The Essentials With Bobbi Brown: Sag Harbor Farm Stands, Duryea’s and Jones Road Sunscreen

Bobbi Brown is spending Fourth of July weekend in Sag Harbor with 20 houseguests—”all relatives and grandchildren and pregnant nieces,” she tells Observer, sounding less like a woman under siege than like one exactly where she wants to be. Outside, the East End is broiling through a heat wave. Inside, the makeup artist, who sold her namesake brand to Estée Lauder in 1995 and waited out a 25-year non-compete to launch Jones Road Beauty in 2020, is doing what she does best: paying very close attention to what women actually want.

She learned that lesson the hard way this year, when Jones Road pulled its Everyday Sunscreen and the customers revolted until it came back. “My Jones Road customer is very, very opinionated and very vocal,” Brown says. “I know exactly what they like, what they don’t like, what they still need.” The proof lives on Facebook, where a community called “The Roadies”—90,000 members at last count—trades products, troubleshoots product application and polices the brand’s every move. When a young mom influencer campaign ruffled the group, Brown logged on herself. “I said, guys, everybody, calm down. There’s room for everybody. New moms are as tired as grandmoms.”

That attentiveness has turned Jones Road into a rare thing in beauty: a brand that skips department stores entirely and still can’t keep up with demand. The newest outpost is in East Hampton, joining stores that stay open through the off-season everywhere from the Hamptons to Palm Beach. The surprise bestseller out east isn’t sunscreen or a breezy tint—it’s What The Foundation, her full-coverage formula. “It’s so weird,” she admits. “People just want it.” Miracle Balm and the mascara round out the perennial top sellers.

The summer pipeline is stacked: Bright Skin Illuminating Drops just launched, the Miracle Balm Palette relaunched June 30, and a new mascara formula arrives at the end of July. She’s also signed a new deal with J.P. Morgan for a follow-up to her podcast series—though, true to form, she’s rethinking the whole medium. “I get bored easily, so I want to do something shorter,” she says. “How do I reinvent even the podcast listening thing?” From an air-conditioned room a few miles from the harbor, Brown walked Observer through her essentials.