Miraclesuit Owner Stretches Into Skincare With New Gen X Brand Aeston West

While many beauty brands are chasing the favor of gen Z shoppers and, increasingly, gen alpha shoppers, newcomer Aeston West is firmly for their moms. 

Incubated by Miracle Ventures, the innovation arm of Miraclesuit maker Swim USA, the prestige skincare brand, pronounced “east an west,” launches Oct. 8 with an elegant trio of face products: $58 Cellevitae Magnolia Cleansing Nectar, $78 Cellevitae Marine Treatment Mist and $98 Cellevitae Signature Serème. Aeston West will be available on its website and Miraclesuit.com.

With Aeston West being Miracle Ventures’ first foray into skincare, it sought out beauty industry veterans to develop the brand. Kaitlyn Schneider, former director of product development at PPI Beauty and director of innovations at Tata Harper, was tapped in January last year to conceptualize Aeston West and bring its products to fruition. In December, Thom Whilton, former retail strategy and brand engagement leader at Sephora, came on board as head of marketing. 

Aeston West shares a core clientele with Miraclesuit of women over 45 years old. Opulent mood boards featuring rich textures and interiors, the brand’s site and Instagram account proudly spotlight almost exclusively women clearly past their 20s. The focus on gen X women makes business sense—and not only because of the relevance to Miraclesuit’s customers. Gen X is responsible for nearly 25% of global beauty spending, the most of any generation, according to market research firm NielsenIQ. The generation will continue leading beauty spending through 2034, with growth of $150 billion over that stretch.

While Schneider, a millennial, isn’t in that age group, she calls the brand a “love letter to my future self.” Speaking of members of Aeston West’s demographic, she says, “They’re either still in their careers or they’ve retired and they’re traveling or they’ve had kids. They’ve got such storied lives, but when I look at the products currently on the market, they never felt like they reflected that at all. They had an energy of, ‘here, this will fix you.’ We wanted to bring the fun, excitement, frankly just the pleasure of doing skincare.” 

In Aeston West’s development process, Schneider and Whilton spoke to more than 100 women over several months, including longstanding Miraclesuit customers. The women are discovering skincare from friends, relatives like their daughters and makeup counters, but a good portion of them don’t feel confident in their ability to understand the skincare right for them.

“That shaped how we created the brand,” says Whilton. “When you go through the website and you look at the application, how we’re communicating things, the storytelling, it should all feel like it’s coming from a friend or trusted confidant and not feel like it’s a brand that is just throwing actives at you.”

In conversation, the women also revealed that, for an effective, streamlined skincare routine with twice-daily application, they didn’t want the price to exceed $100. “It shouldn’t be such a big hill to climb,” says Whilton. “Skincare that does focus on repair and protection should be accessible.”

Cellevitae, a patent-pending active ingredient that helps with the skin’s vitality, barrier and defense against stressors, is the centerpiece of Aeston West’s formulas. Sclareolide, a bio-fermented compound derived from clary sage, and magnolia, an anti-inflammatory botanical extract, are other key ingredients. Resembling a piece of Elsa Peretti jewelry, the brand’s weighty, sculptural packaging is designed to be easy to use for consumers in their 40s, 50s, 60s who may be losing dexterity. 

“I am really passionate about this idea of holistic product development,” says Schneider. “We all know that the formula is important. Of course, our ingredients are fantastic, but an ingredient that you can’t reach because you can’t open the bottle twice a day, an ingredient that you’re not using because it gets put in the back of your medicine cabinet when company comes over, it’s not actually doing anything for your skin.” 

Though Miraclesuit has robust retail distribution at retailers like Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s, Nordstrom, Nordstrom Rack and Saks Fifth Avenue, Aeston West won’t be leveraging those partnerships for its distribution, at least at the outset, and will focus on direct-to-consumer sales for the near future. Schneider mentions the brand has a healthy pipeline of forthcoming releases, but the plan isn’t to bombard the market with a litany of newness.

“The last thing that I want to do is teach you all about your skin, how to take care of it, and then immediately pull you over to something else, and now you’ve got to learn something new,” she says. “That completely contradicts this idea of regular, proper application.”