A hosiery buyer, ten cartons of polish and the casino salons of Las Vegas.

essie is named after its founder, Essie Weingarten. English Wikipedia describes her as the founder of Essie Cosmetics, Ltd., branded as essie, and says she began her career in cosmetics in 1981, when she premiered her first nail-polish colours in Las Vegas, Nevada, before distributing them to salons across the United States and then internationally through distributors in several countries.

Before the polish came hosiery. In an interview with Into The Gloss published in August 2012, Weingarten said she had been in the ladies’ hosiery business, and Entrepreneur, in a profile published in May 2014, described her as a former hosiery fashion buyer. She told Into The Gloss that her interest went back to childhood Saturdays at the beauty parlour after ballet class, when salons offered only a handful of polishes, and that her father would take her to a relative’s pharmacy in Manhattan to choose more. In her account, the cosmetics companies of the time were busy with lotions, eye shadow, mascara and lipstick, and she saw an opening in nail colour.

She described the start in practical terms. She went looking for a chemist who would listen to her, and gave him colours to match: a raspberry satin pincushion she had fallen in love with, which became the shade Fiesta, and colours she saved on her travels. She named three original shades still in the range in 2012: Bordeaux, a deep red she compared to a bottle of wine; Blanc, a stark white; and Baby’s Breath, a soft white intended for a natural-looking French manicure.

The launch was deliberate. Weingarten lived in New York but flew to Las Vegas with cartons of polish, reasoning, as she told Into The Gloss, that the city’s dancers, cocktail waitresses, dealers and showgirls all had to look perfect, hands and feet included. She called on the hotel beauty salons and, in her words, got every one. Entrepreneur quoted her on what followed: women on holiday tried the polish in the casino salons, went home to other states, and calls started to come in from around the country. She said she originally sold door-to-door, driving between salons with samples in the trunk.

From salon polish to a L’Oréal brand.

The name on the bottle was not Weingarten’s idea. Entrepreneur reported in 2014 that she hired her husband early on, and that it was his suggestion to put her name on the product. “I was horrified. But he was right and I was wrong,” she told the magazine. The first name became the brand, and the company’s own website still presents it in lowercase, as essie, alongside the line “The original professional nail polish.”

The brand’s most famous shade arrived early. Weingarten told Into The Gloss that Ballet Slippers, a sheer pale pink that “became as important as the name ‘Essie,’” was made in the company’s second year, and NewBeauty, in a March 2026 history of the shade, dates its debut to 1982. The brand told NewBeauty that the shade was a nod to those Saturday salon visits after ballet class and to the pale pink of ballet slippers themselves.

A royal letter followed. Entrepreneur reported that in 1989 Queen Elizabeth’s hairdresser wrote to Weingarten requesting an order of Ballet Slippers because it was the Queen’s colour of choice, and quoted her calling it “the turning point” in her life. The brand gave NewBeauty the same date and the same account in its own words.

Other shades built the catalogue. Weingarten told Into The Gloss that she released Wicked, a black red, in 1986, when colleagues doubted anyone would wear near-black polish, and that her London distributor sold out of it; and that Mademoiselle was created with Mademoiselle magazine. She also noted that the novel The Devil Wears Prada has its Vogue staff wearing a coat of Marshmallow over a coat of Ballet Slippers.

On 21 April 2010, L’Oréal USA announced that it had signed an agreement to acquire Essie Cosmetics, which the press release described as founded in 1981 by Essie Weingarten and sold mainly in American salons and spas. The release said the deal was subject to regulatory approvals, and Wikipedia records the sale as taking place in 2010. L’Oréal has owned essie since 2010; by 2014 Entrepreneur described the brand as a staple of salons, drugstores and cosmetics retailers around the world.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group sell makeup and nail colour to a wide public, through pharmacies, supermarkets, department-store counters and salons. A mass-market cosmetics brand reaches its customer in a crowded aisle, so much of its identity is carried by small things seen at close range: a wordmark on a cap or a tube, the shape of a bottle, and the name printed on a shade.

Shade names do a great deal of that work. Some brands number their colours, some describe them plainly and some give them names that read like jokes, places or lines of dialogue, so a name can become as recognisable as the colour itself. Bottle and compact shapes are another constant, because a customer often meets the product on a rack or a counter display where many similar containers stand side by side.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, its packaging and how its shades are named — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A first name, a lowercase wordmark and shades that are named, not numbered.

The essie identity rests on two things: the founder’s first name and the names of the shades. Weingarten explained the second in her 2012 interview with Into The Gloss. Working in hosiery, she said, she had seen that pantyhose carried names, and she had learned that women remember names they like, while “no one remembers numbers.” Every essie colour has a number, she said, but customers remember the name, or at least part of it.

She described the names as a place for personality. Some are descriptive and some are not; she said she let her own character influence them and that, in her experience, “the naughtier the better.” Ballet Slippers, Mademoiselle, Wicked and Bordeaux span that range, from a literal description of a pale pink to a magazine title and a single word for a black red.

The range was organised into collections. Weingarten told Into The Gloss that she worked in collections held together by a common theme in the names or by colours that work together, so that each release told what she called a complete fashion story. She said her team helped narrow each choice, with the final decision resting with her.

The company’s current website keeps colour at the centre. It describes colour as “an infinite language” and sets out a three-note colour system: primary notes as the foundation of each shade, dimensional notes for undertone and depth, and unexpected notes as an accent. Ballet Slippers still leads its list of icons.

The lowercase wordmark completes the picture. The brand writes its name as essie throughout its own site, a quiet treatment for a first name that has passed from a founder to a global beauty group without changing.

For a design guide, essie shows how a founder’s first name in lowercase and a catalogue of named rather than numbered shades can carry a brand from a few Las Vegas hotel salons to a L’Oréal portfolio. Compare it with OPI, a salon nail brand whose identity also rests on shade names, and Sally Hansen, another name built around nail colour. For this guide we use ballet pink and raspberry with deep bordeaux and a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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