02: Male Celebrities are Launching High-End Skincare Lines
What to make of Brad Pitt's Le Domaine, and Travis Barker's Barker Wellness.
It wasn’t long ago that we were teased by news of male celebrities like Harry Styles, Machine Gun Kelly, and Tyler the Creator entering into the beauty scene, only to then be bombarded with indistinguishable variations of gender-fluid nail polish lines. Even non-celebrity brands like Faculty, and To Be Freak got in on the action of guy-friendly nail polish. And while we’re glad to see men experimenting and becoming more comfortable with beauty products, the deluge of nail-polish all felt a bit unserious.
Well, now it seems, we’re about to get more serious with celebrities like Brad Pitt and Travis Barker both recently unveiling their newest projects: luxury skincare lines. Let’s take a look.
Brad Pitt’s Le Domaine is a genderless skincare line that consists of 4 products at launch: a cleansing emulsion ($80), serum ($385), fluid cream ($310), and cream ($320). His inspiration? Goop. Mr. Pitt readily acknowledged to Vogue that he “loves what Gwyneth has done with Goop.” However, beyond entering the same industry as his friendly-ex, it seems he’s taking inspiration elsewhere. With three of the four offerings priced above $300, including two versions of the cream, it’s hard not to draw some comparison to another recent headline-making prestige brand that launched with two versions of their own signature cream, Augustinus Bader. Even the messaging sounds similar, as there is talk about exclusive molecules GSM10 and ProGr2, developed by European Professors, that exists in every product in the range, not dissimilar to Augustinus Bader’s TFC8 that is used across their own range as well.
Le Domaine’s story though, reminds us a lot of Vintner’s Daughter and Caudalie in its reliance on grapes, and wine-making, heck they even use the word terroir to describe their ingredient philosophy. We also learned from Estee Laundry that Caudalie’s founder has already alluded to the similar storytelling on their Instagram. The idea for Le Domaine apparently started when Brad Pitt was at Chateau Miraval (yes, THAT one of the Pitt v. Jolie infamy), and developed in partnership with the Perrin family of vintners. And it’s not that the brand story is unoriginal per se, it’s just that grape/wine-making narratives in skincare have been done before and haven’t really seemed to resonate.
The products do look exquisite, and the science looks like it’s taking a page from Augustinus Bader, though, if this exclusive launch interview with Vogue is any indication, it might be hard to make a compelling case for why one should be spending this much on products that seem inspired by products that already exist, nor taking the entire business seriously from a handsome celebrity who doesn’t really seem to be even interested in skincare.
If there is anything we’ve seen, it’s that celebrities aren’t the rainmakers that people thought they’d be, especially amongst the younger generation of buyers who strive for authenticity. Goop, it should be said, is an exception to the celebrity-founder mold, because Gwyneth fully immerses herself into the brand and built an entire empire from it, even eschewing paychecks from Marvel for Ayahuasca documentaries, which is something that rarely happens. Case in point, Gwyn’s former bestie, Madonna’s similarly high-end and tightly curated MDNA skincare line, had a big launch but judging by the tumbleweeds online (a popular Google search for MDNA Skincare is: does it still exist?) — just didn’t seem to resonate. Brad Pitt’s first foray as the face of a skincare brand almost feels farcical, as though he’s half in on the joke of celebrity-skincare lines. Maybe there’s time to reconfigure from the initial rollout, but as it is, we don’t quite see how this works out, unless they get a serious industry player in their corner to back their products and transition their messaging to focus more on the products and science.
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We kind of scratched our heads at this one: “Who is asking for a wellness line from Travis Barker?” But then we remembered, he’s married into the Kardashian family, the same empire that built Kylie Cosmetics, SKKN by Kim, and his wife’s wellness platform, Poosh, and it became a question of why wouldn’t he join the family business?
Barker Wellness is a range of CBD-centric wellness products spanning skincare, edibles, and bath products. Despite the breadth of product, the price range firmly remains on the aspirational end of the spectrum, with a 1-month (30 count) supply of CBD gummies at $65, a 2-in-1 cleanser & mask at $95, and sleep tincture at $80.
You might be asking who the customer is that would spend these prices for CBD-infused personal care products when they could get something luxurious from a respected purveyor of CBD-centric wellness like retailer Standard Dose for the same price range, but it might make sense in the grand scheme of the Kardashian business machine. CBD is becoming more widely accepted by the day, but is still regarded as the wild west as far as regulation is concerned, to the point that many investors won’t even accept decks from businesses that are involved with CBD in any way. Thus, it makes sense that the punk-rocker of the Kardashian klan would be the one to bridge this gap and go into CBD. The audience, we’d guess, is therefore not necessarily the CBD-audience. It would likely be the same one that the Kardashians target for Good American jeans and Skims, to Kylie Cosmetics and SKKN by Kim, which explains the aspirational-but-not-astronomical pricing of the products. And as CBD gains wider acceptance and coverage, the Kardashians will have something ready for their audience to explore.
The major drawback we can see immediately though, is that the packaging is decidedly not aligned with the elevated Kardashian aesthetic which in the past, has been a major point of differentiation and one of their stronger areas (love her or not, those Kim Kardashian perfume bottles are 🤌). The packaging direction was also a way for the Kardashians to say “there was a lot of thought that went into this,” which helped them stand out amongst celeb-influencer brands, but we don’t really see that here. On the other hand, this might be more true to what Travis Barker’s own aesthetic is, and the product designers may have been told to go for an aesthetic that resembles The Ordinary in its straight-forward, informational approach. The biggest risk here is whether it will necessarily resonate with the intended audience.
It’s much too early to tell where either line will go. But what we can gather from precedent is that the brand has to feel true the founder in its entire DNA. If we were to point to a north star as far as male celebrity skincare brands go, Pharrell’s Humanrace and Francisco Costa’s Costa Brazil are exemplary: distinctive packaging, an interesting premise, and price points that settle nicely with the intended audience. But for every Humanrace, there are countless House 99’s, the skincare brand that L’Oreal launched with David Beckham in 2018 that is now something neither party wants us to remember.
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Disclaimer: By nature, some analysis may be speculative, and should not be taken as fact. Views and opinion expressed are just that, and should not be taken as endorsements, nor advice (financial or otherwise).
Disclosures: Newsletter may use affiliate links. Underneath It All is run by Garçon’s Media, which is not a shareholder of any beauty company, nor vice versa.
Finally, a smart review that isn't just bashing celebrity lines like what I see from Caroline Hirons and Angela Caglia. Why do you think celebrities are creating their own lines rather than investing in someone or a team that is actually in the industry to do a more legitimate line?