It’s 2025, and if you’re launching a beauty brand, congratulations—you’re also launching yourself. Your life story, your skincare failures, your existential crisis over whether mica is ethical—it’s all potential content.
Globally, this approach is playing out in real time. Charlotte Palermino of Dieux is as known for her brand’s barrier-loving moisturisers as she is for her TikToks about regulation and reform. Dianna Cohen built Crown Affair on her own hair rituals, which now live on mood boards and Sunday night routines everywhere. Diipa Büller-Khosla, who launched Inde Wild off the back of her own platform, told The Nod: “I’m Diipa the businesswoman in team meetings and product development; Diipa the face, doing shoots and content; and Diipa the personal brand, still engaging with my own platform.”
But what happens when the lines between person and brand start to blur?
Out in the open
For Karishma Kewalramani of Fae Beauty, building her online presence was a deliberate part of the brand strategy. “I made a conscious effort to be honest,” she says. Her Instagram series Karishma’s Journal, a running commentary on the behind-the-scenes realities of beauty entrepreneurship, is cross-posted to her own profile and also the brand’s via collab posts, making her personal life part of the brand’s content engine. The series exploded after her appearance on Shark Tank India, pulling in a broader, more curious audience.
But her openness doesn’t stop at selfies. When Fae’s sunscreen wasn’t selling due to its higher price point (largely due to packaging), she decided to sell it at a loss. The decision was explained transparently on social media. “We had a very strategic business reason for doing this, and we wanted people to know our reasoning,” she says. And it seems to have worked. Consumers in the DMs were lining up to buy the product or appreciate Kewalramani’s transparency.
For some founders, being visible isn’t about the algorithm, it’s about building real connections. Roshni and Naina Mehta, the twin sisters behind Hibiscus Monkey (alongside their mother Mona), deliberately stepped in front of the camera for the brand’s ads. Their personal profiles may be private, but their presence is central. “We didn’t want Hibiscus Monkey to be a faceless brand,” says Roshni. One memorable ad shows them fangirling at a Coldplay concert. It’s not staged. It’s not styled. But it works. “It’s important that people see who we are—and why we care.”
As Naina puts it, “Doing business in India and building something ground up is not for the faint-hearted… If consumers see the sweat and systems that go into every product, they understand the complexity—and they’re more forgiving when something goes wrong.”
How open is too open?
But being visible comes with its own tension. “Nobody shows the middle of the journey,” says Anshita Mehrotra, founder of Fix My Curls. “I wanted to show that part—not just the launch or the $100-million story.” She splits her content intentionally: her personal account talks about her entrepreneurship journey, while the Fix My Curls page focuses purely on product and brand. “People follow people. They want to know me but not necessarily hear about my curly-hair products every day.”
There’s something incredibly refreshing about a founder being this clear-eyed about boundaries. Because here’s the thing: the cult of authenticity can sometimes turn performative. The pressure to be “real” every day—to show your burnouts, your breakdowns, your budget spreadsheets—can create its own kind of burnout. As a viewer, it can also feel manipulative. There’s a fine line between vulnerability and an emotional dump. Transparency works when it’s a story with a point, not when it’s constant crises.
That’s something Mehrotra gets. “There’s a point where oversharing becomes asking for pity,” she says. “I can share a failed launch, but I’m not going to make it sound like the whole thing is a disaster.”
What happens when something goes wrong?
What happens when the founder is the brand—and something goes wrong? Industry watchers point to Glossier’s Emily Weiss, whose departure from day-to-day operations led to identity questions for the brand. Others cite wellness-influencer-led skincare lines that struggle with credibility or backlash when personal missteps bleed into brand perception. You can’t unbraid yourself from the brand once you’ve tied them together. So, if you burn out, or pivot, or people change how they feel about you, it affects the business too.
The mental drain is real, too. In the same The Nod interview, Büller-Khosla said: “It made sense that I would be the face—it grew from my personal brand. But yes, it’s exhausting.”
The trust equation
According to Euromonitor’s ‘Voice of the Consumer: Lifestyles Survey (2022)’, 54 per cent of consumers say they only buy from brands they trust completely. And trust, according to the report, isn’t built through flawless execution. It’s built through honesty. Through being informative, showing your values and being human.
Not every beauty brand is built around a founder’s face, though. Legacy giants like M.A.C, Clinique, and Estée Lauder have long thrived without centering a single personality. Their power comes from institutional authority: M.A.C is “trusted by pros”, Clinique is “dermatologist-developed”, and L’Oréal Paris sells itself with global ambassadors rather than a behind-the-scenes creator. These brands were built in an era where expertise, prestige, and polished marketing carried more weight than personal storytelling.
But for today’s millennial and Gen Z consumers, that model can feel sterile. In a market crowded with similar-looking products and high-budget campaigns, younger shoppers often seek connection before conversion. This shift isn’t just aesthetic—it’s structural. Social media demands a protagonist, and many of today’s most resonant brands were built natively for Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. They are designed to be experienced through a person.
What does this mean for beauty brands today?
It means that the rules have changed—but not for everyone, and not in the same way. Founder-led brands have rewritten the playbook with personality, transparency, and access. Legacy brands, on the other hand, still lead with expertise and scale. Their strength lies in authority. Both approaches can work, but neither is immune to scrutiny.
What’s becoming clear is that in a post-glossy, hyper-connected world, trust is the currency and there’s more than one way to earn it. A founder might build it through vulnerability. A faceless brand might build it through consistency. But either way, consumers are paying attention to how the story is told—not just what is being sold.
