Page 30 of State of Ruin

I give a little snort at that, because my filter has vacated the room. But also: that’s really nice.

“I’ll just call an Uber,” I lie.

“No way. I won’t be happy unless I know you’ve been delivered to your door by someone I trust. End of discussion.”

I sigh. “Okay,” I say, mainly because I’m too exhausted to argue, and the concept of walking to the station right now feels physically impossible. I yawn against his very nice shoulder. “If you’re sure your driver won’t mind? That’s super kind of you, thank you.”

“He won’t mind. This is an early night for him.” His hand smooths over my ass one more time. “And for your information, these past two times with you have been the best money I’ve ever, ever spent.”

CHAPTER 16

Sinclair

As Vanessa Tan stands in front of the huge screen in our conference room, I’m reminded of just how much we have riding on this new skincare line and just how much faith I have that Vanessa is the right person for the job.

First of all, she’s come to us from our archrival, Bellamy, a fellow East Coast legacy beauty house. And if poaching star employees from your greatest nemesis isn’t the greatest feeling in the business world, I don’t know what is.

And second of all, she’s the creative visionary who put Bellamy firmly at the forefront of this industry with the LANE brand she’s built for them over the past five years. If Glossier and rhode had a love child, LANE would be it. It’s no exaggeration to say that watching the stellar success of this brand from the industry sidelines has made me sick to my stomach.

Like Bellamy, Voss has legacy. It has a timeless, old-money quality that will never truly go out of style. I’m proud of the way in which we’ve retained the loyalty of the older generations while building that of the new. But there’s timeless and there’s hot, and our stable of brands is way too heavy on the former for my peace of mind.

The beauty industry is so fucking fickle that it makes fashion look like someone’s stagnant great-aunt. The way these skincare and cosmetics brands go in and out of style is terrifying. You can throw billions of dollars of investment at R&D and packaging and big-name advertising, and twelve months later the preteen market decides you’re yesterday’s news, Sephora moves you to a small shelf at the back of the store, and you’re dead in the water.

You need new products coming online as others lose their staying power. You want viral videos and stock shortages and lines outside shops and organic celebrity endorsements and blind hysteria.

And if you can achieve that, you can control how to crystallize that success.

Spin-off.

Sale.

The choice is yours.

Today’s meeting is a key moment for our strictly embargoed new brand and Vanessa’s creative baby, solène. The multiyear R&D process is behind us, and production is underway. Now is when we firm up the budget for and direction of the brand campaign. It’s when Vanessa presents the results of the endless, tireless hours of work our group-wide marketing and advertising teams have put in to Voss’s most senior executives.

My older brother, Seb, is the last of the management team to arrive. As Voss Inc.’s chief financial officer, his attendance is mainly to ensure we exercise financial restraint. He’s here mainly to piss on our party. I stand so we can bro-hug—he’s been working out of Fairwater the past few days so I haven’t seen him—and give Vanessa a nod as we take our seats.

“It’s all yours.”

She stands at the front of the room, fully at ease. Our single most expensive hire in recent years, she has the kind of résumé that would give any recruiter a boner: Cornell undergrad, then HBS for grad school, and a career list equally weighted in blue chips and unicorns. She negotiated her equity allocation like a fucking shark, and I have every reason to believe it’s been worth our while to roll over. In a black tailored vest over a white tee and sleek black pants, she’s the picture of understated elegance. Her mouth is a perfect matte red, and not a hair is out of place. I like all this even more than I like her aggressive negotiation tactics because it means she has flawless taste. And this new line will live or die on Vanessa Tan’s taste level.

The brand name fills the screen.

solène.

Sunshine yellow on white space, a weighty, rounded sans serif font, all lowercase, naturally. What it lacks in the correct punctuation, it makes up for in impact. “It’s a vibe” may be one of the most irritating phrases Gen Z has concocted, but in this moment it’s accurate—solène most definitely is a vibe.

“I won’t spend much time on this part,” Vanessa says. “You all know the concept. Fresh, clean, contemporary, but with gravitas. This isn’t some shitty Insta-brand that’s all about the aesthetic. It’s backed by the pharmaceutical rigor of one of the planet’s largest, most established empires. It’s modern and it’s timeless. It taps into the zeitgeist without being gimmicky. This is a brand that acquires its consumers young and grows with them.”

The next slide is a brief reminder of the numbers and timeline: three years of R&D completed at a cost of twenty-eight million dollars. A patent secured for a new active complex we’ve formulated. Nine million in packaging investment. And the next step: sixty-five million dollars of global advertising spend for a prestige-tier debut. My brother groans, and I chuckle.

Perhaps sensing she shouldn’t spend too long reminding us of how much money we’re sinking into this, Vanessa clicks her remote. A video fills the screen: sunlight over the sea in the late afternoon. The footage has a lovely, old-school movie-like quality that suggests it was probably shot on a stills camera. It looks like the French Riviera. The light in that part of the world has a warmth to it you don’t get anywhere else.

“This is the vision we’re selling,” she says over the gentle sound of waves ebbing and seagulls calling. “Authenticity. Skin that looks lit from within. Sunlight, not ring lights. That certain je ne sais quoi that French girls have and every last one of us wants to emulate. But also, new rituals that anchor your day and compound on your skin.” She looks straight at me. “We’ve been through all the casting calls and shot a ton of candidates. The brief, if you remember, was to try for an unknown. This is about finding a face that communicates solène’s vibe so perfectly that you don’t need a word of marketing copy, that doesn’t come with residual links to other brands. And I believe we’ve found exactly what we were looking for. There was one woman that stood out for the entire team, and she actually gave me goosebumps. I honestly feel like she’s the Kate Moss to our Calvin Klein—and she’s even half French. We just saw her last week, but we want to move quickly. Take a look at this.”

Seb and I exchange a smirk, not only because this part of the job is not exactly a hardship, but because Vanessa is seriously bigging this up. I’m surprised she’s not being more low-key. I lean back in my chair and cross my arms like I’m settling in for a movie.

This should be good.