By You might have heard the whispers that Ariana Grande (or Ari, as she’s known to her legions of doting fans) was preparing to launch her own beauty line. In fact, you might be one of the cool 906,000 followers (and counting) that the @r.e.m.beauty Instagram page has accumulated over the past few months, as teasers drop left, right and center. Having had a first look at the new products (available to buy on Friday 12 November at 9 a.m. ET on the brand’s website), as demonstrated by Grande herself, Vogue can now confirm that you’re in for a treat.
R.e.m.beauty is totally vegan and cruelty-free—something that was super important to Grande—and will be sold in drops. “This is a special moment for me and team r.e.m.—I can’t believe that we’re at the point where we get to finally talk about it after working on it for two years,” Grande beams over Zoom. “I am smiling so hard, my cheeks hurt!”
The singer, who is known for her trademark feline flick and camera-ready make-up, was nervous about launching a new beauty brand in an already “crowded” market, but has brought her own time spent in the make-up chair and on stage to the party, delivering hardworking formulas that she has personally tested over the past few years. “Hopefully it will inspire people to express themselves in a new way and share that with the world,” she says.
Fans of Grande’s music will recognize the name of the brand from one of her songs “R.E.M.” – and Grande says there is a reason she singled out that track in particular. “It encompasses a lot of my favorite parts of my sound. And also REM [stands for] rapid eye movement, focusing on dreams and the eyes,” she says. “Eyes are our most effective communicators—you can say more with the way you look at someone than you can articulate with words sometimes, and so much beauty happens there.”
As for the space-age packaging: “I wanted to make sure everything looked like a prop from either Star Trek or Black Mirror,” she laughs. “I treated it like it was a Tesla situation, not like make-up. I didn’t want it to look like make-up. I’m a huge fan of sci-fi, vintage space stuff, so this was about creating our own world with this packaging.”
