When I go to my mall back home and stop by Sephora, I feel like I find more celebrity makeup brands every time. At this point, it feels like some singers have more lip glosses out than songs (I’m looking at you, Rihanna). These brands can be fun and unique, but many celebrity brands and collaborations don’t add anything to the market that can’t be found in another brand. Additionally, other brands have started collaborating with celebrities rather than creating their own products. Brands are using a name to sell a product rather than creating new and innovative makeup.
Celebrities have been creating their own makeup brands for years, with model Iman creating one of the first in 1994. Some other notable early brands include Jessica Simpson Dessert Beauty—a brand that sold edible makeup and, not surprisingly, didn’t last for long—similar to Jennifer Aniston’s hair care company, Living Proof and Gwenyth Paltrow’s Goop. However, the number of celebrities creating makeup lines has become overwhelming. Just in 2021 alone, Jennifer Lopez, Halsey, Priyanka Chopra, Vanessa Hudgens, Madison Beer and Addison Rae all released or announced a release of their own beauty products. The issue isn’t just that there are too many cooks in the kitchen, but rather that most of these brands add nothing new to the beauty industry. While some lines focus on having an inclusive shade range or being environmentally friendly, others are just makeup that most of us already have in a different packaging. Most celebrity makeup brands are unnecessary and just take attention away from other up-and-coming brands.
A few celebrity beauty brands that are especially unnecessary are Kylie Cosmetics, REM Beauty and Pleasing. I know that accusing Kylie Jenner, Ariana Grande and Harry Styles (respectively) of creating useless products is quite bold. They all have a very defined brand and aesthetic, but their products are just not worth the expense. Kylie Cosmetics became insanely popular for the lip kits, which came in a variety of shades and styles and were high quality. But now, Kylie Cosmetics doesn’t focus on a certain aesthetic or quality. Their website features everything from fake lashes to overly-crowded eye shadow palettes and even skin care. Instead of focusing on what makes the brand so special, Kylie Cosmetics produces anything and everything in order to turn out a profit, and in the process, they ended up creating a line of mediocre makeup that is consistently criticized by the beauty community. Meanwhile, newer celebrity makeup companies don’t seem to have a focus or anything unique. REM Beauty, Ariana Grande’s new company, has a futuristic and space aesthetic, but the products themselves aren’t particularly special. The bold-colored highlighter toppers and liquid eyeshadows come in colorful and bright shimmery shades and are very on-point with the overall theme of the brand.
But other products missed the mark. There was an opportunity to make eyeliner, eyeshadow palettes and lip products that were also colorful and metallic, but instead, they come in shades that could be found literally anywhere else. The line, overall, is underwhelming, especially since Ariana herself has such a well-known look. Harry Styles also dropped a beauty line in the last year: Pleasing. Right now, the line only has three types of products, the main event being nail polishes. The packaging for these polishes is beautiful. The product itself is pretty plain, as the only colors are black, white, pink and a pearly topper. Other than the topper, these shades are colors that anyone already has a bottle of at home, and they’re extremely overpriced at $20 a bottle. Pleasing’s skin care products are much more exciting, with the Pearlescent Illuminating Serum having mini pearls in the bottle and the Pleasing Pen providing a cooling sensation for the lips and eyes, containing unique ingredients like okra and lingonberry. Let’s hope that Pleasing either sticks with skin care or ups the ante with their nail polishes.
Besides creating their own brands, celebrities and other companies have been collaborating with makeup brands non-stop. Colourpop, for example, had some of the most innovative and exciting makeup on the market from 2016 to 2018. From their iconic Super Shock Shadows to their Lippie Stix, they offered not only new forms of makeup but also makeup in colors that we hadn’t seen before. Now, they seem to have hit a wall, mostly making collaborative collections. Recently, they’ve had collections with the NBA, “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and even “The Mandalorian.” The packaging is certainly fun and creative, but the products themselves are all things we’ve seen before. Morphe, as well, has reached a point where most of their drops are collaborations, specifically with social media stars. The products tend to be hit or miss, but overall, it just feels unnecessary. Morphe could create a brightly colored eyeshadow palette without collaborating with Sour Patch Kids. Other brands create collaborations that are just too expensive. Urban Decay recently collaborated with Marvel’s “Eternals” movie, creating a collection that is almost $300. The eyeshadow palette itself is $65 at full price, more expensive than the Naked palettes—and the Kathleen Lights x Colourpop Zodiac palette is basically a dupe for it.
Two celebrity makeup lines that, in my opinion, actually add something new and exciting to the market are Rare and Fenty Beauty. Rihanna’s Fenty launched in 2017 and has created many products that several other makeup lines have been recreating ever since. The Pro Filt’r foundations and concealers come in 50 shades, and other products including the bronzers and highlighters in this brand are made for all skin tones. The Fenty Gloss Bombs are consistently rated as some of the best available, and Fenty helped start up the trend of body make up with their Body Sauce. Fenty not only promotes inclusivity and innovation, but they set the bar so high that other brands can’t help but follow their lead. Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty is another unique celebrity brand that has a mission statement to promote inclusion. Rare focuses on individual beauty rather than promoting a certain look to strive towards—and they provide easy to use and cohesive products to do so with, as the line contains mostly cream products that are easy to blend together. As well, the packaging for Rare’s makeup is meant to be accessible for people of all abilities to use. The screw-top lids on Rare’s products have a tab attached on top so that the makeup is easier to open for people with arthritis to use.
The beauty industry doesn’t need a line or collaboration from every celebrity. Celebrities are using their name to sell while contributing products that often don’t add anything new or exciting to the market. Consumers would rather buy innovative and creative products or at least products of good quality that they can keep coming back to. In short, we want less Addison and more Anastasia.