The first time I met Sarah Creal was at London’s Claridge’s Hotel in the spring of 2016. At the time, she was working for Estée Lauder and the event was the hush-hush press launch unveiling of the brand’s collaboration with Victoria Beckham. As Creal, a witty, super-smart, fast-talking New Yorker, took us through the textures, formulations, and products with Beckham, she spoke with a dazzling passion, incredible insight and delivered a playful irreverence rarely experienced at luxury beauty media launches.
While Creal may not have been a household name, at some point, every beauty consumer would have come into contact with her magic. That s because Sarah Creal—as one of the industry’s most revered product formulators and brand builders—is the force behind some of the world’s most iconic beauty companies; Prada Beauty (remember the iconic lip balms from the late ’90s? That was Creal), Estée Lauder, Tom Ford, L’Oréal, Bobbi Brown, Aerin Lauder and more recently Victoria Beckham Beauty where she was CEO until her departure in 2022.
“Nobody really knows me outside the beauty industry,” acknowledges Creal with a laugh. Today, however, with the launch of her eponymous line, Sarah Creal Beauty, that’s about to change. This revolutionary, high-performance luxury beauty and skincare brand is powered by superior formulas that are focused on moisture, wear, and repair and—here’s the clincher—are specifically created to respond to the complex beauty needs of women over 40. Everything from the campaign imagery to the language to the products intentionally and unapologetically speaks to and represents an older demographic. In an industry actively built around courting, desiring and selling youth, it’s a strategy that seems positively audacious. But Creal is unconcerned. “I couldn’t think of a single luxury brand specifically creating products for women like me. So this brand is about me saying, right, fuck it,” she says with a laugh.
Creal grew up in “a tiny town in the middle of nowhere” in northwestern Pennsylvania. It was far away from the glitz and glamour of the luxury beauty scene, and yet her foray into beauty, it seems, was predestined. At eight, she was “making eyeshadow out of baby powder and food coloring,” and as a teen spent her weekends perusing the beauty aisle of her local drugstore and reading the ingredients list behind the products. “One day,” she recalls, “I looked behind three different mascaras and they were exactly the same formulation. And so my 13-year-old brain was like, ‘it has to be the brush, the brush is the thing that makes the difference. Does someone have the job of creating this? I want that job.’ I thought it might be in beauty marketing. And then it took another 10 years to understand that what I wanted to do really existed.”
In that time, Creal almost followed another path. When applying to college, her father, an architect and art history undergraduate, encouraged her to pursue her love of reading and writing. So she studied British Literature. “He said, ‘you’ll never have the chance to study great works of literature again. You’ll be able to learn marketing in beauty on the job. You won’t have an issue getting an entry-level position in marketing,’ and he was totally wrong,” says Creal, roaring with laughter. Rejection was swift and ongoing until Clinique offered her a job—standing behind their counter at Bergdorf Goodman. “But you know it was informative and formative. The women that were coming in—a high-end clientele—were smart and discerning. I quickly realized that if I wanted to be successful in my job, I really needed to understand what the women’s needs were. That has made a difference to my entire career.”
Now 54, after many years of building some of the world’s most desirable beauty brands, Creal felt ready to build her own. “When I left Victoria Beckham, I knew I was ready to be my own boss. But it wasn’t until the fifth of December in 2022 that I woke up with this idea for the brand fully formed. I was like, ‘why is luxury beauty not talking to me?’ I was 53 at the time and I thought, no one is formulating for me, educating me, reflecting back at me, and really curating this beauty landscape—which is a disaster—for women our age. I was craving a brand that was going to excite me, inspire me... I asked my sister, who was 55 at the time, whether she had a hard time finding products that work for her and she said, ‘my vanity is a graveyard of formulations that don’t work.’ And that was it. That was the spark. Sarah Creal Beauty was born.”
While Creal enthuses over the number of people who have been “so generous and supportive and loving in order to make it all come together”, she is also quick to admit that the route to launching her brand has not been without its challenges, particularly when it came to raising funds—a world that is notoriously helmed by men. “You know that is generally the dirty secret about beauty,” she says with a raised brow. “It is run by men. And I was reminded of this when I had to go out to investors and raise money. I’d never done it before; it was daunting and a lot of the experience was highly discouraging. One man actually said to me, ‘I just don’t think older women want to look at older women, ” she recalls with incredulity. “And I had to say to him, I have the data that proves you wrong. I asked 2,000 women this question and you know what their answers were? Ninety-nine percent agreed that providing education, age representation, and age-specific formulations were essential for women over 40 plus. And 89% said a beauty brand addressing the unique needs of women 40 plus is necessary. I was respectful but I was furious, absolutely furious,” she adds with a chuckle.
Still, she reasons, considering wider society, that ageism and misogyny within the beauty industry shouldn’t come as a surprise. “Yes, it permeates our industry but it is totally reflective of the patriarchy in which we live where, when a woman is no longer a vessel for reproduction or sex, she is suddenly no longer relevant.” She shakes her head and adds with a wry smile. “You know, I’ve spent a lot of time in my career in a lot of situations explaining to men what women want. I’m so glad that is over.”
Everything You Need To Know About Sarah Creal’s Products, In Her Own Words
This is a one-coat creamy mascara that conditions the lashes, adds volume, and gives the effect of lash extensions.
“My mascara was really about helping women dealing with ‘panda eyes’. From my research, I realized that women are ‘quiet quitting’ their mascara because this makeup is not keeping up with her. I realized the issue. If you start with a volumizing mascara in your 30s, you’re like, this is the best thing ever, I love this mascara, it’s fantastic. But in your 30s, you have a lot of lashes. Fast forward 15-20 years, you have fewer lashes, and you continue to use the volumizing mascara but it isn’t looking so great now. In that time, there’s a good chance that you’ve also added a rich eye cream and a concealer because you’re getting dark circles. Both of those formulas probably have oils that are sitting on top of the skin. And those are acting as a makeup remover on the polymer that is keeping up your volumizing mascara. So, they’re suffering from a compatibility issue, and they don’t even realize it. So I’ve not only created a tubing mascara which has a more cylindrical way of coating the lashes—it sort of wraps itself around the lashes to create volume without using any of those traditional volumizing balls—I’ve also created other products that complement your mascara. Which by the way, breaks up easily with warm water because when you have fewer lashes, you want to hold on to them!”
A peptide-, niacinamide-, hyaluronic acid- and squalane-rich moisturizer that drenches skin in hydration and improves the skin’s baseline hydration by 45%.
“The thinking behind this came from a friend of mine who’d had a peel. She said, ‘Sarah, I’ve used that barrier cream from my dermatologist and I cannot use that sticky ointment thing one more day. But my skin is so dry and I’m now just slathering oil on top which isn’t helping.’ I didn’t have anything to recommend to her—now I’ve made it. I took all of these active ingredients, niacinamide, hyaluronic acid, and peptides, and I put them in a water phase. And then, I used squalane derived from olives—but without any binders. Binders are the thing that usually combines an oil phase and a water phase. It makes a beautiful-looking cream. No question. However, they are also the things that can keep the product on top of the skin. So I took them out and this product now has small molecules that are going to go in and really hydrate and stay in the skin. You simply shake it, take a couple of drops and pat into your face and the neck. There’s no stickiness, it really goes in and creates this juicy, moist, sort of glow. It feels unbelievable.”
A plumping, moisturizing daily lip treatment with Cupuacu oil, also described as the Goldilocks of lip balms.
“The lip balm concept I created at Prada in the late 90s was really ahead of its time. But that’s Miuccia Prada. She was and is a genius and creating a line for her was one of my favorite jobs ever. It also began my obsession with lip balm. To create this, I’ve used Cupuacu, a Brazilian nut, at a high level which is incredibly moisturizing; a teeny tiny bit of lactic acid to exfoliate, not to irritate; and peptides to reduce lines over time. The issue with stick lip balms in general is that you have to compromise so much of the formula to wax in order to make it a stick, which is why it’s easier to make a good lip balm in a squishy formula. But with this, I think I’ve cracked the code.”
A lightweight but intensely hydrating eye cream chock full of peptides, caffeine, and hyaluronic acid to smooth, brighten and moisturize. Otherwise known as “your proxy for eight hours sleep.”
“One of the biggest things that came out of our research is that, when it comes to beauty, women are most dissatisfied with their eye cream. So as well as peptides and hyaluronic acid, it also includes jasmine flower, which, combined with caffeine, helps with the microcirculation and to reduce dark circles over time. It also brightens instantly and is proven to decrease the depth of your dark circles by 9.5% over eight weeks, which doesn’t sound like much, but when you are talking about actual dark circles, it’s pretty impressive. The name is a bit of fun—it’s a nod to women not getting the consolation prize and this being a reward for all the steps you have taken to get here. So I’m giving you what I think is the best stuff on the planet to make your life easier but you can also have a laugh, have some fun—hence the lighter packaging—which is also refillable.”
Think of this as a concealer meets foundation hybrid that is brightening and hydrating while also concealing any hyperpigmentation blemishes and dark circles.
“Women [over 40 plus] are not necessarily wanting to wear a full face of makeup, but, at this age, you have sunspots, you have melasma, you have hyperpigmentation from past acne or whatever, you have dark circles… So, I wanted to create something that would work on the very thin skin under the eyes without creasing and would also give enough coverage across areas on the face that are more difficult to cover. I created a complexion brush to use with it. If you combine Moisture Source with Face Flex and apply with the brush, it makes the most gorgeous skin tint.”
An antioxidant-rich SPF that imparts a golden glow and no white cast on any skin tone.
“It’s hard for any product developer to choose a favorite product but I am super proud of this. It’s an SPF 50 that uses a patented zinc oxide combined with bakuchiol—a natural form of retinol—that is safe to use in the sun and boosts antioxidant protection by up to 200%. It’s so great to have something that is so reparative. None of my formulas are harsh—the products a lot of women are using right now are doing that enough. This product is here to help them calm the skin, give baseline moisture, as well as incredible top-line protection and some gentle repair. Oh, and a glow—a low, sophisticated glow because this is for my woman, you know? It’s got to be sophisticated.”