Buyers beware — celebrity beauty brands value quantity over quality

Over the past few years that I’ve started buying and wearing makeup, I’ve noticed an undeniable trend: the explosion of new celebrity beauty brands. Fans are naturally drawn to products associated with a famous person they admire, which makes it easy for celebrities to prioritize profits and image over anything else.

From Kylie Jenner’s lip kits in 2015 to Dolly Parton’s fragrance in 2021, it seems as though every public figure and influencer nowadays wants to establish themselves beyond the red carpet. Singers like Ariana Grande, actresses like Millie Bobby Brown, models like Hailey Bieber and even social media influencers are jumping on this bandwagon and partnering with or creating their own beauty brands.

In doing this, people who aren’t passionate about beauty products take opportunities from those who do care about it. It’s also well known that people do their best work and put in the most effort for things they care about. If a ce- lebrity isn’t truly invested in the products they’re creating, they run the risk of creating faulty products for consumers.

This was the case with Jenner’s skincare line, which has received a lot of bad reviews over the years — particularly for the face wash, which users found to cause rashes and turn brown. Popular skincare influencer Hyram Yarbro was one of many consumers to pass on the brand, which he reviewed in a YouTube video.

Makeup gurus on YouTube who establish their own brands are warranted in their entrepreneurship. Manny Guiterrez, for example, found his fame on YouTube by reviewing popular brands and sharing his passion for makeup with a wide audience. It wasn’t a surprise when he launched Lunar Beauty in 2018, because it relates to how he gained fame and what he cares about. The problem lies with those who are creating brands simply because they want to make money and maintain relevance rather than because they are passionate about it.

When asked about their intentions behind creating a beauty brand, celebrities often give vague answers or ones that could be crafted by any makeup brand founder. For example, on r.e.m. beauty’s website discussing their mission, Grande writes, “it means so much to me to be able to create a product line for absolutely everybody and anybody who wants to wear it and feel incredible.” She goes on to explain that she wants people to feel even more beautiful in their own skin and providing the tools to do so is a “gift” that she’ll “never take for granted.”

Grande’s r.e.m beauty claims innovativeness and prides itself in such, but besides their interesting looking, spaceinspired packaging, the products themselves aren’t that groundbreaking. I’m not saying the products are bad — I’ve used them, and they aren’t — but it does suggest that celebrity beauty brands overvalue image and profit. This isn’t to say that celebrities never have pure intentions when creating beauty brands. Tennis player Naomi Osaka launched her skincare line Kenlò in 2021 which caters to melanated skin tones and focuses on uplifting women.

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