As I listen to Cassandra Grey, the founder of the highly regarded and meticulously curated American beauty website Violet Grey — which launches in the UK this week — tell me her origin story, some of the character traits of Penny Lane, the charismatic groupie played by Kate Hudson in the 2000 film Almost Famous, come to mind.
Like Penny’s character, Grey comes across as both seductive and charmingly elusive, an innately curious dream chaser drawn not just to the fizz and glamour of life (she is friends with Gwyneth Paltrow and Sienna Miller and her late husband, Brad Grey, was the CEO of Paramount Pictures), but also to its professional possibilities. She is seemingly someone who, no matter what pitfalls life throws at her (her husband died of cancer in 2017), possesses a rare kind of grit and determination to pick herself up and keep going.
Grey, a youthful-looking 48, sits with her back against a large window in her Upper East Side apartment, the midday sun shining like a halo around her wet, shoulder-length dark brown hair. “I just came from the gym,” she says, tugging at her Sporty & Rich white T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Be Nice. Get Lots of Sleep. Drink Plenty of Water”. Has she accomplished all three today? “Well, I woke up with a cold sore this morning. I haven’t had one in a year. I’m running a little slower than usual.” If that’s the case, I wonder what Grey is like when she’s running fast.
From left: with her friend Gwyneth Paltrow, 2024; and with her husband, Brad Grey, who died in 2017Matt Baron/Shutterstock
She founded Violet Grey (which she named after the Peanuts character, “the snobby one, I loved her”) in 2013 after moving to Los Angeles following her marriage and where she regularly socialised with stars on the red carpet. One day it struck her how untapped the vast community prepping all these Hollywood A-listers was (the hair, make-up and nail artists, as well as the aestheticians and dermatologists). These experts possessed a highly sophisticated and in-depth knowledge of the world’s best beauty products.
What if she could share that information with the very people who had no reliable way of accessing it — the average consumer? And instead of selling entire product ranges, she would only feature hero products endorsed by a hand-picked committee of experts? Violet Grey was born and the tagline “Violet Code Approved” became her greatest USP.
“Violet Grey was largely inspired by Natalie Massenet,” she says of the Net-a-Porter founder, “in how she combined two addictions — shopping and perusing magazines. That’s what I wanted to do.” Products apart (she brought on board brands such as Charlotte Tilbury, Victoria Beckham Beauty and Dr Barbara Sturm when still nascent, as well as Augustinus Bader, which she is credited with launching on the global stage), the site would also feature editorial content. Early wins included a digital cover of Kim Kardashian with make-up by Pat McGrath. “She was the most famous celebrity in the world at the time with the most famous make-up artist.”
In its heyday Violet Grey reached £15 million in turnover. Grey sold it to Farfetch for a reported £37.5 million in 2022.
But in 2024, with the help of the private-equity investor Sherif Guirgis, she was able to buy it back for an undisclosed amount. “I go on intuition. Sherif [now the CEO of Violet Grey] is an underdog, he has got a lot of fire in his belly.” Recent figures indicate Violet Grey achieved 50 per cent year-on-year growth in 2025 and is tracking to reach 100 per cent by the end of 2026.
Alongside the international launch, it is opening its first shop within a shop in Harvey Nichols London. “It will feel like walking into Cassandra’s apartment and will have windows overlooking Sloane Street,” says Julia Goddard, CEO of Harvey Nichols. Grey’s ten-year-in-the-making first scent, Madame Grey, is also having its UK release and will retail at a punchy £825 for 60ml. “I wanted the fragrance to smell like a woman who could ruin your life, the one that got away, who’ll haunt you for ever.”
From left: Grey’s new scent, Madame Grey
Common to so many entrepreneurs, the story of what formed Grey is unconventional. She was born in San Francisco. Her parents divorced not long after and for the next 14 years she and her brother crisscrossed America with their Montessori teacher mother, living in, among other places, a Quaker community and in a tepee on a Native American reservation.
She was home schooled until the age of 14, when she moved back to San Francisco with her father so she could attend high school. “It was a wild childhood,” she says. “A lot of that entrepreneurial spirit came from my early education. I don’t think I would have had the audacity or naivety to build a company if it hadn’t been for that upbringing.”
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Grey talks in long, excitable sentences, shifting about in her seat as she tells me how she first visited New York with a friend when she was 17. She immediately knew she’d found her place. She spent the next five years working every job so she could move there.
Eventually installed in New York, she started modelling. “Not the glamorous kind,” she says, laughing. “I was a catalogue model. It gave me a bit of walking-around money.”
She mentions several times during our conversation that she is a recovering alcoholic. “I hadn’t discovered drugs or alcohol in San Francisco, but when I moved to New York I started drinking and playing poker. I was a party girl. It was really fun while it lasted and then I got sober. It was the first time I got to know myself. It turns out I am an introvert extrovert.”
From left: the Violet Grey shop at Hirshleifers department store, Long Island; and the Manahttan standalone
One night, during a trip to LA with her boyfriend at the time, she went to a dinner at Chateau Marmont. Brad Grey was one of the guests. “He noticed me and started pursuing me relentlessly,” she says. “I thought he was cute and smart but I wasn’t going to have a long-distance relationship, and there was just no way I was going to move to LA because I love New York so much.” But she eventually did. “It was an epic love affair. I was so in love with him and he was one of the five guys running the town. It was very glamorous. I hung around with Jack Nicholson, Bob Evans and Brad Pitt.
“I never thought I would get married,” she continues, “have kids [they had a son, Jules, in 2015] or meet someone I could honestly say I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, but it was a real thing. Most of my LA experience was my love affair. We married in 2011 and then he got diagnosed with cancer later that year, so the second half of our relationship was cancer. It’s a different kind of love when you have to care for someone.”
The business was four years old when he died. “I thought, there’s no way I’m ever going to be OK. I won’t be able to function ever again. But I had a kid and you figure it out. Jules saved my life. If I didn’t have him I don’t know. It was hardcore. I got all the shrinks, the psychics, the mediums, the grief people, an incredible support system.”
She is now back in New York. Is she excited about her London launch? “I love the culture, the taste, the original thought and humour, but most of all how generations interact with each other. I lived there for six months when I was 22. I was shacked up with a British boy. I was almost exclusively interested in British boys.”
I think you quite like British girls too, don’t you, I say, alluding to her six-year relationship with the musician and DJ Samantha Ronson (sister of Mark), which ended in 2024. She laughs. “Yes, I love British girls too.” Are she and Ronson still friends? “After we broke up everyone was really mad and now we’re really close again and Jules and I see her all the time.”
For the moment Grey is focusing on her own beauty self-care, New York-style. “I see Dr Levine [plastic surgeon], I had my upper bleph [blepharoplasty] with him. It’s so great. He’ll be doing my facelift. I also do Botox, Sculptra and I use my Lyma Laser Pro daily to tighten my stomach.”
She pauses. “You know, I’ve been single for a year and a half now. Life is better when you’re hot,” she says, taking a page out of Penny Lane’s playbook.