Mainstream Luxe Beauty

Luxury brands are investing in "status beauty," using these lines as a new form of luxury signaling, but can brands keep up with the ever-changing beauty wave? Can luxury brands maintain their prestige identity in an industry focused on inclusivity and trend-driven launches?

Lily-Rose Depp for Chanel Beauty. Available via IG @lilyrose_depp © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.

Beauty is becoming a significant marker of affluence, with extensive coverage of beauty launches on social media platforms. Luxury brands, in response, have been creating beauty lines to gain more mainstream appeal through luxury signaling.

Although owning luxury items has always served as a status symbol, owning luxury beauty products is a new form of signaling, often more obtainable for younger generations than traditional luxury pieces. But how can luxury brands maintain prestige and simultaneously appeal to a broader audience?

This concept of "status beauty" has emerged as the latest beauty movement, with heritage brands like Hermes and Louis Vuitton recently announcing their entrances into the prestige beauty space with the help of mavens like Pat McGrath. This is pointing towards a more profound shift for luxury fashion houses, showing that they are beginning to take beauty more seriously as a category. Though this is partly due to the economy's current state, it also points to beauty becoming an increasingly important space for the new generation of luxury consumers.

Luxury fashion has always been an elitist space, emphasizing exclusivity through pricing, sizing, and overall identity. Luxury fashion is successful in part because some consumers want to be part of an exclusive group and want to signal that desire to others. Although some purchases are more aspirational, most of them are made to communicate this to others.

The logo-based designer purchases of the 2010s are a great example of this, such as the LV tracksuit and Gucci slides. Although certain items were designed to follow specific trends within fashion, most luxury designers offer more timeless and curated pieces that can be worn for decades, such as the Burberry trench coat or Chanel 2.55 handbag.

The growing popularity of short-form videos on platforms like TikTok led to an explosion in the beauty industry, changing how brands create, release, and market their products. This accelerated trend-based beauty cycle has resulted in a wide array of products launching quickly, all with differing competitive advantages to play the emergence of makeup as an expression of personal identity and connection to others. If a brand can successfully capture consumer attention and go “viral,” they are more likely to see consumer loyalty and generate more attention for future launches.

Prestige beauty sits in a unique corner of the market since products allow consumers and creators to play into the traditional “status” piece of luxury purchases. Luxury makeup can communicate a person's values, interests in beauty, and social position. Prestige beauty got its first boost of popularity with the “Shelfie,” or a photo of the beauty products one uses that would be posted online. Now, brands are getting more involved in dynamic content, such as Get Ready with Me videos, new product reviews, and PR package unboxings.

Beauty has always been a more trend-driven industry, meaning to find some form of mainstream success that luxury brands must launch products designed to fit within what’s trending at the time. So how can luxury brands keep up with this accelerated trend cycle and make more accessible products without losing the core of their brand identity?

There’s an incredibly delicate line for these luxury houses to walk, a balancing act between exclusivity and mass appeal. Yes, it’s important to release products that will be successful in the current beauty market and generate revenue, but it’s also important that these products are in alignment with the DNA of the brand.

A luxury fashion house that walks this line well is Dior, who has found a good pace of releasing innovative trend-forward products while developing hero products that are in alignment with the prestige of the brand. Their skincare-focused glowy products are in alignment with the brand’s emphasis on natural beauty while clean and elegant packaging make it perfect for consumers wanting to show off their products. The brand was ranked as the third largest prestige business in the US, according to WWD. Yet their Diorshow Mascara, Backstage Glow Face palette, Lip Glow Oil, and Rosy Glow Blush have all had their viral moments on social media without being deemed “overhyped.”

Chanel is another example of a luxury fashion house with a successful makeup line, which came out in 1924. Chanel even dropped a book at the end of 2024, Chanel: The Allure of Makeup, which takes consumers through how the brand has approached color cosmetics since its inception. Their La Creme Main, Les Beiges Healthy Glow bronzing cream, and Les Beiges Water-Fresh Complexion Touch are all hero products that have successfully found widespread success.

Other luxury fashion brands with makeup lines are getting more creative with online marketing and personalized brand experiences. The week of Valentine’s Day, many luxury brands, including Prada Beauty and YSL Beauty, held special, themed pop-up events in New York City. Brands offered free products, testing of their most popular formulas, and experiences such as a photo booth for attendees of the Prada pop-up to take photos in.

These activations allow consumers to document their experiences, potentially convert them into becoming loyal to the brands, and organically market to other consumers over social media. Offering unique experiences that anyone can attend or participate in highlights a departure from the traditional notions of exclusivity within beauty and is redefining the conventional notions of luxury while keeping the essence of these houses DNA.

Luxury fashion houses can make the shift into more mainstream beauty if they are intentional about it. They make the transition more seamless by staying true to their heritage, creating an ethos that aligns with and makes sense for their brand, and implementing innovation in their products and in their marketing and consumer activities.