Three surnames, one salon business and a product line.

IGK was created by four hairstylists: Aaron Grenia, the brothers Franck and Leo Izquierdo, and Chase Kusero. The company names all four on its own “Who We Are” page, and they are named in the same way in coverage of the brand’s launches, including Refinery29 in February 2018 and Malaysia’s The Star in May 2018. The name is built from their surnames: NewBeauty reported in January 2017 that IGK stands for the first letter of each stylist’s last name — Izquierdo, Grenia and Kusero.

The business began with salons, not bottles. According to NewBeauty, the first IGK salon opened at the Shore Club in Miami Beach, later moving to the SLS in Miami Beach, and the four had run their salons for eight years before they added a line of products, which went on sale at Sephora. Refinery29 and Vogue Scandinavia both date the founding of the haircare brand to 2016. In January 2022 Glossy reported that IGK operated three salons of its own, in New York, Los Angeles and Miami, and described co-founder Chase Kusero as a master colourist.

The salon network has changed since. The brand’s website now lists IGK salons in New York, with sites in SoHo and on the Upper East Side, as well as in Miami, West Palm Beach and Las Vegas.

Playful names, city scents, dry shampoos and at-home colour.

IGK’s products are known for their names. When the line launched in the United Kingdom, at Space NK in February 2018, Refinery29 listed a leave-in conditioner called Thirsty Girl, an air-dry styler called Rich Kid and a salt-free texture spray called Beach Club, along with a trio of dry shampoos with air-travel names, graded by how deep a clean they give. The brand told Refinery29 the formulas were vegan, gluten-free, and free of sulphates and parabens. Today the website sells products such as Good Behavior, a smoothing spray, Antisocial, a dry-hair mask, and Expensive, a shine gloss treatment.

Scent and place are part of the system. NewBeauty reported in 2017 that each product was tied to one of the founders’ three home cities and given a signature scent for that city, and described the packaging as chic. By 2023 the line used seven fragrances, each inspired by a different city, Vogue Scandinavia reported, with notes such as bergamot and mimosa for Los Angeles and black pepper and leather for New York. The same magazine called IGK known for its tongue-in-cheek product names, and said the Beach Club spray had featured in a YouTube hair tutorial by Hailey Bieber.

The brand has also moved into colour. Glossy reported in January 2022 that IGK had launched an at-home permanent hair colour line that month at Ulta Beauty, with 25 shades running from conventional brunette, blonde, black and red to rosy pink, lavender and grey-silver; Dan Langer, president of IGK’s owner, Luxury Brand Partners, called it “a youthful and of-the-moment approach to hair color.” The same report said IGK’s other products were sold at Sephora, Ulta Beauty and Amazon, and in more than 1,000 salons and retailers, and that the brand had run an online scavenger hunt with NFT prizes in December 2021.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all hair-care names: KEVIN.MURPHY, Sachajuan, Maria Nila, IGK, Virtue, Fekkai and Pureology. Hair-care brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from small houses that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger beauty groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a hairdresser’s back bar to a department store or an online shop.

A hair-care brand’s identity is usually carried less by any one formula than by a bottle, a name and a colour code on the shelf, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its offices or grown far beyond the salon or city where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and how its packaging and name have changed over time.

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 look has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word. None of these guides assesses what a product does for hair; claims about ingredients or results are the companies’ own.

A Luxury Brand Partners company, sold far beyond its salons.

IGK belongs to Luxury Brand Partners, which Global Cosmetics News has described as a brand incubator and whose website bills its portfolio as “artist driven beauty brands.” Glossy identified Luxury Brand Partners as IGK’s owner in January 2022, and in October 2026 the IGK professional website still described itself as “a Luxury Brand Partners (LBP) company.” LBP’s own website lists IGK among its current brands, with R+Co, ONE/SIZE, IN COMMON and Elaluz, and lists Oribe, Becca Cosmetics, PULP RIOT and V76 by Vaughn among its former ones.

A change of ownership has been discussed. In July 2024 Global Cosmetics News, citing The Business of Fashion, reported that Luxury Brand Partners was said to be weighing a sale of ONE/SIZE and IGK and had hired the advisory firm The Sage Group to look at its options for the two brands. As of October 2026 both IGK’s website and LBP’s still present IGK as part of Luxury Brand Partners.

The brand has travelled nonetheless. Sephora South East Asia announced IGK’s arrival in its stores and online in Malaysia in May 2018, The Star reported, three months after the Space NK launch in Britain. In November 2023 Vogue Scandinavia reported on a pre-launch evening at Bank Hotel in Stockholm for hair professionals, marking IGK’s arrival in salons across Sweden. One practical note: the letters IGK are used by several unrelated organisations, so the brand’s own address, igkhair.com, is the reliable reference.

For a design guide, IGK shows how a brand can be named for the people behind it — three surnames, four stylists — and then speak through loud product names and city scents rather than a founder’s face. Compare Oribe, a former Luxury Brand Partners stylist brand, and Ouai, another haircare line built by a working stylist. For this guide we use night ink, hot coral and beach pink with a heavy grotesque sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep IGK’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.