Ilia

Ilia began with a graphic designer reading a label. Sasha Plavsic, who came from design rather than cosmetics, grew frustrated trying to find clean color products that actually performed, and in 2011 she launched Ilia from Vancouver with her brother Zachary — starting, fittingly for someone obsessed with packaging, in the lip category. The early tinted lip conditioners set the template for what the brand would become: makeup built like skincare, in objects that looked beautiful on a shelf.

Plavsic's contrarian thesis set Ilia apart in a crowded field. Rather than swearing off all synthetics, the brand argued that not every natural ingredient is good for skin and not every synthetic is bad — the goal was performance through a smart blend of both. It was, as the company likes to say, clean before clean was cool. The breakout came with the Super Serum Skin Tint, a skincare-makeup hybrid that landed in 2019 and sold more than a million units, helped triple the brand's sales, and arrived just ahead of the wave of serum foundations that followed. Other staples — the Limitless Lash mascara, the Multi-Stick, the Bright Start eye cream — filled out a full face.

In early 2022, Ilia was acquired by Famille C, the Courtin-Clarins family's holding company, which also owns Clarins, in what was that fund's first major purchase; Plavsic stayed on as chief creative officer and kept a stake. The brand had hit roughly a hundred million dollars in sales the prior year.

The honest read: Ilia genuinely delivers on its skincare-makeup premise. The Super Serum Skin Tint is a well-earned hero — light coverage, skin-loving actives, mineral SPF — and the brand's formulas are thoughtful and gentle enough for reactive skin. The trade-off is the obvious one for the category: this is clean prestige makeup at prestige prices, and the coverage is deliberately sheer, so anyone wanting full, matte, long-wear color should look elsewhere. For dewy, low-effort skin with benefits, it's one of the strongest options going.

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