PATTERN Beauty launched in September 2019 with a clear thesis and a founder with the reach to make it land: Tracee Ellis Ross, actress and producer, had spent decades navigating the gap between the hair care products available in mass retail and the products her curly, coily hair actually needed. She built the brand she wanted to exist.
The product line was formulated specifically for 3B-4C curl patterns -- a range that mainstream beauty had either ignored or served with inadequate formulas. PATTERN's Heavy Conditioner, Curl Gel, and Leave-In Conditioner became staples for natural hair routines almost immediately, and the brand's community grew quickly among people who had tried numerous other products without finding what they needed.
The expansion to Ulta Beauty brought PATTERN into one of the largest beauty retail networks in the country, alongside the brand's existing Sephora placement. For a brand that launched with celebrity backing but was built on formulation rigor and community trust, the multi-retailer presence signaled that PATTERN was not a moment. It was a brand.
“My whole life I could not find products that worked for my hair. So I made them.”
Ross has been consistent in describing what she set out to do: not to build a celebrity vanity project, but to address a gap in the market that had been obvious for decades and that the industry had chosen not to fill. The Ulta expansion was one more step in that project -- access, not arrival.
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