This week, I checked in on how Jennifer Lawrence’s new hair-care brand stacks up in an uneven celebrity beauty market. Additionally, Dove expands into fine fragrance, and The Center adds a new brand to its portfolio.
How does Jennifer Lawrence’s Mes hair-care brand stack up in a saturated celebrity beauty market?
If you’ve been wondering why Jennifer Lawrence has been popping up everywhere from Instagram to paparazzi shots outside of Dakota Johnson’s birthday party, you may now have your answer: On Tuesday, the Oscar-winning actress revealed the launch of her new hair-care brand, Mes.
Lawrence, known for her starring roles in “The Hunger Games” franchise and critically acclaimed films like “Silver Linings Playbook,” partnered with Arcaea founder and CEO Jasmina Aganovic to create Mes. The brand, which Lawrence teased with an Instagram post in October, will be sold exclusively via DTC. It includes a hair mask, a volumizing mist and a styling serum, with prices ranging from $34-$52.
“It was these three [products] because these go with the ethos of elongating your hair, like elongating your washed hair, spending less time in the bathroom,” Lawrence told Glossy. “The Good Roots spray is going to give you lift and keep your hair from getting oily. You won’t need a dry shampoo. It’s your built-in dry shampoo. The Restyling Serum is going to keep your hair’s shape and bring it back.
Lawrence said she wanted to partner with Aganovic after seeing her TED Talk on biotech’s role in beauty innovation. Aganovic, who is also the founder of fragrance brand Future Society, was not necessarily looking to partner with a famous founder, but she believes the quality of Mes’s products makes it more than just a standard celebrity beauty brand.
“I think people will see when this launches that this is fundamentally different. As wild as it is to say ‘building something with Jen,’ I don’t view it as [a celebrity brand],” said Aganovic. “This is so much more, and the reason for that is because she has this very specific vision for what she wanted to create that was a very real need in the market.”
Lawrence’s Mes brand launches with stylish visuals, an A-list face with flowing locks and a co-founder with established credentials in the biotech beauty space. But it also hits the market at a time when consumers may be increasingly skeptical of celebrities’ attempts to translate their fame into products, particularly in the saturated beauty sphere.
“The consumer is a lot smarter than when I started in this business. They no longer assume because you’re famous or because you’re beautiful that you have the secret,” said Pauline Brown, founder of executive development platform Aesthetic Intelligence Labs and former LVMH and Estée Lauder exec.
Hailey Bieber proved celebrity beauty could be a blockbuster business when she sold her skin-care and cosmetics brand Rhode to E.l.f. Beauty in a billion-dollar deal in 2025. But for every Rhode, at least a handful of celebrity-founded beauty brands are disappearing from shelves.
Scarlett Johansson’s skin-care brand The Outset shuttered in September, while E.l.f. Beauty announced the sale of the Keys Soulcare skin-care brand back to founder Alicia Keys in May. In October, Beauty Independent reported the shuttering of Halsey’s mass makeup brand Af94. Jared Leto’s skin- and hair-care line, Twentynine Palms, barely made it to the one-year mark before ceasing operations in 2023.
Turning fame into product sales requires a more direct connection with the public that movie stars like Leto and Johansson may not be accustomed to. Before launching Rhode, Hailey Bieber was already an established social media presence with the proven ability to turn her favorite products, like Beautystat’s vitamin C serum, into viral hits. Johansson, meanwhile, never joined social media even after launching The Outset.
“[With] the rise of social media, for better and for worse, there’s an ability for the consumer to see how attached the celebrity really is to the brand,” said Jon Tenan, managing director in Baird’s Global Consumer Investment Banking Group with a focus on beauty and wellness. “With Hailey Bieber’s Rhode, you can feel it’s who she is and her aesthetic. And she obviously has a very large and engaged following, which is huge for driving brand success, because, ultimately, one of the larger line items for so many young brands is marketing and customer acquisition spend.”
Lawrence may have learned from Johansson’s absence; she published her first Instagram post in September. But whether her social media presence moves enough fans to buy her products remains to be seen.
“If the feeling is she’s doing [Instagram] as an advertising channel, I don’t think it’s going to be effective,” said Brown, who estimates that a successful launch for a DTC brand like Mes would translate to roughly $10 million to 15 million in annual sales in its first year. “If she’s doing it with another imperative, and she’s using that powerful mechanism to also share this part of her story and her authority, it can work. But I’m dubious simply because of the timing.”
While earlier entrants to celebrity beauty like Rihanna and Bieber largely stuck to the cosmetics and skin-care categories, many are now turning to hair. In addition to Lawrence, famous faces like Blake Lively, Beyoncé, Shakira and Cardi B have all launched hair-care lines in recent years.
Those launches speak to a hair-care market that is growing beyond drugstore staples like Pantene. According to Circana, prestige hair care was among the fastest-growing beauty categories in the first half of 2026; U.S. dollar sales rose 11%, and units sold grew 8%, with sales of hair serum alone rising 60%. The fact that major conglomerates like Estée Lauder are not acquiring cosmetics brands like they used to may make founders cautious to jump into the space.
“Obviously Rhode found an exit in E.l.f., but you talk about Rare [Beauty], you talk about [Makeup by] Mario — these are incredibly successful, scaled, multi-channel, omni-channel brands that have had a really tough time navigating the exit landscape because of these dynamics that are fully out of their control,” said Tenan. “I imagine that celebrities launching brands are doing so in concert with advisors who are keen to these dynamics.”
But while launching any product line is far from a guaranteed success, celebrities will likely continue to place their bets on CPG brands as their usual income streams take a hit.
“The challenge is that [celebrities] make so much less money in what they traditionally have done and have been trained to do well,” said Brown. “If you think about what brands are paying for endorsement or for association, that is now spread across people who aren’t in big movies, who have a very different source of fame.”
Indeed, movie stars are now sharing major beauty and fashion endorsements with non-traditional figures like influencers: OG YouTuber Emma Chamberlain has been a Lancôme global ambassador since 2023, while Burberry’s fall “Anniversary Portraits” campaign features faces like Seoul-based content creator Jonathan and tattoo artist Dr. Woo.
And even the primary profession for A-list actors — starring in movies — is not as lucrative as it once was. According to Forbes, the combined earnings of Hollywood’s top 20 highest-paid actors dropped 20% in 2025 when compared to 2024. That is not to say the stars are suffering; Adam Sandler, 2025’s top earner, still raked in $48 million.
A major name like Lawrence can certainly get consumers in the door — her Instagram account racked up over 8 million followers just weeks after launching. But when it comes to retaining those customers, the proof is in the pudding. If Mes can live up to its claims of providing 86% less frizz or 72 hours of volume, it may well get consumers coming back for a second round of serum or mist, or lining up for the brand’s next product drop.
Executive moves:
- Patrick Ta Beauty announces Angela Simpson as chief marketing officer and Carolyne Rapp as vp of creative. Simpson most recently served as CMO of Haus Labs, while Rapp joins from Merit, where she was a vp and creative director.
- Alicia Valencia is named CEO of Allies of Skin. She was previously global president of Makeup by Mario and global gm of Pat McGrath Cosmetics. Founder Nicolas Travis is due to depart the brand in February.
- Madison Reed names Michelle Peterson as chief marketing officer and promotes John Sullivan to chief commercial officer, the first to occupy the role at the home hair color brand.
News to know:
- Dove launches its first fine fragrance. The Unilever-owned body-care brand worked with fragrance developer Ann Gottlieb to create a perfume version of its beauty bar. The fragrance launched on Tuesday and retails for $19.57 a bottle.
- Beauty accelerator The Center Brands acquires skin-care brand Boscia in partnership with dermatologist Dr. Mamina Turegano. The Center, which has incubated brands such as Phlur and Saltair, acquired Boscia from Japanese cosmetics company Fancl, which launched Boscia in 2002.
- Puig’s Q3 2026 sales rose 7.2% to €1.39 billion ($1.55 billion). The Spanish conglomerate reported a 16.1% rise in makeup sales, driven by the growth of Charlotte Tilbury. Its fashion and fragrance division, which includes brands like Jean Paul Gaultier and Dries Van Noten fragrances, saw sales rise 3.9%.
Stat of the week:
According to Yipit’s The State of TikTok Shop Beauty 2026 report, men’s representation in fragrance on TikTok Shop is 51% higher than at other beauty retailers.
In the headlines:
This beauty set promises $950 worth of products for $150. Does it deliver? Why the messy hair in Jane Austen movies drives me crazy. When hair is your best accessory.
Listen in:
On this week’s episode, Cymbiotika co-founder Durana Elmi joined Glossy Beauty Podcast host Lexy Lebsack to walk through the brand’s strategy to win in the notoriously competitive world of beauty supplements.
Need a Glossy recap?
Bath & Body Works has a successful holiday season on its wishlist. Can Zooey Deschanel help it deliver? The products that led L’Oreal Group’s 7% earnings jump this summer. Target unveils its revamped Soho location as big-box stores seek to become retail destinations. Glossy Pop Newsletter: SharkNinja is turning its fans into beauty sellers ahead of the holidays.
