Celebrity Brow Artist Kristie Streicher, Creator Of New Brand KS&CO, Hopes The Thin Brow Trend Returns To The Nineties

Kristie Streicher, the brow artist known for feathered brows and handling the arches of many of Hollywood’s boldest names, including Emily Blunt, Gwyneth Paltrow, Mila Kunis and Mandy Moore, has launched the brow-focused brand KS&CO.

The brand’s debut collection features items enabling consumers to customize their brow look, including $42 Microfeathering Brow Pen in three shades that mimic natural brow hairs, $36 Sheer Tinted Brow Gel in two shades and $32 Clear Strong-Hold Brow Gel. The products have ingredients such as biotin, red algae, argan oil, lutein, ginseng and red clover to promote healthy brow hair, fight UV damage.

With the tinted brow gel, Streicher says, “It just looks like you have beautiful brows. It’s enhancing what you have and something clean, buildable, user-friendly and sheer.”

KS&CO isn’t Streicher’s first brand foray. In 2008, she released a brow oil and calming moisturizer under the brand name Après. In 2015, its assortment grew with a brand kit. Après products like the $40 Après Calming Cream, a product designed to soothe sensitive skin have been rebranded and folded into the KS&CO collection.

In addition to her brand and celebrity work, Streicher co-owns the Beverly Hills beauty studio Striiike her sisters, makeup artist Jenn and hairstylist Ashley, where she sees clients clamoring for her trademark The Nurtured Brow shaping, a tapered feathering and sculpting technique that leaves a full, but natural brow. A 30-minute service with Streicher is $325. 

KS&CO declined to disclose sales targets, but sales of brow products are expected to rise. The global brow gel market was valued at $264.9 million in 2021 and is estimated to advance to $431.7 million by 2031, according to market research firm Allied Market Research.

Bootstrapped KS&CO is only available at Striiike and on its website at the moment. However, Streicher is interested in placing it at niche clean retailers. She says, “I want to keep it a little exclusive for now, but I’m open to possibly partnering with some other retailers.” 

Streicher took some time out of her busy schedule to talk to Beauty Independent about developing KS&CO’s products, her brow care philosophy, the latest brow trends and non-brow beauty products she loves. 

Celebrity brow artist Kristie Streicher is known for her trademark The Nurtured Brow shaping, a tapered feathering and sculpting technique that leaves a full, but natural brow.

Why did you develop your own products?

Other tinted eyebrow gels tend to be a little bit oversaturated with color, too thick. The experience wasn’t my aesthetic. After doing brows for 25 years and having such a specific philosophy and aesthetic, I wanted a clean collection that spoke to that, that really made the hair the star of the show and not the product. 

How did you bring the products to life?

I worked with a product developer to expedite the process. She was the liaison between the labs and all the different moving parts in creating a product. It was hard. The gels kept coming back with so much pigment, and I went through so many lab samples of the pen, too.

Getting the color was really difficult because it kept turning orange or green. It’s clean, and there was really no other clean brow pen out there. It took almost four years to develop the line from start to finish.

How are the products complementing your services at Striiike? 

We’re the leaders of the natural, full, easy-to-maintain brow, but it takes a series of appointments, and we do strategic tweezing, which is how we find your custom growth cycle. It’s usually in the six- to eight-week range, so we let you grow for six or eight weeks. You come in at that point, and we take all the hair at once.

Then, what happens is the hair grows in all at that same six-, eight-week cycle, and you can start to train it to grow where you want to and to not grow where you don’t. So, it does require some education and nurturing ingredients, which is why the base of all these products are super healthy, hair-supportive growth ingredients.

We are all about working with the brow that you have and not forcing it to be something else. Usually, after a year and a half, clients come in and just ask for a tint. I haven’t tweezed my brows in over 20 years, so they become really low maintenance.

What trends are you seeing in brows either in products or services?

We’re getting a few people asking for a bleached brow, which I love because it’s not really taking away hair. After specializing in growing back hair and really making the brows the focal point and getting them to the really full, fluffy state, that thin brow, I just can’t be down with it. 

Brow hair is not the hair on the head where it’s just so tenacious and it goes back no matter what. You take them off once, and they could never grow back again. That no-brow kind of otherworldly look doesn’t really work for everyone, and the thinner brow, it’s a lot of face. Even if you are super cute, it’s a lot. I always liken the brows to lash hair. Would you ever want fewer lashes? I always think that the brows should just be in their natural state. 

What other beauty products do you love?

We sell basically everything I use and love [at Striiike], but it is a small curation. We don’t have the whole line of anything. We just brought in Make Beauty, and they have those really beautiful lip balms that feel like a treatment product, but have soft color. The cheek tints are really beautiful, too.

Westman Atelier, I’m wearing the red palette right now. I love the shadow palettes from Roen, and the Kosas mascara is one of my favorites. The Tower 28 cheek cream cheek color is what I have on today. I love the Iris&Romeo’s mineral SPF tint.