Monastery founder Athena Hewett’s schedule is packed this Saturday in Paris. First, she’ll be backstage at Ralph Lauren’s market presentation, doing the skin prep on the models before they get their glam done. Then, she’s off to Dover Street Market (DSM) in Le Marais to celebrate Monastery’s arrival at the store. The skincare brand’s products will be artfully arranged on Grecian pillars inside the space, the colourful packaging contrasting with DSM’s rustic pedestals.
“Dover Street has been on my vision board — it’s artsy and on-brand for us,” says Hewett. “When we did the installation I thought, this looks like we’re supposed to be here. And that made me feel really good.”
Monastery was born 20 years ago when Hewett began making products from botanicals for herself and her clients at her San Francisco spa. Products like the Rose Cleansing Oil and the Gold Botanical Serum became client favourites, so she started selling it at her spa and as a back-bar line for professional estheticians in 2011. It took another five years for the founder to package up her products and sell them through an e-commerce site, or through small outlets like hotel boutiques, officially launching the Monastery brand. It’s been quietly building since, with year-on-year growth of around 50 per cent.
Monastery’s approach to building a skincare brand follows a more fashiony playbook than one typical for her category. Skincare — a $116 billion global market as of 2024 — is competitive and crowded, and trends move quickly while discerning customers scrutinise ingredient lists. To cut through the noise, Monastery is going off the beaten path, eschewing Sephora and TikTok influencers for fashion stores and a cast of celebrity clients. DSM is the brand’s third retail partner, following Goop and Moda Operandi, and Hewett counts Chloë Sevigny, Kirsten Dunst and Sofia Coppola as customers of the brand. Monastery has also begun frequenting backstages at runway shows, doing skin prep before models get their glam at Cecilie Bahnsen (both in Copenhagen and in Paris) and Khaite in New York.
“We gravitate towards things that we’re interested in — design, fashion — that lend the brand to getting more attention with cool clients,” says Hewett. “My friend said, ‘All your clients are cool girls.’ It’s partly coincidence, partly by design.”
Hewett’s goal now is to create a brand that’s elevated and aspirational, more so than commercial. She’s the sole owner of her company, which gives more freedom to make off-beat decisions. She also currently makes all of her products in-house in small batches. But, Hewett says, her aspirations aren’t humble.
“Believe it or not, we actually want to be really big, with beautiful stores and spa environments. I think that people would be surprised to hear that because of how slow we’re going,” she explains. “But it really is just about exposure and keeping things elevated. Khaite is not that approachable, it’s elevated. You could say the same about Chloë and DSM.”
That means drawing boundaries on where Monastery shows up. “Sephora, I don’t think that’s the path for us. Maybe it will be someday, but it doesn’t feel like our girl at the moment. We are still so small batch, and I would hate to compromise the integrity of the product just to get it into these types of stores,” Hewett says. Same goes with influencers, who have become a big force in the beauty world. “These influencer events just feel not cool. I don’t want to seem too cool for it, but it does sound super cringey. I just want to be doing things that align with my taste, and things feel very commercial in that world.”
Coming up, Monastery has some collaborations in the pipeline, as well as another retail launch with Violet Grey. While Hewett says she’s considered raising money, right now, control is the most important part of scaling her brand.
“You should be the measure of your own success — what’s right for your brand, not what have they pigeonholed you into,” she says. “I get nervous about having a board and having people tell me what to do.”
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