Recently celebrities have been launching makeup brands like Fenty Beauty by Rihanna, Rare Beauty by Selena Gomez, and Haus Labs by Lady Gaga. While some are more affordable than others, price doesn’t always correlate to quality. LLB Online stated that celebrity beauty is a $716 billion industry and includes skincare, hair care and makeup products, making it unclear where to start.
A key factor in quality is how affordable a product is. For example, Haus Labs tends to be very expensive with an eyeshadow quad in which each shadow fades on the eyes throughout the day and doesn’t blend smoothly for a $49 price tag. Rare Beauty offers a 6-pan eyeshadow palette for almost half the price at $29. Compared to Haus Labs, the Rare Beauty eyeshadow palette offers a wide variety of glitters and matte colors that are unique and stick to the eye. Another win for Selena Gomez is her viral soft pinch liquid blush priced at $23, which gained mass popularity across social media. The hype lives up to the quality, as the blush is highly pigmented and has lots of product for the price. Haus Labs includes good quality products but their products are considered luxury with high prices. Another great alternative is Flower Beauty by Drew Barrymore, as her products are sold in select drugstores such as Kroger, while Haus Labs and Rare Beauty are exclusively sold at Sephora. Flower Beauty offers a wide variety of innovative products for fair prices. Ranging from $9-$20. With this, both Fenty Beauty and Haus Labs are considered “luxury brands”, meaning their products use premium ingredients and have high quality packaging with an equally high price tag.
While affordability is important to consumers, the quality of product simply outweighs all. Fenty Beauty by Rihanna easily offers the best highlighter on the market. The Killawatt Freestyle Highlighter priced at $40 is beautiful on the skin and doesn’t fade making it worth its price tag. With unique colors like Trophy Wife, a vivid gold, and Wattabrat, a bright pink, Fenty offers a color for everyone of all shades and skin types. With brands being versatile it means their quality can be subjective. This can be seen with Rare Beauty’s Positive Light Silky Touch Highlighter, priced at $25, which is nowhere near the quality of Fenty’s. While the highlighter is pigmented and blends well, the product is too soft, pressing too hard can break the entire pan, which is disappointing because of the quality being really good and affordable. Most want a product that can survive through it all, but good quality doesn’t always mean it is a great product. GXVE beauty by Gwen Stefani exemplifies this in many different ways. Her Xtra Sauce Longwear Vinyl Liquid Lipstick is the definition of a true red, but it is drying on the lips and smells like nail-polish remover as soon as it is opened.The color is absolutely gorgeous, but the quality does not translate.
With affordability and quality out of the way, there are cleaner and better options with celebrity makeup brands. Rose Inc. by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley earns the clean at Sephora stamp, meaning it contains healthy products and is cruelty free. Whereas, Flower Beauty is cruelty-free, but their products contain talc, a type of asbestos that is known to cause breakouts and skin irritation. Brands like Fenty Beauty and REM beauty by Ariana Grande are also cruelty-free and vegan but still contain talc along with other harmful ingredients like Dimethicone, a good ingredient for the skin that has detrimental effects on the environment. These products do create pigment, but their long term effects to the environment make them hard to support.
After reviewing brands, the best celebrity makeup brand is Rare Beauty by Selena Gomez. Each of her products is vegan and clean by Sephora. Her products are affordable, contain good products and the quality values the price point. A fan favorite -that isn’t the viral soft pinch blush- is the Warm Wishes Effortless Bronzer Sticks that come in six shades . Another great brand is About-Face by Halsey, sold exclusively at Ulta, clean ingredients dominate the lineup and the products work for all skin types. A fan favorite includes the Matte Fluid Eye Paint, which is highly pigmented and comes in a variety of gorgeous colors. A brand to avoid is REM beauty by Ariana Grande because of quality concerns. Most notably her Essential Drip Lip Oil which receives a 3.7 star from 473 reviewers. The product is very drying on the lips and is not hydrating, which is expected of a lip oil.
In essence, the world of celebrity makeup brands can be a tough one to navigate, but reviews on Ulta and Sephora are always a great place to start. With celebrity endorsements being at the forefront of makeup, finding the best products can be hard, but with makeup these opinions are subjective, what works for someone else might not work for others, and that’s perfectly fine. In the end, find what works best.
