The Scoop with RBO’s Sophie Wybrew-Bond: On Their Festive Partnership with L’Oréal

Welcome to the Scoop: a weekly email series in which I quiz fashion insiders on the stories of the week. This will be a way for the Vogue Business community to synthesize and reflect on the latest headlines and get a little inside scoop every Friday.

This week’s guest is the Royal Ballet and Opera’s chief commercial officer, Sophie Wybrew-Bond. After a career in media, Sophie joined the Royal Opera House in 2024, as the organization looked to build a more resilient mixed-funding model.

One of the first things Sophie did was to add the word ‘ballet’ to the name. Ballet is half of what the company does, but according to Sophie, 30% of their audience didn’t know it. They do now — and they have grown as well. In the years since Covid, the RBO’s social channels have grown from about 3 million followers to 7.5 million, mostly because they began posting content that felt light and organic, rather than branded.

At the same time, much like everywhere else in culture, brand partners at the Royal Ballet and Opera House are arguably more important than ever. I called up Sophie to find out their plans for the festive season.

Hi Sophie, what’s the scoop?

This year’s festive partner for the Royal Ballet and Opera is L’Oréal. This is the second time we have had a Christmas partner — last year’s was Paul Smith. L’Oréal is designing the Christmas tree in the Paul Hamlyn Hall. The concept we are working with is “Where beauty meets performance”.

We want a tree of discovery; meaning that people come into the house and even if they don’t have a ticket, they’ll spend a bit of time looking and finding details and delightful extra bits that you don’t notice at first glance. We’ve got 10 bespoke dioramas, which are like little storytelling elements to the tree, which then have L’Oréal products within them. At the top of the tree, we’ve got a star made of pointe shoes that glitter. We will be unveiling the tree next Wednesday, November 18.

What is in a festive partnership?

We actually also announced a beauty partnership with L’Oréal just recently, which means their product is being used by our wigs, hair and makeup teams. One of our principals, Marianela Nunez, who’s been with the company for 26 years, is the face of that partnership. As part of that, we offer some behind-the-scenes tours to our community. We program moments during the holidays, where you can drink and dine or listen to music — and it will be all around the tree. Because of The Nutcracker, people will be coming into the house to feel festive.