Deborah Pagani: Founder of Deborah Pagani Beauty

Episode 751

On today’s episode, Kara welcomes Deborah Pagani, Founder of Deborah Pagani and Deborah Pagani Beauty. A celebrated hairstylist, jewelry designer, and now beauty entrepreneur, Deborah has spent decades shaping luxury across industries — from working with icons like Prince and Cyndi Lauper, to sparking the French pin revival with her cult-favorite hair accessories, to designing fine jewelry sold at Barneys and Bergdorf Goodman.
Most recently, she launched Deborah Pagani Beauty, a luxury haircare line years in the making. Self-funded and born out of her vision to merge indulgence with performance, Deborah created clean, high-performing formulas anchored by an addictive signature fragrance and packaged in glass bottles worthy of display. In this conversation, she shares how her career journey prepared her to disrupt multiple categories, the white space she saw in the crowded haircare industry, and what it takes to build unapologetic luxury without compromise. This episode is packed with insights for founders, creatives, and anyone interested in brand building at the highest level. Don’t miss it!

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up, that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you. Just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control, control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show today. I’m joined by Deborah Pagani, founder of Deborah Pagani, and Deborah Pagani Beauty as well. And she is just an incredible, incredible business person, visionary, hairstylist, jewelry designer and now beauty entrepreneur who has built a career at the intersection of artistry, design and luxury. And Deborah’s journey, as I mentioned, is absolutely incredible, from training under icons like or be to working with legends including Prince and Cyndi Lauper to building her cult favorite jewelry and hair accessory line. Now she is doing it once again. So most recently, she launched Deborah Pagani Beauty, a line of indulgent, clean, beautiful, high performing hair care that’s disrupting the industry with its addictive fragrance, beautiful glass bottle design and uncompromising formula, which, by the way, I have in my hair right now, right before I get it blown out. So I’m very excited to have her here today to dive into the story and talk a little bit more about what it really takes to get into the beauty industry and really do what she feels like is needed in in the marketplace, in a brand that is probably entering into one of the toughest categories out there, but I know she is ready to go forward. So Deborah, thank you so much for joining us today.

Deborah Pagani 2:26
Well, thank you for having me and thanks for that warm welcome.

Kara Goldin 2:29
Yeah, absolutely. So let’s start at the beginning. So let’s talk about the beauty line. Actually, not really at the beginning, the beginning of the beauty line, I should say. So what is Deborah Pagani Beauty? And how is it different from everything else that is out there?

Deborah Pagani 2:46
Well, I call it the evolution of luxury, which is luxury without compromise, beautiful esthetics with high performance ingredients, and, of course, performance so everything, everything was done with intention. I have I was a hair colorist in the late 90s. I worked with amazing people. I have used every single hair care product out there known to man, I am a consumer, and I’m also really obsessed with luxury beauty, makeup and all of that. And I really felt like there was a lack in the market I use, like a Gucci Westman or a Farah Hamidi. I feel like you get, like, the full package. But it was never with hair care. I was like, why all of these hair care products, like, they say that they are luxury, but they come in a plastic bottle. The I feel like they are just one hit wonders. I wanted to come up with hybrid, bespoke formulas that were multitasking also, so I felt like, you know, okay, we we’ve got a luxury product. We’ve got a great ingredient, but let’s also come up with a packaging that is shelfie worthy. And also we need clean formulas. And then there was the scent aspect of it was super important to me. Also, usually with hair care, you either have fresh scent or a floral scent. And I am always been a gourmand girl. So I was like, Okay, well, you know, these are the perfumes that I love. I need something that will, you know, vibe with this also. I mean, I know that there are other people out there, because these are, like, the highest selling perfumes. So, yeah, that’s, that’s where it all came from. And then I started meeting with labs. It was a process of about two and a half years to come up with the products.

Kara Goldin 4:51
So, so interesting. Actually, two and a half years is not too bad we’ve had people say, like, seven, eight years. I mean, I’m sure you were thinking about something like this. For a long time as well.

Deborah Pagani 5:01
Oh, yeah. I mean, I was thinking about it for a very long time. And then I was on a photo shoot for my hair pins and jewelry, and we, and I was with this photographer, Gilles Ben Simone, who is very, very well known, and he was asking me, like, what else is next? And it’s that’s not a real common question that people are asking when they’re already have an established brand. I was like, How did you know I wanted to do something else? And he’s like, I don’t know. I could just tell like you look very antsy, like you’re always looking like you look like something else is in the works, and nothing was in the works at the time. But I was like, you know, I really want to have, I don’t know whether it’s perfume or hair products or something. But I do want to get into beauty. It’s really where I started. So I wanted to do something that paid homage to what I was doing before. And he literally took his phone, called up his friend who was the director at Roberta, which is a perfume house that does the I mean by Rito, I mean all the brands, all the brands I’m blanking right now, but all, like, really, really big brands. And he just pushed him on the phone with me. And I was like, Okay, well, Gilles just put us on the phone. I think we should meet. And it was like, they didn’t want to work with me. I was not an established brand. They’re they’re doing Selena Gomez, they were doing sole de Janeiro. All these, all these top brands. And I kind of like, was like, Listen, this is my vision. I want to take hair care and take it to the next level. I want to really make luxury hair care like it’s never been done before. I want to do a whole experience. So scent is super, super important. And, yeah, so that’s how it kind of got started. But I’m also very in person. So I, you know, it’s not like, I just, you know, make one phone call. It was like, Okay, we’re meeting next week. Can we meet next week? I’ll come to your office. I’ll bring a whole I’ll bring my whole deck, all my inspiration, and then, you know, trying to meet labs and asking people like, you know, who made your lipstick and who made your this, and who made your lotion, and that’s how, that’s how it came to life.

Kara Goldin 7:20
So you mentioned that you were a colorist and a well known colorist, and you worked under some incredible industry icons on your way to getting there. What did you learn from those early years of not only, you know, just getting started, but also being able to work under people who have really built incredible brands that I guess helped you to not only think about I can go do this, but also maybe when you do go do this, what you’re going to be able to kind of Take away from those experiences.

Deborah Pagani 8:01
Well, first things I started when I was 18. I didn’t go to college. I kind of fell into doing hair. I wanted to go to fashion school. My father was like, No, I’m not paying for that. The that’s not real school. And I was saying to myself, what can I do that’s creative? That gets me into New York City and I can make money and move out. And I met my stepmother, sister, who was a hairdresser on Fifth Avenue. She was dressed so beautifully, hair done, smelled good. You know, those types of women that really like are so inspiring. And I was like, Well, what do you do? And she’s like, I do hair. And I was like, Okay, well, can I get a job? Thinking like, you know, you just start doing hair like that and making money. And she was like, Listen, you have to go and be an assistant. Go to John Sahab. This is where you should go. And I walked in and really understood what working in the service industry was, I was an assistant for three years there. He was super tough, but, my God, he was an amazing mentor. He was like the Mick Jagger of hair in I mean, he started earlier than than when I came but of the 90s. And I think being in a service industry, you really learn people in and out, especially behind a chair, having a woman in front of you looking at her, it is a very intimate process, like I was basically a therapist. I would give fashion advice, I’d give beauty advice. I’d tell them what to do with their hair. And once you start listening and trusting somebody on what they’re going to do, on your touching your head. It is a, I think it’s a very, you know, intimate process. And I learned a lot and doing that, finally I was like, you know, I needed, I needed another. Creative outlet, like I said, I’m always something’s always tinkering in on the back end when I’m whenever I’m doing one thing. So I started making jewelry. I was making fine jewelry, and my clients were purchasing the pieces. And started off with one medallion that was inspired by a a key chain, the only key chain that was made in 18 Kara gold that my grandfather brought from Cuba. It was the only piece of jewelry they were allowed to bring. And it had sentimental value. And I kind of changed it around, modernized it, put it on a chain. All my clients were buying that. And that kind of started spinning out to making a line. And I think I was doing like six pieces, and people were purchasing. And then I got pregnant with my daughter, and that was when the formaldehyde straight perm came out, and I just decided to just leave, and that was the end of it. And start my start my jewelry line.

Kara Goldin 11:03
That’s That’s wild. So what was it about the just, can you dive into that a little bit more when the formaldehyde you just mentioned that, like you decided to leave at that point,

Deborah Pagani 11:13
yeah, because I thought I said to myself, this, there is no way that this can be safe for an unborn child. Like, it smelled so intense. This is not the straight perm that they’re using now, like, they’ve discontinued that formaldehyde in there, and it was, like, really intense, and it was just my sixth sense. I was like, this is not this is I can leave, but I’m gonna leave now for nine months plus be with. I’m like, I’m going to lose all my clients anyway, so I might as well. I’ve always wanted to go into a creative industry, more of a creative industry, and I think that this is now the time. So in retrospect, it’s all because of my daughter that I started this whole thing. Because probably if I wasn’t pregnant with her, I would have never left.

Kara Goldin 12:01
So you launched in 2020, your now iconic hairpin. How did that come about?

Deborah Pagani 12:09
I actually launched it in 2019 so pre covid. Okay, so, I mean, that’s also another long story. I was at Barney’s. I had a really great run at Barneys. It was a perfect time to have really edgy jewelry. Was the only retailer that really got it and had the customer to purchase those types of pieces. And then when they went out of business, everybody who was wholesaling fine jewelry ran to Neiman’s and Bergdorf, and it just, it just became a whole nother animal. And I was really not happy doing it at all. So they were always asking me, you know, what about we need to, like, round out the entire collection. We need less expensive jewelry and and brass and Vermeil jewelry was just not my thing. I it just creating when you’re creative and you’re making things that you really don’t resonate with you, and you’re not even going to wear them yourself there, I feel like the consumer feels it. There’s no authenticity behind it. There’s no passion behind it. And I feel like now the consumers are so smart, they see it. We’re all on social media, and I didn’t want anything to be forced. But I did wear hair accessories, and I was always on the hunt for chic hair accessories that didn’t clash with jewelry, that really were just an extension, that you never had to really think about it. I always wore my hair in a bun, looking for a really high end hair pin. And I set out to make the best and most Luxe hair pins. So I decided to make it one. One thing that was super important to me is that it couldn’t be bendable. And most of them on the market are bendable. They’re very pliable. Um, also couldn’t have any sharp edges, because I didn’t want it to snag on the hair, and it also had to look beautiful. So I launched with four different styles, a small pin, a large pin, and two hair cuffs that were supposed to take the place of a black elastic on the wrist. And really what took off were the hairpins. And when we were doing our editor meeting desk size, when I first launched it, they had never seen it, which was crazy, because I’ve always used hairpins. Hairpins have been on on women since the beginning of time. They would use a just a stick, but people really went crazy. And now, I mean, there’s tons of brands that have hairpins now so, but I still feel like I’ve got the most Luxe one, because it’s stainless steel. I still have people that own theirs from 19, from 19, from. 2019 and they still tell me that it looks exactly the same, and that was super important to me. It’s all about craftsmanship, timeless, but in a very accessible way.

Kara Goldin 15:12
I love it. So how has your brand? Just speaking about the hair accessory brand, how does that brand changed since the beginning, when you first launched it, versus today. I mean, you mentioned that people still have it, so the quality is still just as strong, if, if not better. But would you Is it pretty much the same? You’ve just added more skews and new designs.

Deborah Pagani 15:36
Yes, we’ve added more styles. We’ve done collaborations, we’ve done limited editions and but the pin is we sell them every single day. It’s something that people buy them as gifts. They’ve really become an extension, like they’re the people who wear hairpins are never going to wear a plastic claw clip. They’re just not now they see that. They don’t. They can go from the office out. They never have to worry about looking, not put together, not saying that, you know, a claw clip can’t look cute in somebody’s hair, but it’s just a lot harder. You never have to think about a hairpin.

Kara Goldin 16:17
So especially being a serial entrepreneur as you are, and different different categories. I even think, you know, just launching your own business as a colorist, I mean, you that, to me, counts as also being an entrepreneur too. You’re running your business, you have a clientele. You know, it’s definitely a serial entrepreneur experience, for sure, but when you think about probably the hardest things, the hardest lessons that you’ve learned along the way and building any of your businesses, I think I love that you touched on the service industry and Taking care of consumers. It’s never just about the product, because you can have a great product, but if you have just one bad experience, that that experience can go viral, even more so, to say, than maybe 20 years ago. But what are some of the biggest things that you’ve learned in actually operating your own businesses, and you’ve done it in multiple categories, as well as physical products as well services

Deborah Pagani 17:29
that every single customer counts every single one. I spend a lot of time in my DMs. I think that that trickles down from being in the service industry and being one on one, I love to talk to the clients on DMS. Like, sometimes we have conversations about, like, just yesterday, somebody asked me that we’re like, I love the scent of the hair products. What other perfume can I use to enhance the scent? And like, these are the type of conversations that I love. They’re just so niche. And I think that having, having being able to be accessible to your community, and being able to talk to them like that on these, like, just these little questions, I think, is super important. You know, at the end of the day, those are your consumers. It’s not really your friends and it’s not your family, it is the community that you build.

Kara Goldin 18:32
Yeah, definitely. So you’ve, uh, had not only great experiences and and training underneath incredible people, but you’ve also had many celebrities and influencers, Gwyneth, Paltrow, Rihanna, pick up your products and actually showcase them as well. How much do you think that that’s helped you and kind of building your overall brand? You know, obviously, to be seen more and more as as a product. I think it definitely works. But so so much of the time when people are building their their business, they’re thinking, Oh, I can’t afford to have an influencer relationship. I mean, what, what do you think you can do to kind of build out, uh, build out your business if you don’t have big budgets to maybe get those influences,

Deborah Pagani 19:27
those those, I mean, we were selling on goop, and Gwyneth just used the pin. I mean, they were selling it on there, and she used it so it was not like any paid endorsement. Um, Rihanna wore the jewelry for for a couple of events, and then a Fenty ad, and, you know, she borrowed it. It’s, I think that it’s just being accessible. I think that gifting is important. You can’t expect people. So you can’t be like, Okay, I’ll, I’ll send you a gift, but you have to, you, you have to post. You have to just blindly gift somebody, and if they love it, they’ll post about it, and if they love it, and they say, Listen, you know, maybe we can talk about a paid partnership. You have to see if it’s worth it. I do have to say that I have worked with a lot of influencers where it just doesn’t, you know, you don’t see the the return on your investment. And sometimes you just have a a woman who has a very small following, who bought your product and who posted it, and all of a sudden you see your Shopify account blowing up, and this person was just a consumer. So I don’t think that people need to put so much emphasis on the influencer marketing. Now, I’ve got a lot that I have a relationship with, and they’re great. So I don’t want to, like, squash that whole industry, but I think that it’s changing, and I think it’s changing every single day. And I think that brands need to be constantly pivoting, like, what what was, what was working six months ago, is not working today. So I think you kind of have to, like, you know, make your budget, see how much you can allocate to gifting, see how much you can do for any paid partnerships, and put those in buckets, and kind of test out each one and see which one kind of, you know, moves the needle for you definitely.

Kara Goldin 21:35
So going back to your beautiful products, the the beauty products that you’ve created. Can you talk a little bit about the ingredients and why you felt they were so important? Obviously, they work. You have beautiful hair. You’re a perfect example of somebody who is is using the product and and it’s definitely doing what you want it to do for consumers and what they wanted to do. But can you talk a little bit about what the makeup is, the ingredients and why it works?

Deborah Pagani 22:08
So I was adamant about having a clean product. I also wanted something that had a sensorial experience to it, and I also needed it to have results. And one thing that I am really hyper fixated on is having my hair weighed down or having any type of film or residue on it like this makes me bonkers. And I used a lot of heat protectors out there. Sometimes they’ve worked, but the smell, I can’t take it. It’s like a granny type of smell, a floral, dated scent. And sometimes I would use them, and I have straight, fine hair, but it does get frizzy, and I would it would just get really PC, and that I didn’t like either, and then also where it has that, like waxy feeling. So I tested out all of them, and I have to say, I mean, we’re only three months old, and the vital Miss has won two awards already, so best heat protector and Shape magazine and best hair send for Marie Claire. So that’s just saying something huge. And what’s also amazing is that you can use that hair mist, with or without heat. The heat is going to really activate it and using it as just a hydrator also to refresh your hair after you exercise. It also works fabulous. It has niacinamide. It has guava, hyaluronic, botanicals. It has beautiful, beautiful ingredients.

Kara Goldin 23:54
Yeah, it’s, it is so nice, and especially on the ends, I’ve just found exactly what you were saying that it wasn’t, it didn’t have that waxy feel, where you feel like things are almost separating out.

Deborah Pagani 24:07
And I really, really don’t like that. And the nectar was a hybrid. I didn’t want another leave in conditioner, but I wanted it to be more like a serum. They were designed to work in conjunction, but you can use them separately also. So the the nectar should be looked at as the way that you would apply a facial serum. It should be your first thing that goes on before you blow dry, even if you’re letting it air dry, it is super hydrating, super weightless. Can be used as exactly what I said, like a leave in conditioner, hydrator. It is also an amazing finisher. So when your hair is done getting blow dried, and let’s say you’ve got, like, all these flyaways, like usually have so much regrowth constantly, because, you know the age that. I’m at, I’m Oh, my hair is always like, never making it down to a certain and then it starts regrowing again. So I’ve always got these flyaways, and I’ll just take a little serum and use it as a tamer also, and it will not leave any buildup on the hair. And that one has a proprietary blend of hyaluronic guava and squalene.

Kara Goldin 25:21
It’s just absolutely beautiful, and it really is so different than anything that I’ve tried on the market. And like you, you can’t tell right now, but my hair is very long and and I I’ve tried it both straight as well as with curls, and it’s absolutely perfect. So sometimes those sometimes different products too. You can’t curl your hair, right? It just doesn’t, it won’t hold a curl. And I really you can, it will hold the curl. It will do both, right?

Deborah Pagani 25:53
It also has a little bit of hold to it, just just a touch like your waves will last a few days. I think you know when you have the when you have experience in hair, but you’re also a mega beauty consumer. I feel like it brings another layer of expertise, kind of, to the to the table, and because I’ve used so much, I know what women want to see their hair. I’ve seen them how many times I did somebody’s color, they go and get their hair blow dried, and they come back and they’re like, look at how flat my hair is. He put too much conditioner. He put too much of this, and too much hairspray, too much that I hate product in my hair. I’ve heard it all. And even when I was doing the hairpins, like people would always ask me, like, What product are you using in your hair? My hair is so baby fine. I can’t use anything. And I feel like women postpartum, perimenopausal and menopausal women Hair Care has no one is making any thing for their hair at all. And this can be used on hair, but it can also be used on the most baby fine hair, definitely.

Kara Goldin 27:02
So finally, what’s next for Deborah Pagani Beauty? So you have your two products, and they’re just, I mean, they’re terrific. So I’m curious is there, are there larger sizes, anything different? I mean, they’re beautiful. The packaging is you’ve just nailed it. The inside the products, you’ve nailed it. But is there anything else coming up?

Deborah Pagani 27:28
Well, you know, I don’t really. I’ve always kind of disrupted every industry. Like people were like, who, who’s, who’s gonna actually buy a hairpin? Like, you can buy those at Duane Reade and this and that. So I, I’m always disrupting something, and I don’t follow the usual hair and beauty playbooks of other brands. So and I don’t want to just put product out, to put product like it is very important for me to have these formulas multitasking. I used to use about five products. Now I’m using two, and sometimes I’ll use a hairspray. If I am like, you know, I really want a lot of hold, but for the most part, for styling, I’m just using these two products. One thing, if I’m listening to my community, everybody wants a scent. Everybody all the comments we’ve has reviews. I have people who’ve slid into the DMS and said, Please make a cent. So that is, that’s where people are pushing me. So that’s where, you know, maybe I’m gonna be going. I’m also working on a couple of formulas, you know, things take time, and I’m not happy with anything right now, but I definitely think scent is on the horizon for divorce. Definitely.

Kara Goldin 28:49
Have you thought about a shampoo and conditioning line? Of course,

Deborah Pagani 28:53
I also get asked all the time, but then, how do I make something so beautiful and esthetic? Because you can’t put glass in the shower, that’s just asking,

Kara Goldin 29:04
right? Yeah, it’s asking for

Deborah Pagani 29:06
it. One thing that is still on brand,

Kara Goldin 29:11
yeah, definitely. Well, I’ll be your first customer. So Deborah, thank you so much. Really, really loved having you here today. Where’s the best place, obviously, on your website, but other places where people could purchase the product.

Deborah Pagani 29:27
Right now, it’s direct to consumer. So it’s Deborah Pagani Beauty.com you can find me on Instagram, Deborah Pagani Beauty, or just Deborah Pagani, and we’re on Tiktok. Awesome.

Kara Goldin 29:40
Very cool. And thank you everyone for listening. Thank you again for your time. Deborah, really appreciate it. All right. Thank you so much. Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit. And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss. A single episode of our podcast, just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms. At Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book. Undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building hint we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now.

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