A lot has changed in the beauty industry since Marc Jacobs first launched his beauty brand in 2013. TikTok has replaced YouTube when it comes to setting trends, cream blush has become a standard in consumers’ makeup bags, and fragrance has overtaken color as the industry’s most dynamic category. Amid such changes, the original Marc Jacobs beauty line quietly went on sale before disappearing from shelves altogether in 2021, with beauty fans left wondering what happened to the once-beloved brand.
But, five years later, Marc Jacobs Beauty is back. The legendary fashion designer’s return to makeup goes live on Marc Jacobs’ online store on May 28, followed by arrival at Sephora.com on June 1. The new collection of colorful eyeliners, eyeshadows, lipsticks, blushes and more hits Sephora shelves in North America, the U.K. and Australia in September.
“I think having a good time and enjoying the shopping for makeup, the ritual of putting on makeup, what pleasure you can have in that situation, [is important],” said Jacobs. “I think joy and pleasure are hugely important, especially when there’s so much stuff in the day that isn’t playful or joyous.”
And front and center in the new iteration of Marc Jacobs Beauty is a familiar favorite: Daisy. The Marc Jacobs Daisy fragrance, a pillar of Coty’s portfolio since its original launch in 2007, has already inspired countless flankers and now serves as a through line in the fashion designer’s anticipated return to beauty.
“For fragrance, for beauty, for clothing, for accessories, the process is very much the same. I start by saying, ‘I have no idea. I don’t know what I want to do,’” said Jacobs. “[In developing beauty] I thought about when we started to do Daisy, and I had these abstract ideas of what I thought the story behind Daisy should be. And we ended up with this really big Daisy on the top of the bottle as the cap. … That, to me, was like, ‘Well, this makes sense. This is like doing a [fashion] show. This symbol, these materials, these colors, together, project a spirit.’ And that’s what I brought into working on the beauty, was going back to that sort of thinking.”
To tie the new Marc Jacobs’ makeup line in with the already established fragrance arm, a 3D daisy motif appears throughout the packaging for Marc Jacobs Beauty 2.0, including atop the chubby yellow blush stick and on the silver metallic powder bronze compact. Daisy oil also appears throughout the formulations as a skin-enhancing ingredient.
The 3D motifs, which look akin to Jeff Koons balloon animals, also take the form of red hearts atop the chunky lipsticks and purple stars on the mascara tubes. It’s a sharp departure from the original Marc Jacobs Beauty packaging, whose sleek, black-and-white compacts blended in with the aisles of Sephora. In today’s beauty environment, standing out is more imperative.
“I did feel the [original] packaging should be black and it should be simple, which made it much more in line with how sophisticated beauty products were packaged. So it was like coming up with my version of something that was very known,” said Jacobs. “I was encouraged in a different direction [by Coty]. I remember the conversations as being, ‘We don’t want to fit into that world. We don’t want to sit in that world. We want to do something that’s more disruptive and different.’”
Coty has reason to encourage a more daring look, given the saturated beauty environment in which brands need to make a statement to stand out. “A lot has changed. In the time [between] we first did packaging and when we currently do packaging, there were lipsticks in the shape of a penis,” said Jacobs. In 2023, Isamaya Ffrench released a $95 lipstick encased in a silver metal penis, though the brand has since traded in the phallic case for traditional tubes.
Despite the playful packaging, the stakes of Marc Jacobs Beauty are high for Coty, which has produced Marc Jacobs fragrances since 2001 but only acquired the license for the makeup line from LVMH in 2023. In February, interim CEO Markus Strobel called the beauty conglomerate’s recent financial performance “disappointing.” In May, Coty reported a 1% decline in net revenue for the third quarter of fiscal year 2026 to $1.28 billion. The Marc Jacobs fashion line is also undergoing its own transition: in May, it was announced that LVMH would sell the brand to WHP Global, with Jacobs remaining on as creative director.
Coty announced its “Coty Curated” turnaround plan to return the company to growth. That plan includes reviewing its portfolio — Coty sold its remaining 25.8% stake in Wella to KKR for $750 million in December — and investing into its already robust fragrance portfolio, which includes the likes of Kylie Jenner’s fragrance line and licenses for designer brands like Burberry.
Marc Jacobs 2.0 follows a similar strategy to many beauty brands, leaning on an existing hero product to reinvigorate consumers. Bath & Body Works, MAC and Glossier have also sought to put renewed focus on existing icons and hero products in recent months. But Marc Jacobs Beauty, while relying on Daisy’s popularity, still has to introduce consumers to a whole new lineup of products and hope they’ll bite.
Those new products aim to merge the colorful payoff popular in 2016-era beauty with today’s demands for performance and longevity. Makeup artist Thomas de Kluyver gave a teaser of the products when he used them at Marc Jacobs’ Spring 2026 runway show in February, with girls sporting bold, berry lips or pastel blue eyeshadow.
“We are mixing different categories of products, so it’s really fun and rule-less, as well, when it comes to texture,” said Julie Palmieri, global marketing director at Marc Jacobs Beauty. “Even when it’s super performance with color, it will be super comfortable and infused with skin care. All of this is for us the formula manifesto that is really the anchor in the Marc Jacobs unique DNA.”
The second coming of Marc Jacobs Beauty will arrive on Sephora shelves amid high consumer expectations. Some fans still remember the Highliner gel eye pen or oversized bronzer from the first line. Colorful eyeliners and powder bronzers are back in the new line, but whether or not fans take to them like they did the originals remains to be seen from the first line
“I think everything is done with the intention of it being a great product that performs in a certain way and delivers a certain impact. But it’s not up to us, it’s up to the audience to decide [what they like],” said Jacobs. “It’s really up to the customer to decide which is working and which isn’t.”
