Pat McGrath

01 / Career record

Early life

Patricia Ann McGrath was born in 1970 in Northampton, England, and raised by her mother, Jean, a Jamaican-born dressmaker and Jehovah’s Witness who introduced her to makeup and fashion early. McGrath has described the household as "very religious, very conservative." She completed an art foundation course at Northampton College, which did not include fashion or makeup study, before moving to London in the 1980s.

02 / Career record

Early career

In London, McGrath built relationships with Alexander McQueen and John Galliano, and in the early 1990s worked alongside Edward Enninful at i-D magazine while supporting herself as a receptionist. In 1999, Giorgio Armani hired her to help develop a new cosmetics range, and she won the Pantene Pro-V Make-Up Artist of the Year award in both 2000 and 2001. From 2004 she served as Procter & Gamble’s Global Cosmetics Creative Design Director.

03 / Career record

Building an empire

McGrath launched her own line, Pat McGrath Labs, in 2015, and in 2017 Edward Enninful — by then editor of British Vogue — made her the magazine’s Beauty Editor-at-Large, the same year she won the Isabella Blow Award for Fashion Creator at the Fashion Awards. By 2019, Pat McGrath Labs had become a $1 billion company and Selfridges’ best-selling beauty brand.

Recognition followed at the state level: an MBE in 2014, and in 2021 a damehood, making her the first make-up artist to be made a Dame Commander of the British Empire, "for services to the fashion and beauty industry and diversity." She was named to Time’s 100 most influential people in 2019 and has been called "the most influential make-up artist in the world" by Vogue.

04 / Career record

A new chapter with Louis Vuitton

In March 2025, Louis Vuitton announced La Beauté Louis Vuitton, its new beauty division, naming McGrath Creative Director of Cosmetics; the collection, developed over five years and drawing on the house’s historic atelier in Asnières-sur-Seine, launched that August. That October she served as head makeup artist for the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.

Pat McGrath Labs itself has faced real commercial headwinds: in December 2025 the company began a distressed-asset sale amid declining revenue and rising competition, and in January 2026 it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, with a planned auction subsequently cancelled. McGrath’s own creative and consulting work — including the Louis Vuitton role and the 2025 Victoria’s Secret show — has continued through that restructuring.