Selena Gomez for Rare Beauty. Courtesy
After months of teasers, Selena Gomez‘s Rare Beauty is officially launching on September 3 and the soon-to-be new beauty mogul is opening up about her big plans.
Back in February, Gomez announced that she was entering the beauty world with a “special project” of her own. “Guys, I’ve been working on this special project for two years and can officially say Rare Beauty is launching in @sephora stores in North America this summer!” she wrote on an Instagram post on February 4. In just one day, the Rare Beauty Instagram account racked up over one million followers and Gomez’s fans and beauty lovers were left anxiously waiting for more. Now, just three days away from the launch, the anticipation is still there but the mystery has died down.
Since announcing the brand, Gomez has given fans various behind the scenes peeks at Rare Beauty, posting everything from inspirations boards to community castings on the brand’s Instagram. We know the brand will launch with 48 foundation shades and we even got a sneak peek at the makeup in action in Blackpink and Gomez’s Ice Cream video, which released August 28. But there’s more to Rare Beauty than meets the eye.
Celebrity makeup and skincare brands have been on the rise but Gomez’s Rare Beauty promises to stand out. The singer says she wanted to create this brand to “challenge” the current beauty space. “I didn’t just want to be a celebrity attaching her name to something because that’s definitely not my style. I would feel disingenuous,” Gomez admitted in a press event. When the brand was first announced, it was glaring that this was going to more than just than makeup. It was going to be a community. “Our mission is to shape conversations around beauty, self-acceptance, and mental health,” read the first caption on Rare Beauty’s Instagram page.
Gomez wants Rare Beauty to be a safe space where people can talk about the good, the bad, and the uncomfortable. “I know that there’s such a stigma and it feels weird and it doesn’t feel like it’s you,” Gomez said on mental health relationships, adding that she wants Rare Beauty to feel like “a home.” Mental health has always been a topic close to Gomez’s heart so, alongside Rare Beauty, she also launched The Rare Impact Fund to help increase mental health resources. Gomez believes there’s “complete beauty in imperfection,” which is why makeup should just be an accessory. “[Makeup] should be something that you’re proud of wearing and highlighting what makes you beautiful and if you’ve ever felt another way internally, that’s the whole reason why I started the fund,” Gomez says.
As far as the products themselves go, Gomez tells us that the texture in all of the products is “very flexible” and they are meant to suit anyone. “Most products you can just use your finger if you’d like,” she says.
Aside from its 48-shade foundation offering, Rare Beauty will launch with a very exciting, new lip product. Gomez’s love for lip products is no secret — ” I’m a sucker for red,” she admitted — that’s why she’s launching her brand with “lip souffles,” a product that she had admits went through a lot of trial and error. “I think [we were] very specific on how we wanted it to feel and how we wanted to make sure it didn’t feel, so it felt like a mousse but a lip stain at the same time and you could do touch-ups throughout the day,” Gomez says.
Courtesy of Rare Beauty
In addition to that, there are concealers and also blushes, which Gomez loves because “it wakes you up and it’s so fun.” All of the products she created aren’t meant to feel complicated or overwhelming, just like fun and everyday beauty, it’s a way to find a moment of joy.
Relating makeup to joy is not a new concept to Gomez. In fact, it’s something that goes back to her childhood. Selena Gomez remembers her mom being “such an icon” when she was growing up. As a young mom, she worked multiple jobs and tried a little bit of everything but there’s one job that Gomez remembers most: Doing makeup at a modeling agency. “I would get to go with her and see what she was doing. Sometimes at night, she’d go into her room and she’d open her [makeup] box and she’d have candles and music playing,” Gomez recounted. “I think that felt like a sense of therapy for her.”
Courtesy of Rare Beauty
Those memories are what Gomez remembers most vividly about beauty and why she has such adoration for it now. “That’s when I kind of got the grit for it,” she says. As she got older her interest grew and turned into the giant what will soon be Rare Beauty.
Whether you’re her fan, a makeup enthusiast, or just someone looking for a sense of community in the beauty world, Rare Beauty is coming to make a change. On September 3 at midnight EST, Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty will launch its initial collection exclusively at Sephora and on RareBeauty.com.
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Originally published on TeenVogue.com
