Pat McGrath: The Artist, the Unicorn and the Bankruptcy Court

In the New Year Honours of 2021 Pat McGrath became the first make-up artist to be made a dame, for services to fashion, beauty and diversity.^[1] The government's citation called her indisputably the leading make-up artist of modern times, credited her with championing cultural diversity in the global beauty industry, and recorded that her company had achieved unicorn status and become the biggest-selling beauty line in the history of Selfridges.^[2]

Her reputation was made backstage. She worked for two decades across Milan, Paris, London and New York, for houses including Prada, Gucci, Versace and Alexander McQueen, before her own brand existed.^[3]

A runway artist's work is seen by millions and credited to almost no one, and that was the condition of the job for most of the century. The later story, of an artist whose name became the brand, is also a story about that condition ending.

Pat McGrath Labs launched in 2015 with Gold 001, a gold pigment that, mixed with the solution supplied with it, gave a high-shine foil effect on the skin; its first thousand units sold out in six minutes. In 2018 an investment from the French firm Eurazeo valued the company at a billion dollars.^[4]

The value did not hold. In 2021 Sienna Investment Managers bought a stake at a valuation of about 1.3 billion dollars, wrote it down by eighty-eight per cent the following year, and by 2024 held it at a figure implying a company worth about 162 million.^[4]

On 22 January 2026 the company filed for Chapter 11 protection in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida, listing assets and liabilities of between 100 and 500 million dollars, on sales the previous year of about 50 million.^[5]

The plan that took it out of bankruptcy was approved on 17 April 2026, backed by 65 million dollars from GDA Luma, which was to set up a new holding company for the business. McGrath stayed on as chief creative officer.^[6]

While her own company's value was collapsing, Louis Vuitton gave her its first make-up line. As Creative Director, Cosmetics, she led La Beauté Louis Vuitton, which went on sale in China on 20 August 2025 and in selected stores and online worldwide from 29 August.^[7]

The two stories together are the decade in miniature. The artist's authority and the brand built on it turned out to be different assets, and only one of them was hers to keep.

What the company's new owner will make of a brand whose value rested so heavily on its founder, and how long her role there will last. Both depend on decisions that had not been made public when this entry was written.