There is no end to celebrity cosmetic brands. After celebrities like Rihanna and Kylie Jenner made their way into the cosmetic world and their brands, shortly after, became successes, it wasn’t too long until other celebrities followed in their footsteps. Almost every celebrity has tried to find their way into the very competitive and crowded beauty and cosmetic industry. Celebrities like Selena Gomez, Harry Styles, and even baseball player Alex Rodriguez have tried to launch their beauty brands in hopes that they will have success. However, although many of them did find success with dabbling in the cosmetic industry, many also failed tremendously, tanking their overall brand.
Celebrity adulation is nothing new, and many celebrities have used it to their advantage. They enforce the idea that if you use their product, you will have no other choice but to look the way they do which drives the revenue up. However, the downside to this is the actual quality of the cosmetics themselves. Because celebrities know that if they endorse it, the consumers will buy it no matter what. For instance, Kylie Jenner’s lip kits were transformative from 2015 to 2017. Jenner credited her lip kits with giving her the plump and pillowy look that her fans were striving to achieve. However, as the lip kits grew in popularity, the more Kylie had to mass-produce them, which drove the initial quality of the lipsticks down. Fans and consumers started to realize this, and her revenue declined. However, the young billionaire decided to take a different direction with her cosmetic brand and drive her revenue back up.
As a result, consumers started second-guessing the quality of celebrity beauty brands. Due to the distrust in the consumers, celebrities have begun to launch their beauty brands and attach them to a social cause to make it seem more progressive and build trust between the consumer and the celebrity themselves. However, this can sometimes backfire. For instance, a New York beauty reporter, Jessica DeFino, questioned this practice’s authenticity, stating, “Why not launch a company that makes it easier for all beauty brands to create accessible packaging, instead? Why not use your influence to take the entire industry better, rather than polluting it with more products?”
It’s safe to say that the Celebrity cosmetic industry is growing, whether celebrity or not. We must hold cosmetic brands to account for the products they produce and make sure that they are created with the consumer in mind and not just revenue.
