Costa Brazil Relaunch 2024: Francisco Costa on Taking Back the Brand

The founder discusses buying back his brand—and bringing his customers into a Brazilian state of mind.

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To know Costa Brazil is to love it. It’s the kind of beauty brand made for beauty-lovers—celebrity makeup artists, like Romy Soleimani and Patrick Ta, have posted about it; celebrity facialist Joanna Czech has been a longtime fan; and you can often catch a whiff of the brand’s fragrance, Aroma, wafting at any beauty industry event. Founded by Francisco Costa, former women’s creative director of Calvin Klein, Costa Brazil has always been a deeply personal project. “I used to dress a woman,” he says. “Now I’m dressing the body.”

Costa calls his relationship with the brand “very intimate.” And it shows—since 2018, Costa’s fingerprints have been all over the body-care products, which serve as an homage to his home country. “It’s Brazil in the bottle,” Costa says. “It’s like magic in the bottle. The essence of the Amazon is there.” But that magic abruptly died in 2023 when Costa Brazil’s then-parent company, the biotechnology-focused Amyris, announced they were shuttering the brand. In the year-plus since, Costa hasn’t spoken much about what happened behind the scenes. Now, in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, he’s sharing how he regained control.

That August, Amyris filed for bankruptcy and put its other brands, like JVN Hair and Rose Inc., up for auction shortly after. Costa says he saw the writing on the wall, but his pleas to buy the brand back before it closed fell on deaf ears. “I felt the urge [to take back Costa Brazil] way before the company went bankrupt,” he says. When the time came for him to learn the news, “the interim CEO basically said, ‘I just wanted to let you know that we’re shutting down the brand, and there’s no reason for us to keep negotiating.’ It was so shocking.” After Amyris pulled the plug, Costa Brazil’s future looked uncertain at best.

Now, a little over a year later, Costa Brazil is back. “I bought the brand back in November, which was the most exciting time of my life,” Costa explains. “I felt like I’m not only an entrepreneur now, but I graduated business school,” he says of the process. “I felt like I graduated law school.” The brand officially relaunched this February.

Costa Brazil 2.0 included familiar products that fans know and love, like the Vela Jungle Candle and the Kaya Firming Oil. As always, the thing that makes Costa Brazil’s products special is breu, a resin extracted from the cosalmaciga tree in the Amazon rainforest. Not only does breu infuse each of Costa Brazil’s products with a deep, woodsy scent that serves as a tribute to the rainforest, it’s also a multifunctional ingredient.

“[In Brazil] the Indigenous people use breu to seal their canoes so water doesn’t get in,” Costa says. “It petrifies. It becomes like cement. But it’s also antimicrobial, antibacterial, mosquito repellent.” Costa says that breu also has 17 different terpenes in it, which may have anti-inflammatory and calming properties.

Breu is sourced from the Amazon rainforest, but sustainability is of the utmost importance for Costa. “The Amazon [is] our biggest supplier,” Costa says. “We’re not destroying this incredible source of life. [It’s] not just the oxygen that we breathe, but also the science and knowledge that [the rainforest] can give us.” The brand partners with Conservation International to follow best production practices and aims to use recycled materials in their packaging whenever possible.

Above all, Costa wants his products to feel true to who he is. He’s not in the business of anti-aging—he calls it “passé”—but he is in the business of supplying people with products that give them a confidence boost. By doing this, he also helps everyone feel the allure of his home country. “[Brazil] has an ease about it,” he says. “Everybody’s happy, no hang-ups. I don’t think body shame is something that exists in Brazil. People are so comfortable with their bodies, so comfortable touching their bodies, and so comfortable with being. That’s the legacy that Brazil can give us. A really easy, relaxed way of being.”

For Costa, “Brazil is a state of mind.” Now that Costa Brazil is his again, he—and we—can exist in that mind frame all the time.

Katie Berohn is ELLE’s beauty editor. Previously, she held the same title at Who What Wear, where she was promoted from associate beauty editor. She’s written for publications like The Cut, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and Mashable. Her interests include fragrance, vintage shopping, hot yoga, food, travel, music, books, and attempting to make every NYT Cooking recipe. She’s on the endless hunt to find the perfect shade of red lipstick.

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