Lady Gaga joins the celebrity clean skincare game with the relaunch of her Haus Laboratories and a new home for the brand.
Like her many incarnations, Lady Gaga’s beauty label, Haus Laboratories, is undergoing its own transformation. The brand is leaving Amazon for the greener, cleaner pastures at Sephora with a new name and new formulations.
“The future is beautiful,” Lady Gaga, born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, wrote in an Instagram post last week, adding the “supercharged clean artistry” previously an Amazon exclusive, will be only available at Sephora from June 9th.
Beginning next month, Haus Laboratories will change its name to Haus Labs and feature clean ingredients, likely to comply with the Clean at Sephora category standards, removing more than 2,700 “questionable” ingredients, the company said.
“Lady Gaga welcomes you to join this new chapter of Haus Labs, with supercharged products created with innovative formulas that will shape the future of the beauty industry. She believes artistry should be for everyone, and that no one should have to damage their skin or sacrifice their principles to be self-expressive,” the brand said in a statement.
Haus launched with Amazon in an exclusive partnership in 2019, but sales failed to meet targets, particularly when compared to other celebrity-led brands. Sephora has been a longtime partner of Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty, which helped the singer become a billionaire.
Gaga’s Haus Laboratories was the first beauty brand to sign an exclusive deal with Amazon, a move she said was motivated in part by Amazon’s hands-off approach.
But the approach didn’t equate to sales. Haus Labs says as it shifts to the beauty platform Sephora it is reformulating all products from eyes to lips to face using natural pigments and botanical ingredients. The products will come to 25 Sephora locations initially, with “hundreds more this fall,” the company said.
“It’s about the consciously selected, safe and sustainably-sourced natural and synthetic ingredients that do make it into our formulas,” the company said. “And the way we formulate (and reformulate) our products until they exceed our ridiculously high standards of innovation, safety + efficacy.”
Clean beauty movement
Clean at Sephora has been a success for the LVMH-owned beauty platform. It set the industry standards for clean beauty ingredients as the first major retailer to announce a policy on chemicals in products in 2019. Ulta, Sephora’s nearest competitor, launched a similar commitment soon after.
The retailer’s commitment is led by consumers’ shifting preferences for sustainable and non-toxic ingredients and practices.
In 2020, Sephora said it achieved shared ingredient information for 95 percent of its products—up 13 percent from 2019. As of 2020, 87 brands have achieved the Clean at Sephora seal, a 22 percent increase over 2019.
Gaga’s pivot is part of a celebrity brand shift being led by the Kardashians. Last year Kylie Jenner relaunched her beauty brand with all-vegan formulations and the removal of questionable chemicals. Sister Kim Kardashian is in the midst of revamping her line, KKW Beauty. Last year the brand shut down sales, telling fans it was coming back clean and sustainable. Earlier this year KKW Fragrance shuttered as well, promising to return with clean products and a new name.
Earlier this month Alicia Keys announced the launch of MakeYou, her first color collection as part of the Keys Soulcare skincare label that uses clean ingredients. It takes a sparing approach to color; Keys is known for eschewing makeup, even hosting The Grammys makeup-free.
Scarlett Johansson launched The Outset in February—a minimalist skincare range based on the actor’s own skincare regimen.
Check out our top picks for vegan department counter and drugstore makeup brands.
