It’s Thursday evening in Beverly Hills, and Isabel Madison is greeting guests in her home.
The founder of Nude Envie — the beauty brand dedicated to neutral shades — is getting ready to host a sound bath. The group of women lay out their mats and get comfortable as the lights are dimmed in the candle-filled living room.
The practice aims to guide a person through a deep meditative state using music and instruments such as gongs and bowls. Madison, a longtime yogi, discovered her love of sound baths seven years ago.
“The whole class might be about an hour,” she said. “About 30 people show up usually.”
There are a dozen today, on a rainy Los Angeles day. Usually set up in Madison’s backyard, poolside overlooking the city, the session was moved inside.
“It was even better,” she says after the class. “When it’s indoors, the sound stays inside. Every little bell, every little sound that comes from those bowls, the vibration, whatever it is, which is hard to explain, does wonders. You can renew yourself and come out of it a brand new person. That’s huge. How often do we get to do that?”
Madison was immersed in beauty from a young age growing up in L.A. Her father, the late Perry Cohan, was head of research and development for Max Factor and Halston cosmetics before launching his own brand of custom-blended cosmetics in partnership with the late Roy J. Karrell, Visage Beaute — picked up by Nordstrom, Fred Segal and ultimately sold to Revlon.
“Our house was flowing with makeup all the time,” she said. “We breathed makeup. I was kind of my dad’s partner….During the time he had Visage, I was in the lab with him.”
She brought the creative: “I have this thing where I can see color. I would see the difference between a pink with a little blue [in it], or a little yellow, a little black or gray. He was shocked all the time. ‘How do you see that? How do you know?’ He, of course, was the master of formulation. We worked well together.”
It was about 25 years later that she began developing Nude Envie.
“My kids were growing up, and I was going through a major life change,” she said. “I thought, ‘OK, this is a good time to start something.’ I could never ever find the perfect nude lipstick. Back then, a nude lipstick was beige, gray, chalky.”
Hers were shiny and hydrating, offering various hues of soft earth tones, pinks and peaches. “And then I was super lucky. Barneys picked it up right away.”
Now sold at Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue, Madison is expanding into cheeks, eyes and nails — creamy, shimmering shades.
“It brightens the face,” she says of nudes. (Next, she’s tackling foundation.) “It’s like getting highlights in the hair, how it just all of a sudden makes your face glow.”
With beauty, “I always say I sell happiness,” she continues. “I create happiness and I love to make people happy.”
Sharing a sound bath experience brings her the same joy, she says. “For me to teach it and to bring it into other people’s lives is just an extension of what I do with makeup.”