Girls like stars: Why do celebrities make cosmetics
Text: Roxana Kiseleva
To sell cosmetics, brands love to cooperate with public figures: pop stars, actors and models - only now beauty bloggers have been added to them. Launching your own cosmetic brand is a risky move, but if everything goes well, in the end it turns out to be beneficial for both the celebrity and the partner company. We remember how it worked before, and tell why the news about the collaborations of Rihanna and Kanye still should be taken seriously.
↑ Fragrance Britney Spears Private Show
The history of celebrity fragrances began in 1980 with the release of Sophia Loren Sophia perfume. The real boom, however, happened closer to zero when the spirits of Cher, Britney Spears and even the Lube group appeared. With cosmetics, everything is much more modest: Kylie Jenner’s sets are here and Josie Maran, the Hollywood organics who have reached the shelves of American Sephora.
Marketing is different. Buying a luxury perfume for which an actress from the "A +" list was invited for huge money, we get an incredible beauty commercial and a fairy tale about an exclusive offer - for example, a special garden in which flowers were grown just for this perfumery composition. Buying the scent of another teen idol, we get a hastily made photo shoot and a dubious bonus in the form of an autograph on the back of the box, which we will soon throw away anyway. Maybe it’s better to support your favorite singer by buying her album in iTunes? Probably all the same, yes.
The stars do not develop anything themselves, no matter what they promise us in advertising brochures. No matter how luxurious the hair of Jennifer Aniston may be, it looked that way long before entering the Living Proof market. Moreover, it is fair to doubt that the person whose skin, body and hair are engaged in the best specialists of Hollywood, will independently understand the banks of a friendly brand instead of spending the scarce time on family and friends. But, buying a product with the signature of your favorite celebrity, we expect to "steal" a part of her personality - this can be at least your favorite color in the design of the bottle. For example, Nicky Minaj did manage to surprise everyone, albeit with enormous packaging costs, but we expected more than just an awkward bottle of secondary design with compote (instead of the promised sperm and blood) inside from outrageous Lady Gaga.
↑ Aroma Her Secret Game brand Antonio Banderas
It is important to understand that at the time of the popularity of "star" fragrances, most knew nothing about niche perfumery. What the stores offered — an endless stream of Dior, Guerlain walk-through flankers and down the list — was not perceived as an object of desire, as Jo Malone's colognes wrapped in rustling paper now appear to be. In principle, all interest in buying anything star-related was due to the fact that there was nothing to choose from. The situation has changed dramatically, but even now, when everyone admits that everything is in love with millennials, and the best way to sell a product is to create hype around it on social networks, bloggers prefer to cooperate with already well-known brands rather than build their own empires.
Appearing at the right time, numerous "star" brands of perfumery have occupied their niche and bring a stable income to the owners. If the fragrances branded with the name of Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber are primarily interesting for fans, then Antonio Banderas’s perfume line is doing great: over twenty years, sixty flavors were released, and the brand seems to have no plans to stop (though the actor does not go very well). The brand’s commercial success, at least in Russia, is due to its low price: until recently, our choice of perfumery was limited to an assortment of large chains, annoying direct sales companies and stores of dubious origin. Choosing between something that is bottled at the Loren Cosmetic plant and toilet water of a famous person for a thousand rubles, the average consumer still chooses the second.
One of the most interesting recent restarts is Flirt Cosmetics. The most young brand of the concern Estée Lauder in Russia was remembered as a nondescript brand, whose assortment was represented by three types of carcasses that nobody misses. The original concept thus collapsed, but last summer Flirt Cosmetics returned with the assistance of activist and model Amber Rose. Now the brand offers lipstick color changing, breath freshener and strange aggregates for gluing false eyelashes. I wonder how successful the return will be.
↑ Lip Phetish Lipstick, released with Amber Rose
Another long-awaited story - cosmetic line Fenty Beauty. “So Marie Antoinette would go to the gym,” says Rihanna about her Fenty x Puma collection, while simultaneously showing the forgotten trend of the zero at the podium — sneakers on stilettos. Whether such extravagance justifies itself, we will see, but from Fenty Beauty, whose launch has already been scheduled for this autumn, it is definitely worth waiting for unbanal decisions. The first product seen — pink holographic lip gloss — flashed on the backstage of the Fenty x Puma SS '17 show. Partner Rihanna will perform concern LVMH, so everything is very serious.
And in February, Kanye West announced the launch of his own cosmetic line, and the world literally went crazy - no one expected such news. The release of cosmetics named after itself looks like an elegant provocation and, it seems, it is. Kanye is a notable troll of the fashion industry: we all remember the monstrous Yeeze Season 4 with falling models and a two-hour delay due to the late Kardashian-Jenner clan. So far, all we know about West's cosmetics business is the brand name - Donda, in honor of the late mother of the creator. The range of the brand can equally well be a completely serious line of skin care, and one varnish for 99 cents - West is an unpredictable person. In general, we are waiting, and thanks for being alive, Kanye.
Whatever the cheating it all looked like, one has to admit: the world saw a lot of cool cosmetic products that do not become less cool, because a non-Hollywood actress was engaged in bookkeeping. Here is a good example from the past: the top model of Somali origin, Iman, who released the tonal basis for different skin colors to the cosmetic market in 1994, continues to develop the concept of "cosmetics for all" to this day.
Against the background of the metamorphosis occurring in the beauty industry these days, one can also count on the transformation of the entire category of star products into something really interesting. Today, it is not enough to sign on the bank to buy it: the content should also be interesting, in order to get rid of the same niche perfumery, for example. Successes Rihanna and Kanye in the field of fashion can give them a credit of trust: these people really invest in projects, so that their recognition becomes not a decisive circumstance.
Photo: Aroma-Butik, Letual, SpellSmell, Flirt Cosmetics