A STORY beyond a brand
For Camille Peressini and Georgie Gilbert, years spent inside one of Australia’s most influential beauty businesses gave them an unusually close-up view of what makes a beauty product matter. They saw the launches that created a buzz, the products that earned cult status and, just as importantly, the ones that didn’t quite make the cut.
Camille spent more than a decade leading skincare and new concepts, while Georgie built her career across the business and into leadership. Between them, they had spent years thinking about what customers wanted - and what was still missing.
Eventually, they decided to stop watching from the sidelines.
Bronte came from a gap they knew well. Body care had been treated as the less exciting corner of beauty - something functional, often overlooked, and rarely given the same attention as skincare.
Camille and Georgie saw it differently.
Why shouldn’t body care have the same level of thought behind the formula? Why shouldn’t the packaging look beautiful on the bathroom shelf? And why shouldn’t using a body cleanser or lotion feel like a small luxury, even on an ordinary Tuesday?
That thinking became Bronte.
The brand spent two years in formulation before launching with a tightly considered edit of body care essentials. The idea was never simply to make another body wash or body lotion. It was to bring together performance, sensorial textures, elevated fragrance and design without making the products feel precious or inaccessible.
And perhaps unsurprisingly, the response was quick. Bronte’s first body wash and lotion launch sold out within 72 hours, giving the founders a fairly immediate sign that they had tapped into something the category had been missing.
But Bronte is also personal.
The name has its own story. Camille’s Nonna was born in Bronte, a small town at the foot of Mount Etna in Sicily, before migrating to Australia. The name has since carried through the family, including Camille’s daughter, Miela Bronte. Georgie’s connection is equally rooted in place - she grew up in Caloundra in a family deeply connected to surf lifesaving and spent her childhood in the ocean.
It makes sense, then, that Bronte feels distinctly Australian. There’s something coastal and uncomplicated about it, but with the polish you’d expect from two women who spent years working at the sharp end of beauty.
And their MECCA years clearly left a mark.
Working inside a business where experience is everything taught them that a great product is rarely just about the product. It’s the way it looks. The way it feels in your hand. The story behind it. The reason you want to come back to it.
Camille and Georgie have taken that thinking into a category that had plenty of room for it.
They’re also building Bronte while navigating the realities of modern life - including motherhood, business growth and the less glamorous side of entrepreneurship. Their professional lives have shifted from leading within a major beauty company to making every decision themselves, from formulation and packaging to retail and brand strategy.
It’s a very different kind of leadership.
There’s no big corporate team to hand something over to. No endless layers between the idea and the finished product. Just two founders who know the industry intimately and are now responsible for making their own call.
That experience is part of what gives Bronte its confidence.
It doesn’t feel like a brand trying to convince you that body care suddenly matters. It simply behaves as though it always should have.
And now, that story is continuing at Eclat.
Camille and Georgie joined beauty journalist and Eclat favourite Gemma Watts for a conversation about their journey, recorded in the Eclat podcast room. It was a fitting setting for two founders whose story sits somewhere between beauty, business, creativity and the realities of building something of their own.
With Bronte now joining the Eclat community, the relationship continues beyond the podcast room.
The brand is setting up at Eclat this Spring, bringing its considered approach to body care into the space and creating opportunities to connect and treat the Eclat community.
Explore the world of BRONTE
