The latest must-have accessory for a luxury brand? A beauty line.
This year has seen luxury fashion labels enter beauty in rapid succession. Balmain dropped a new fragrance collection in August and has makeup on the way, while Celine launched its Celine Beauté makeup in October and Prada Beautyâs just over one-year-old makeup and skincare line made its US debut in January. The pipeline for 2025 is even more packed, with Miu Miuâs coming makeup debut, the comeback of Marc Jacobs Beauty and Balenciaga and Alexander McQueenâs return to fine fragrance.
The struggle for all of them will be to find the right niche in a market already inundated with luxury beauty.
Among luxury fashion brands, a comprehensive beauty line, complete with fragrance, makeup and skincare, was once limited to a handful of top-tier labels like Dior and Chanel. Now, as the sector faces a spending slowdown, beauty is providing a bright spot for growth even as other categories decline. While Keringâs luxury brands saw a 27 percent decline in wholesale sales in the third quarter of 2024, beauty, eyewear and royalties grew. LVMH also reported that beauty and selective retailing, which includes Sephora, were the only categories that did not decline that quarter. More than that, itâs a chance to win over entry-level customers who have been turned off by price increases.
âYou might start as a 20-year-old buying lip balm, and then as a 30-year-old you might be buying a Prada bag,â said Jamie Ray, co-founder of influencer marketing agency Buttermilk. He added that launching beauty âallows them to bring in this Gen-Z consumer and not only diversify their income streams, but also diversify what audience they are speaking to.â
But theyâre entering a very saturated market. Beauty lines from luxury labels donât just have to compete against one another, but also conglomerate-backed brands and popular indies like makeup artist Gucci Westmanâs Westman Atelier and cult favourite fragrance label D.S. & Durga. This next crop of luxury labels must find a way to differentiate themselves from all of the above without compromising brand equity.
The Right Retail Mix
Classic luxury brandsâ beauty labels first emerged into a world dominated by department stores, but brands must now establish their burgeoning lines with younger shoppers in a market where Chanelâs makeup can be found at Ulta Beauty and TikTok has become a major sales driver for Dior blush and lip oil.
New beauty labels face a challenging environment in traditional luxury channels, as department stores, travel retail and high-end e-tailers struggle to grow sales, or in the case of Net-a-Porter and Farfetch, phase out beauty entirely. To deal with this reality, brands are taking a variety of approaches: Celine and Bottega Veneta have opted for more exclusivity in their distribution, mostly keeping to their own channels. Others, like Prada Beauty, are going wider with a presence at both Nordstrom and Sephora.
Department stores, historically the selling point for luxury fashionâs beauty lines, are still a big part of their retail launch equation. While Celine is now controlling distribution of its first lipstick, it opted to gain visibility with a limited-time pre-launch pop-up at Harrods in September. Department stores, including Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman, are the only channel Balmain Beauty is selling in besides their own.
To stand out in a growing crowd at department stores â just this fall, Nordstrom added Carolina Herrera, Dolce & Gabbana and Burberry makeup to its lineup â brands are getting more creative with attention-grabbing activations. Prada Beautyâs January 2024 launch at Nordstrom began with a big New York takeover in Nordstromâs flagship store, including events, sampling and a device to add Prada fashion prints onto beauty products.
These activations â and brandsâ choice of overall retail mix â are about finding a balance between reaching younger shoppers new to the brand as well as existing fashion customers.
âThe designer beauty customer is a mix of loyal fans who love the brand, who are excited to buy the beauty products, as well as some curious newcomers,â said Debbi Hartley-Triesch, executive vice president and general merchandise manager of the accessories and beauty divisions at Nordstrom.
Brands are also tapping the power of their own standalone stores to find that balance. A âSense Portalâ beauty section set up in Balmainâs new Paris store is geared toward welcoming entry-level shoppers, said Claire Fermont-Langlais, the brandâs vice president at Estée Lauder Companies. Its attention-grabbing graphic display with music âcatches the attention of a younger crowd, because it talks to them in their language,â she said, while Gen-Z star Dove Cameron was named its beauty brand ambassador.
But itâs also a priority to attract high-spending fashion customers as part of the brandâs âclientellingâ strategies for what it calls its VICs, or very important customers, said Fermont-Langlais. At the brandâs most recent runway show, top customers were gifted boxes of the fragrance, and were also invited to the store opening party that included an appearance by Cameron to hype up the beauty launch.
Splicing Designer DNA
When it comes to marketing their beauty products, brands are seeking the right way to balance their fashion positioning and viral social campaigns.
Licensing partner Estée Lauder Companies, for example, worked closely with Balmain creative director Olivier Rousteing on the Balmain Beauty concept, which was incorporated into the brandâs runway show with perfume bottle and eyeshadow palette-shaped bags, as well as glittery dresses splashed with graphics of lipstick and nail polish. It served as a walking ad for the brandâs upcoming makeup launch, the date of which has yet to be revealed.
Jamie Ray, co-founder of influencer marketing agency Buttermilk, said thereâs a delicacy to balancing luxury and mass appeal. His agency was behind the influencer marketing campaigns that initially drove interest in Diorâs Glow Lip Oil years ago, as well Prada Beautyâs Prada Balm in Astral Pink earlier this year. The lip balm took off after being featured in the music video âPlease Please Pleaseâ by Sabrina Carpenter (who was later named an ambassador for Prada Beauty) as well as a simultaneous influencer campaign on TikTok and Instagram by Buttermilk.
Luxury brands have been experimenting more with TikTok, having seen the appâs power in lifting sales for beauty products as well as reaching the aspirational Gen-Z shopper, a crucial demographic. But while theyâre more open to it, theyâre also reckoning with how to do so without diluting their brand positioning.
Ray said that in dealing with luxury brands, Buttermilk is especially detailed on campaign briefs and carefully vets all influencers and sponsored content before it goes live. For the Prada Beauty US launch campaign, Buttermilk selected 10,000 influencers, requiring what it called âelegance with an edgeâ and âplayful sophisticationâ in their aesthetic. The combination of Gen-Z favourite Carpenter and the social marketing was a hit â the brand sold out in two categories in and ranked number one in Sephora for two months after the campaign.
âYouâve still got to be mindful of brand reputation. And thereâs always that thing with luxury fashion houses as they put the veil up, and whatâs behind the veil is what creates the intrigue,â said Ray. âIf you pull that veil off too much, and it becomes too accessible, then you cross the line.â