The Slow Beauty Hike with Attracta!

This Sunday, 29th of March 10:00-12:00, Hampstead Heath, we’re back on the trail for the Founders Hike Club. This Sunday’s hike is Beauty Professionals hike.

We walk and talk with

Attracta Courtney, one of the industry’s most quietly influential figures, operating at intersection of editorial, clinical health, and luxury brand building.

Topics along the trail:

• Why the next generation of beauty brands will be built on trust, not trends.

• How to operate in a category overwhelmed by algorithms without becoming one.  

• The shift from performance-led marketing to practitioner validation.

• What it means to build a brand that moves in seasons, not cycles.

The goal is simple: real conversations, fresh thinking, and high-trust connections while exploring the trail.

Summary of the beauty hike:

What you missed on today's hike with makeup and beauty industry legend Attracta Courtney*

A huge thank you to @⁨AC⁩ for joining us this morning and sharing so openly. If you weren't on the hike, here's what you missed - and trust us, it was worth the windy weather.

Attracta has spent decades at the heart of the beauty industry, from the wild pre-social-media fashion era of the late '90s through to today's science-led wellness revolution. She's seen it all - and she hasn't just watched it change, she's helped shape it.

Back in 2009, when the industry was drowning in airbrushing, she published Imperfect Beauty is Perfect — now in the V&A Museum - making the case for authenticity and uniqueness at a time when that was a genuinely radical position.

Then in 2015 she founded the Attracta Beauty Awards, specifically to celebrate merit over marketing budgets.

Her big theme today was what she calls Slow Beauty: less products, better products, health first. She also made a compelling case for retiring the phrase "anti-aging" altogether - replacing it with restorative, regenerative, longevity language. Language she pioneered that the whole industry has now quietly adopted.

On where beauty is heading: the numbers are staggering. The global beauty market sits at around $450B, with the broader wellness economy at $6.3 trillion. Skincare leads, fragrance is the fastest-growing category (particularly with Gen Z, and the science of scent and mood is fascinating), and the line between beauty and medicine is blurring fast.

What's really shifting is trust. Consumers are done with celebrity endorsements and influencer hype - they want evidence, efficacy, and transparency.

AI and biotech are accelerating this, with companies like L'Oréal now analysing 226 skin biomarkers in partnership with NVIDIA. The science is catching up with the marketing, finally.

Attracta also spoke beautifully about skin as a living organ - not a surface to hack and trend-chase, but something to care for with consistency and simplicity. She connected touch and skincare to the nervous system, which was a quietly profound moment.

And for anyone thinking about building in this space: her advice was grounding. It's still a good time, but harder than it looks. You need scientific validation, the right practitioners involved, a real budget (think $200–300k to launch properly), and above all - a human story.

We left the hike feeling like we understood the beauty industry in a way we really didn't before.