Beauty Founder, Sasha Plavsic, on building her business before the ‘clean’ beauty movement was popularized and how she’s continuing to produce skin-healthy products for all. Plus, tips on launching a business from a fintech leader, the microcurrent technology we’re testing out, and the much-needed outfit inspo for the holiday season — just in time for office parties, white elephants, and beyond. — Samantha

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THE CLOSE-UP

Creating A Skin-Healthy Brand with Ilia's Sasha Plavsic

By Samantha Wu

Welcome to The Close-Up, where we indulge in conversations with tastemakers, entrepreneurs, designers, and others paving the way in their respective industries. Focusing on the people at the forefront of innovative companies, join us as we uncover their style ethos, guiding principles, challenges, and insights that have made them successful in the worlds of fashion, beauty, art, and beyond.

This week, I had the pleasure of speaking with Ilia Beauty founder, Sasha Plavsic. Ahead, we chat about how she worked with a chemist to develop Ilia’s skin-healthy products, the type of look she wants Ilia customers to achieve, and her skincare philosophy. 

Samantha Wu: Ilia was founded back in 2011 before Clean Beauty was a thing. Can you share what you were looking to achieve with that first lip balm product?

Sasha Plavsic: I wish I could give you a grand answer that [I] had some goal in mind, but from a product standpoint, I was looking to achieve a product that wore like a lipstick but felt like a lip balm. When I was younger, I was experimenting with brighter colors and wearing lipstick all the time, and felt that they were more matte back then and drying on the lips. I was always using tinted balm in between my lipsticks and felt annoyed by that. I thought there must be a way to put both of them together and have something comfortable that isn't a lipstick, but it isn't a lip balm. It's that perfect space in between.

SW: Can you tell me more about your personal relationship with makeup and skincare?

SP: Up until the point of starting the brand, my relationship was challenging because I had bad skin. At the age of 13, my hormones started and my skin changed. I felt frustrated and challenged in finding products that would help my skin. That was in the '90s. I would go to a dermatologist and try different topical treatments, everything. Makeup-wise, I was trying to find things that would blend in, not necessarily fully cover because I didn't want to look like I had too much makeup on.

SW: Can you tell me more about how you worked with a chemist to create those clean, healthy products within your first product line?

SP: I knew in my heart that trying to do it myself was a bad idea because I'm not a chemist, and lipsticks are complex. They require a mold, either a metal book mold or a silicone mold, and the formula is heated and then poured into there. Any balm that's going to be in a stick form has to have a mold, and there's a lot that goes into it.

I started looking in Canada because I was living in Vancouver at the time. I couldn't really find anybody, so I started asking around. I went to a yoga class, and I met a chemist. She had a few leads. It's amazing, when you have an idea and you're brave enough to start sharing some aspects, you can find people who can help you or point you in the right direction, and it starts to happen. I picked up the phone, called a lipstick manufacturer, and had to try and convince them to work with me. Found a lab in Toronto that I could not convince to work with me. We work with them today, but they would not do it back then.

I found my chemist actually going to CosmoProf, which is a big cosmetic trade show. They have them all over the world, but there is one in Las Vegas every year. You could go and meet a bunch of different vendors, so that's what I did. I was talking to a packaging vendor, telling him what I was trying to do, and he was like, "You know what? I got to introduce you to this lady around the corner." It's just like one little instant that set it off. If I hadn't gone and talked to him and he hadn't said, "You need to meet this lady around the corner," would this brand even have happened? Because you need to meet the right people to get to where you need to go, and I knew when I sat down with her, she was the right person to do this with.

SW: What type of look do you hope consumers achieve while wearing Ilia products?

SP: I want everyone to be able to find something here. That means we have to have different products in order to reach that goal. I have a saying: “Some people like to wear a lot of makeup, many people like to wear a little makeup.” I felt that, especially when I was creating a line, there were not a lot of brands speaking to women like myself who wanted to wear a little bit of makeup. I felt like I was part of a much bigger majority that was not being recognized or spoken to.

I wanted to create something approachable to anybody, whether they're a professional snowboarder or somebody working in New York City who would never want to step foot on a mountain. That to me is a great success because it means that it can speak to a very broad [range].

It was important to me also to speak to different skin types. Skin tones are obvious, but with skin types, you can have oily, dry, younger, or more mature. My mom was there often testing the formulas with me, and I still had oily, more acne-based skin in my early 30s, and she had more mature, drying, aging skin in her 60s. That was a great comparison to work off of and ensure that the formula would stretch from one to the other.

SW: Can you tell me more about your go-to products for improving skin health, whether it's Ilia or otherwise?

SP: Our skin tint is a savior if you're going to damage your skin the night before with any acid or retinoids. It replenishes that moisture, helps rebuild the barrier, and helps calm any inflammation in the skin. My philosophy around products is if you're going to do any damage, you find a way to repair it and protect it.

If I don't have any time, if I just put on a hint of moisture and quickly fill in my brows and brush them up a little bit, and grab one of our balmy tints and put a little bit on my cheeks and lips, that's a really quick trick to just feel and look a little more awake.

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