Chantecaille: Brand Review and 10 of the Most Luxurious Products

When you're looking for luxury products, you can often find yourself buried in unrecognizable words and terms you have to google before you hit "purchase." It shouldn't be that hard, particularly when you're just looking for something high-end that also performs well, with the added bonus of looking gorgeous on your counter. Chantecaille ticks all of those boxes, as well as has a family-heavy background.

For Sylvie Chantecaille, the brand's roots came from her young life in France. "I have always loved nature and felt at peace when outdoors, surrounded by plants and animals," she tells Byrdie. "As a young girl in France, I was constantly surrounded by nature, art, and beauty. Then, when I was a debutante in Paris, I did my own makeup and it intrigued me—I found it to be an incredibly fun and artistic invention. I saw it as art."

Sylvie Chantecaille moved to New York in the 1970s, where she worked with fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg on a beauty and fragrance line. "In 1979, the Lauder family asked me to create a new company for them: a revolutionary brand called Prescriptives," she explained. "Creating brands is hard, but it's also great fun to create new things and move the needle forward. We did this with Prescriptives, but by the time I was ready to create my own company, my life had evolved, and I was completely focused on health."

Chantecaille wanted to create a company based on plants that used ingredients that were healthy for you. "I saw it as the next level of holistic medicine, translated into beauty," she explained. Alongside her daughter Olivia, she started Chantecaille (the brand) in 1998 with high-end fragrances based on her recollection of incredible trips and memories. At that time, looking to plants and flowers for their skincare benefits wasn't de rigueur, so the brand's innovative approach took off. "We were the first luxury company to use flowers and botanicals in an advanced, scientific way. More than 20 years later, it’s what we’re known for all over the world. Looking back, it's quite amazing how things happen."

The launch of Chantecaille was a precursor to the natural beauty movement, as the brand was one of the first to draw on high concentrations of pure botanicals in a technologically modern way. "We make beautiful, healthy botanical formulas that are super luxurious with a focus on high-quality, clean ingredients," explains Alex Chantecaille, vice president of sales and promotions (and Sylvie's daughter). The brand prides itself on setting trends, not following them—they want to tell you what you want before you even know. "At the end of the day, it is the actual product, its effectiveness, and how it makes someone feel," says Olivia Chantecaille. "We put our efforts into making the purest products, and our clients recognize that skincare and makeup should also be good for you."

The Chantecaille customer is someone who appreciates natural beauty and healthy, natural-looking skin, and also loves to support the brand's give-back partnerships, which work to care for endangered species, the planet, and animals. They love the brand's high-quality naturals and botanicals, selected for their scientific efficacy and sustainability, and assembled in the most thoughtful way for the customer and the environment. "The idea of using naturals, botanicals, and florals is the foundation of the line and the basis of every product we create," explains Olivia Chantecaille. "Our instinct for seeing ahead of the trends sets us apart—we know what women want, often before they do. We’re always the first to incorporate the latest advancements, both in our skincare and our makeup. When you use the highest quality botanicals and the latest lab developments, the results are superior in every way. Our customer sees that and it’s what keeps them coming back."