Pound Cake
Mid-Range“Lip color built for every lip tone.”
Pound Cake is a Philadelphia-based, Black- and Latinx-owned cosmetics brand founded in 2021 by Camille Bell and Johnny Velazquez. Bell built the brand out of a lifelong frustration: shopping as a Black woman, she kept finding lipsticks that either disappeared on her skin or looked nothing like the shade advertised. Pound Cake's answer is a color-theory approach that accounts for a person's natural lip tone, not just their skin tone, so a single "universal" shade actually reads true across a huge range of complexions.
The brand launched with a collection of reds that sold out in 48 hours, and its pro-Black, pro-queer, body-positive ethos quickly turned it into a community favorite. Along the way Pound Cake collected an Allure Best of Beauty award, an early grant from Glossier's initiative for Black-owned beauty businesses, and a $1 million grant from Pharrell Williams' Black Ambition competition. Its lip-focused lineup — anchored by the Cake Batter liquid lipstick and Cake Theory lip oil — is now stocked at Ulta Beauty.
Known For
Flagship Products
- Cake Batter Liquid Lipstick
- Cake Theory Lip Tone Equalizing Oil
Brand Philosophy
Color is not one-size-fits-all — makeup should be formulated around a person's natural lip and skin tone so every shade shows up true, especially on deeper complexions historically ignored by the industry.