Most beauty brands introduce themselves with a lineup. Carte Blanche is introducing itself with a single product—and a message that the line between skin care and makeup shouldn’t exist at all.
Launching today as an exclusive with Violet Grey, Carte Blanche is the new venture from Sarah Tallman, a 25-year formula developer behind some of the industry’s most recognizable names, and Geri Hirsch, the founding Creative Director of Saie and an early advisor to Perelel. Their premise is that beauty consumers have outgrown the idea of choosing between makeup that performs in the moment and skin care that takes longer—they want both, built into a single product.
“For so much of my career in beauty, skin care and makeup were treated as two completely separate worlds,” Tallman says. “Skin care was where you went for efficacy and long-term results; makeup was about what you could see immediately. What became really clear to me was that women don’t actually experience beauty that way anymore. We want our skin to look better now, but we also want to know that what we’re putting on every day is doing something meaningful for our skin over time.”
That belief is the foundation of what Carte Blanche calls its “narrow-and-deep” strategy. Rather than launching dozens of SKUs, the brand is starting with hero products designed to become genuine everyday essentials. The debut is Multi-Hyphenate Brightening Skin Tint Mineral SPF 35 ($68), a complexion product built to deliver sheer, lit-from-within coverage and broad-spectrum mineral SPF protection while clinically targeting hyperpigmentation, dullness and uneven tone. The formula combines non-nano zinc oxide, plant exosomes, stabilized vitamin C and antioxidant-rich tomato extract, and comes in nine shades.
CARTE BLANCHE
CARTE BLANCHE
The decision to launch with one product instead of a full range was deliberate. “There’s already so much product in the world, and we never wanted Carte Blanche to be about filling shelves or launching something just because a category was expected of us,” Tallman says. “Every product has to solve a real problem, feel meaningfully different and earn its place in your routine. Multi-Hyphenate felt like the perfect introduction to that philosophy because it does exactly what we want Carte Blanche to do: more for you, while asking less of you. If we can make something you finish, repurchase and genuinely miss when it’s gone, then we’ve done our job.”
CARTE BLANCHE
CARTE BLANCHE
For Hirsch, who has watched the beauty and wellness categories evolve from inside both Saie and Perelel, the timing felt less like a bet and more like a SKU that was overdue. “I think consumers have been ready for a while, the products just needed to catch up,” she says. “Our lives have only gotten fuller. We don’t necessarily want more products or more steps; we want the products we already use to do more for us. That felt like where beauty needed to go next.”
Carte Blanche’s choice of Violet Grey as its exclusive launch partner was equally considered. “Violet Grey felt incredibly aligned with how we want to build Carte Blanche: with discernment, credibility and a very high bar for what deserves a place in your beauty routine,” says Hirsch. “Their customer comes to them because she doesn’t necessarily want endless choices, she wants to know what is exceptional…it also gives people a physical place to discover us, touch the product, find their shade and experience the formula, which was really important to us.”
The retail exclusivity is also a first step rather than a ceiling. “Long term, we absolutely have ambitions to grow Carte Blanche well beyond one retailer,” Hirsch says. “But we’re not interested in being everywhere overnight. We want to build the brand thoughtfully, prove the product, build a community that genuinely loves it and expand from there. Violet Grey felt like exactly the right first home for that.”
Shop Carte Blanche Multi-Hyphenate Brightening Skin Tint
