Your Name Is the Brand. Are You Still in Control?

Beauty has always been personal. It gets a lot more complicated when your name is no longer just your identity, it’s your most valuable business asset.

Eponymous branding is quietly shaping some of the biggest stories in the beauty industry right now. Founders build brands on personality, artistry, and trust. Consumers do not just buy products. They buy into the persona of the brand. But when success leads to outside investment, acquisition, or rapid expansion, that same name can become a legal asset that no longer fully belongs to the person who created it.

A quick primer on recent news regarding eponymous branding:

Let’s start with the headline everyone’s been following: Pat McGrath Labs.  The brand that helped define a generation of editorial makeup, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on January 22, 2026, in the Southern District of Florida. For a company once valued at $1 billion, the fall has been swift and very public. What makes it more complicated is what’s happening on the other side of the story, with McGrath pursuing her career away from her namesake beauty line.

Then there’s the Jo Malone story, a cautionary tale about the legal risks of turning your name into a brand. Malone sold her eponymous fragrance business to Estée Lauder in 1999 and left the company in 2006. After her non-compete expired, she launched Jo Loves in 2011, and has since called selling the rights to her name the “biggest mistake of my life.”  Fast forward to 2026, and a Zara collaboration labeled “Created by Jo Malone CBE, founder of Jo Loves” has sparked a full-blown lawsuit. Estée Lauder is now suing Malone, her fragrance company, and Zara for breach of contract, trademark infringement, and “passing off,” the legal claim that a party misled consumers into believing its goods or services are associated with another brand.

These are not edge cases. This is the beauty industry’s open secret: when you build a brand on your identity, you’re not just selling products: you’re selling yourself.

Using your own name as a brand is powerful. It signals credibility and authenticity. It tells consumers that there is a real person behind the formulas and the vision. That is why so many iconic beauty and fashion brands are built on eponymous names.

But here is the tradeoff. When you sell your company or bring in investors, you are often transferring rights to your name along with the business. And the fine print of that deal matters more than almost anything else. What feels personal at the start becomes contractual later.

So, what does this mean if you’re a founder, a creative director, or a beauty entrepreneur thinking about your next chapter?

This is exactly where we come in. Whether you’re negotiating an acquisition, building out trademark protections, evaluating a non-compete, or trying to understand what rights you retain over your own name after a deal closes, we can help. Don’t sign until you understand exactly what you’re giving away. 

We can help.