Bobbi Brown is spending Fourth of July weekend in Sag Harbor with 20 houseguests—”all relatives and grandchildren and pregnant nieces,” she tells Observer, sounding less like a woman under siege than like one exactly where she wants to be. Outside, the East End is broiling through a heat wave. Inside, the makeup artist, who sold her namesake brand to Estée Lauder in 1995 and waited out a 25-year non-compete to launch Jones Road Beauty in 2020, is doing what she does best: paying very close attention to what women actually want.
She learned that lesson the hard way this year, when Jones Road pulled its Everyday Sunscreen and the customers revolted until it came back. “My Jones Road customer is very, very opinionated and very vocal,” Brown says. “I know exactly what they like, what they don’t like, what they still need.” The proof lives on Facebook, where a community called “The Roadies”—90,000 members at last count—trades products, troubleshoots product application and polices the brand’s every move. When a young mom influencer campaign ruffled the group, Brown logged on herself. “I said, guys, everybody, calm down. There’s room for everybody. New moms are as tired as grandmoms.”
That attentiveness has turned Jones Road into a rare thing in beauty: a brand that skips department stores entirely and still can’t keep up with demand. The newest outpost is in East Hampton, joining stores that stay open through the off-season everywhere from the Hamptons to Palm Beach. The surprise bestseller out east isn’t sunscreen or a breezy tint—it’s What The Foundation, her full-coverage formula. “It’s so weird,” she admits. “People just want it.” Miracle Balm and the mascara round out the perennial top sellers.
The summer pipeline is stacked: Bright Skin Illuminating Drops just launched, the Miracle Balm Palette relaunched June 30, and a new mascara formula arrives at the end of July. She’s also signed a new deal with J.P. Morgan for a follow-up to her podcast series—though, true to form, she’s rethinking the whole medium. “I get bored easily, so I want to do something shorter,” she says. “How do I reinvent even the podcast listening thing?” From an air-conditioned room a few miles from the harbor, Brown walked Observer through her essentials.
Bobbi Brown’s Essentials
Her perfect Hamptons day:
There’s the Sag Harbor farmers market on Saturdays—I go there and get great sourdough bread. There’s a muffin called the Bobbi Muffin that a local gluten-free baker named Kira Nicole (of Kira’s Cookies) developed for me, and it’s become one of her top sellers. I asked her to make a muffin that had fiber, protein and the right amount of fat so it would fill me up, and even my grandchildren love them. My go-to breakfast is that muffin popped in the microwave for 30 seconds, smushed into full-fat Greek yogurt. The restaurant I just love—and it’s so Hamptons—is Lulu in Sag Harbor. It’s owned by the same people as Duryea’s, the famous spot you take your boat to, which we do a lot. That big giant lobster salad is so ridiculously expensive and filling, you can only order it with a big table. That and fries is all you need. And we have a farm share at Stone’s Throw Farm in Sagaponack, this incredible farm that’s right on the beach. Every Friday we pick up a basket—the most incredible flowers, eggs and vegetables I would never buy myself. My son is very talented in the kitchen, so he cooks it all up.
Lulu Kitchen and Bar.
Eric Striffler
What’s on her vanity:
I buy these really cool Carrara marble accessories on Amazon—one holds my morning vitamins, one holds my nighttime vitamins, plus trays, because everything looks better when it’s neat. I’ve got my Jones Road skincare, because I make it for me, and I’ve also got Augustinus Bader, because I still love the stuff. And then things brands send me to try. I’m very honest—if I love something, I talk about it, so people are happy for me to test things. Sometimes you think, “Wow, this is such a beautiful color, but I can’t stand the formula.” Or the formula’s amazing, and the color’s not great. It’s research.
Marble Serving Tray.
FutureStone Store via Amazon
The hotel she returns to again and again:
My husband [Steven Plofker] keeps trying to talk me into trying different hotels, but it’s Claridge’s in London. We used to be Connaught people, we’ve been Soho House people, and now I can’t not stay at Claridge’s.
Claridge’s.
Samuel Regan Asante
Her most memorable recent trips:
All my husband has to do is whisper “Aman” in my ear, and my bag is packed. We stayed at the one in Greece, Amanzoe, before a Backroads bike trip—they pick you up at the airport in a helicopter and fly you to the middle of nowhere. I felt like Jennifer Lopez or Tom Cruise. I’m like, what is happening? And then we went to Aman Venice over Christmas week, which was incredible because nobody is in Venice. You can walk into any restaurant. You walk around and think, “Wow, this is so cool.”
Aman Venice.
Aman Venice
The thing she panics without:
My Apple AirPods—and my Oura Ring charger. Last time I was in France, I didn’t have it. You can’t just walk into a store and buy one. I even tried to Amazon it to myself in Paris. It did not work. I had to let go.
Oura.
Oura
Her uniform:
I am a uniform. I’m like a modern-day short Jewish Steve Jobs. When I pack, I go through it all: my underwear is Skims boy shorts—unbelievable, no panty lines. My bras are Wolford, so one bra costs as much as all of my underwear. My leggings are Splits59, my workout T-shirts are Cotton Citizen. I’m a sweater-and-jeans person, and I wear the men’s Uniqlo extra-small wool crewnecks—a navy, a white, a gray, a black, so I can mix and match. If I’m feeling out of my comfort zone, everything’s navy. I have almost the exact same crewneck from The Row. The Uniqlos I could donate at the end of the season and get new ones. Once I buy a Row, it’s with me for life. You have to be very delicate with The Row, and there’s nothing delicate about me.
Men’s Uniqlo crewneck.
Uniqlo
What she’s reading and watching:
For me, reading is listening—I do it on my AirPods. I’m listening to the memoir Streetwise by Lloyd Blankfein, who was the CEO of Goldman Sachs for a really long time. I love a memoir, because you see people in these positions and think they’re just so smart and fabulous, but everyone’s got a journey. Luckily, my husband’s interested, too, so we’re both listening. And I’m a documentary person, and he’s not, so I’m watching the Martin Short documentary (Marty, Life Is Short) by myself. It’s awesome.
Streetwise.
Penguin Random House
Best recent buy under $50—and over $500:
Under $50: Coconut Cult yogurt. It takes the place of probiotics. Over $500—only because I’m staring at it, and it’s been to the dry cleaner twice, because I am not very neat—a black Hermès Garden Party bag, the small one. The inside has everything from makeup to nail polish to paint.
Coconut Cult Yogurt.
The Coconut Cult
The first thing she puts on her face every morning:
Water. I don’t wash my face in the morning, because I wash it at night, and I don’t do much in the middle of the night except sleep. Then eye cream and moisturizer, without fail: the Jones Road Rich Eye Cream and the Light Moisture Cream now, because it’s summer. In winter, I haven’t found anything that works better on my dry skin than the Miracle Cream I make. Visualize taking Vaseline, putting it in a blender with the best oil and whipping it up into a paste. The kids call that slugging. I guess I could be cool and say I’ve been slugging for the past 20 years.
Jones Road Eye Cream.
Jones Road
The ingredient she’s obsessed with:
Peptides—like everyone. The kind you put on your skin, the kind you shoot in your skin. I don’t know enough about it yet. My functional medicine doctor gave me a peptide cream that has to stay in the refrigerator, and the problem for this beauty person is: when am I in the refrigerator to put cream on my face? When I’m pouring half-and-half in my coffee? It’s not in my routine yet, so I can’t even say it’s a miracle. But things only work if you can actually incorporate them—which is the whole sunscreen lesson, too. It only works if you find one you like enough to put on.
Bobbi Brown.
