SCAD's New Beauty Program Will Make the Industry Less White and Male-Led
As a beauty editor, I’ve often wondered what it would be like to start my own makeup or fragrance line. With women like Emily Weiss and Zanna Roberts Rassi—of Glossier and Milk Makeup fame, respectively—building Insta-famous beauty empires, it’s hard not to feel inspired. The crux? Though I have two college degrees, I have absolutely zero experience creating a business plan, sourcing ingredients, or pitching ideas to potential investors, let alone doing so in the beauty space.
This got me wondering: If the global beauty market is so lucrative (it’s predicted to be worth $750 billion by 2024 and is even recession-resistant), why aren’t we teaching young women how to get a slice of the pie? Thanks to Savannah College of Art and Design’s Business of Beauty and Fragrance major, which debuted fall 2018, a new wave of beauty tycoons is being sharpened for the C-suite every semester. Even more impressive, the major was developed in partnership with Carol Hamilton, group president of L’Oréal Luxe USA, and features a staff of industry insiders with backgrounds at companies like Estée Lauder and Neiman Marcus.
When the university invited me to their Savannah, Georgia campus to sit in on classes and speak to students, I jumped at the chance—not just for journalism’s sake, but also to learn a few tricks of the trade for myself.
Hadley Stambaugh
First up: a Competitive Product Marketing workshop at Morris Hall with professor and Estée Lauder vet Meloney Moore. Looking around the (very chic, very untraditional) classroom, I noticed how much care each of the 11 fully contoured, blown-out students put into their appearance—a far cry from the hungover sorority girls I went to school with. For the first 30 minutes, we compared growth strategies used by classic fragrance brands like Chanel, YSL, and Dior and artisanal brands such as Jo Malone and Le Labo. We didn’t just watch a slideshow, though. We passed around fragrance samples and analyzed perfume commercials.
Then we moved over to the classroom’s lab table to partner up and design our own artisanal fragrance collections. With posters of the olfactory pyramid and dozens of fragrance note vials surrounding us, we began testing combinations. After several tries, my partner and I fell in love with a vetiver, musk, and citrus mixture, which we named Céleste (in keeping with the industry’s current obsession with all things cosmic). We priced out a product “architecture” using the scent, including a candle and body lotion, then gathered together as a class to sniff each other’s creations. After a text message-powered vote for the most well-rounded fragrance, the winners took home—what else?—a beauty product each from SCAD’s sample locker.
Hadley Stambaugh
Look up the heads of major beauty conglomerates and you’ll find one type of person: an older, white male with a business background, tasked with dictating what beauty looks like for billions.
Perhaps most evident to me during my trip was the university’s focus on securing jobs for students post-graduation. So the next morning, I toured SCADpro, a program in which the college pairs students with outside companies to develop real products and solutions to real problems. Just a few of the brands students have collaborated with: Delta, Google, NASA, Coca-Cola, and Urban Decay, natch. Meanwhile, within the beauty and fragrance major, students’ capstone project is the launch of their own brand and product. This includes everything from packaging design to a strategy for maximizing financial outcomes.
Before I headed home to New York City, I grilled a group of students about their goals in the beauty industry. Not one was inspired by vanity or had selfish aspirations.
“At the mall growing up, you’d be much more likely to find me in the beauty section than looking at clothes,” says student AJ Merjan. “That was because of how I felt about my weight. Beauty felt more accessible.”
“I used to suffer from cystic acne, and nothing worked until I started researching ingredients myself,” says Morgan McKensey. “Then, I started working at Lush and helping other people with their skin. They were so happy seeing a regimen that finally worked—I knew I wanted to do that for a career.”
Hadley Stambaugh
“I worked at the Macy’s fragrance counter two years ago, and it was the only job I ever loved,” says Red Ambuter. “When you help someone find a product that really connects with them, it’s a very powerful thing.”
While I certainly learned a lot about developing a brand at SCAD, the experience ultimately served to open my eyes. Why wasn’t a beauty business program available when I was in college just four years ago? Look up the heads of major beauty conglomerates and you’ll find one type of person: an older, white male with a business background, tasked with dictating what beauty looks like for billions of young people.
Finally, because of programs like SCAD’s, those same young people are learning that a passion for beauty isn’t vain. It’s creative, it’s empowering, and—when fresh faces finally reach the C-suite with aims to shift the beauty standard—it can change the industry.
