One of beauty’s multihyphenates can add “founder” to her résumé.

Mary Phillips, the veteran makeup artist and social media maven, will introduce M.Ph, a range of makeup products across complexion, lip and brushes on Sephora.com on Aug. 15, with an ensuing rollout to north of 650 of the retailer’s doors later that month.

In addition to her two-decades-plus of experience as a pro makeup artist and her robust social media following, Phillips said a brand of her own has “always been in the back of my mind.”

“Over 20 years, I’d always be like, ‘this product is amazing but I wish it was a bit more like this, or like that,’” Phillips continued. “This was about finding the things I loved the most, what I would have changed about them, or colors that are so good that have been discontinued over the years. There’s many reasons I’ve wanted to create my own line, but I’ve always wanted to have this.”

Phillips has many claims to fame. A quick scroll through her Instagram (which has 2.2 million followers) shows her work with the likes of Kim Kardashian, Kendall Jenner, Kaia Gerber and Hailey Bieber, but she also has an aesthetician’s license, has worked as a brow artist and also debuted her own talent agency, Highlight Artists, with acclaimed hair counterparts Jen Atkin and Justine Marjan in 2024.

It’s her broad-reaching point of view that she sees as her key differentiator. After starting the viral “underpainting” makeup craze on TikTok, she realized there was an appetite for her expertise.

“I started making makeup kits for my clients when they knew I couldn’t travel with them,” Phillips said. “I gave them tutorials, I made them little underpainting palettes and put brushes together for them. When underpainting went viral — which is such an old-school way of doing makeup — I realized that everyone became pros, and it made me realize people were ready for this.”

Enter hero product Underpainting palette, which encompasses a color corrector, two contour shades and two highlighters. The palette is available in light, medium and deep variants, with shade extensions to come in 2026, and retails for $64.

Elsewhere, she’s brought in a cream blush, brushes for the blush and the palette, the Lip Ciggy Hydrating Lipstick and the Overliner Lip Pencil. Prices range from $25 to $64. The name itself, stylized by the brand in all lowercase, is a double-entendre nodding to Phillips’ initials and the ethos, “Mary’s Philosophy.”

“Overlining is a technique I love as well,” she said of the lip products. “These are wooden pencils to get a supersharp precision, which is so important when you’re lining lips. You also don’t want the pencil to move when you apply a gloss over it, so they have incredible staying power, but they’re not hard to remove.”

Makeup has seen declines in the prestige market, with first-quarter data from Circana indicating that sales dipped 1 percent for the time period, though it remains the market’s largest category. Industry sources estimate the range will surpass $20 million to $25 million in retail sales for its first year on the market. Phillips didn’t comment on the estimate, but has built a team around the brand that includes president Roshini Greenwald, who previously worked at L’Oréal and Macy’s Inc.

“I joined M.Ph last fall, and I’ve been on board since November,” Greenwald said, noting that Phillips’ educational know-how will form the marketing and messaging as a differentiator. “People are so eager for Mary’s techniques, and how can they, as a typical beauty consumer who doesn’t have an aesthetician’s license, embrace and use these tools? This is a huge part of our engagement with our clients and our community.”

The go-to-market strategy, Greenwald said, is digital-first given Phillips’ following, which has already been given glimmers of the brand to come. “Mary used one of our brushes in a tutorial last week. It’s a little Easter egg with a logo that was partially covered, and immediately, people wanted to know what the brush was and where to buy it. Expect a heavy digital marketing strategy for us.”

There’s, of course, the in-store component, too. “We get to leverage Sephora’s massive in-store and online presence. We’re working with the marketing machine of Sephora to be quite loud about the launch. It’s going to be super comprehensive,” said Greenwald.

Artist-driven and founder-led brands have been a sweet spot for Sephora, and for a few reasons. “When we look at Nars, Laura Mercier or Bobbi Brown, there were reasons why they were so breakthrough back in the day. People want to feel like insiders, and those brand founders were the real deal,” said Alison Hahn, senior vice president of merchandising for fragrance and makeup at Sephora. 

“Laura Mercier was slathering gold paint onto Madonna. People can feel that. The methods in which people get information are different from 25 years ago, but people still feel like they want to learn from the best,” Hahn continued.

Brands of decades past such as those, to more recent players like Danessa Myricks’ eponymous brand, Mario Dedivanovic’s Makeup by Mario or Patrick Ta’s Patrick Ta Beauty, have landed commercial success at the retailer. Makeup by Mario, for example, had projected revenues of $150 million to $200 million when it started exploring deal options with JP Morgan. Hahn thinks there’s enough opportunity in the category for all of them.

“You have them, you have Isamaya Ffrench, Fara Homidi — there’s room for all of them,” Hahn said. “There’s so many different clients out there who are all interested in a lot of different things. They all have great innovation, they’re great new voices in makeup, specifically in artistry, and we love to prioritize emerging talent. We strive to be the best at that, it’s our role to deliver great brands and products to our clients. That’s our north star.”

Phillips’ north star is the same as it pertains to product development. The Underpainting palette, for example, includes vitamin E and hyaluronic acid; the cream blush highlights a biotech ferment complex, squalane and jojoba seed oil, and the lip pencil features a tripeptide to minimize fine lines and wrinkles.

When ideating newness, though, she thinks more in terms of technique, format and payoff than in segments of the market. The Underpainting palette, for example, was ideated in partnership with the Black Beauty Roster to ensure shade inclusivity, and she prefers “all creams to get a much more natural look,” in the case of her blush.

“I always want my clients to look like themselves — just the best version,” Phillips said. “The best compliment I can get is when they text me that they felt like their prettiest self that day. I want them to feel sexy, confident and that’s my makeup. It’s effortless-looking even though it’s not effortless. There’s sometimes a sexy eye or mouth, but the skin’s glowing. I don’t want to change their face, I want to enhance their features.”

Underpainting is the first step she takes when working on a client, hence launching with that technique. The cadence of new products will also follow her process. “Then you lay foundation on top, and we want to go in order of the way I do makeup if that gives a bit of a hint,” she said.

Throughout her decade-spanning career, Phillips has seen makeup trends evolve from the 2000s to the high-wattage looks of the burgeoning digital era, no-makeup-makeup and everything in between. She’s been a student of those trends.

“I don’t necessarily change the way I do makeup, but blush placement has shifted higher than in the ’90s or early 2000s. Black eye shadow used to be blue or gray, and now we have true blacks. We’ve changed the way we line our lips, instead of overlining the whole lip to just the center to lift,” she said. “I’m always paying attention to trends, but I definitely stay more timeless.”