With the opening of Maison Sisley in New York City’s Meatpacking District, the French beauty brand is doubling down on what it does best: services and luxury.
The 2,675-square-foot light-filled space, located on the corner of Hudson and Gansevoort streets, features the company’s full lineup of makeup, skin care and hair care products, plus three treatment rooms for skin services and a dedicated hair area, all decorated with hand-painted wallpaper and site-specific art from the likes of painter Elzbieta Radziwill and mixed media artist Rob Wynne, whose glass text sculpture “Makeup” is hung in the store’s — you guessed it — color cosmetics area.
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“We are a family business and we have the freedom to do things that we believe are linked to the soul of the company and can best express it,” said chief executive officer Philippe D’Ornano, who was touring the maison shortly before its official opening in late June. “We have stores around the world, but this is a different concept. It expresses our passion for products, for services. Here you can have an encounter with us. Yes, it’s high-end and luxurious, but we also want people to feel comfortable.”
That freedom of expression is a winning strategy for Sisley. The company ranks 34th in WWD Beauty Inc’s top 100 listing of global beauty companies, with sales of $1.01 billion. D’Ornano expects the business to be up 20 percent in North America, with strength across all categories, particularly makeup, which has grown by 50 percent since 2019, he said.
“There is more and more interest in high-end makeup with skin care formulations and interesting technologies,” said D’Ornano, noting Sisley is the top-ranked makeup brand at Neiman Marcus.
Sisley’s sales in Europe are also growing 20 percent, D’Ornano said, although Asia, in particular China, remains tough. “It’s been a bit slow to restart,” he said, adding he is expecting a recovery as the country opens up.
But overall, D’Ornano is optimistic, buoyed by the development of the global economy. “There is still a lot of potential of development in cosmetics,” he said. “Look at the last 40 years — the world has gotten richer, not poorer.
“When I started, central Europe was closed. South America was difficult and in Asia, China was closed, Korea was just opening and you had Japan,” he continued. “The world has opened in a way that is incredible, and with development, people give great importance to cosmetics and their appearance.”
D’Ornano is committed to keeping Sisley family-owned, noting, “I usually don’t like to use the word luxury connected to cosmetics — people can see you as a luxury and understand it perfectly. But the great luxury is to be independent,” gesturing around the room as he spoke. “This maison is a reflection of that — the freedom, the possibility.”
The space is also indicative of why — although he doesn’t rule out the possibility of acquisition for further expansion — D’Ornano prefers to incubate new brands in-house, as with the launch of Hair Rituel in 2018, whose growth has exceeded expectations. “I don’t say that we will never buy, but we like to create,” he said.
With its emphasis on face, body and hair treatments, the maison is also intended as a key differentiator for Sisley in the luxury market. Sixty-minute services are priced at $300, while a 90-minute face treatment with LED is $400; hair services start at $125 for a blowout and rise to $300 for a bespoke treatment. “The more you go to high-end, the more you need service,” said D’Ornano. “Coming out of COVID[-19], all of the questions were around digital — and digital is great. It gives information, it can be practical if you want to buy a product. But we talk a lot about the value of service, and if we want to continue to develop the cosmetics industry worldwide, service is going to be one of the key factors.”