The Business of Beauty Haul of Fame: How to Launch When Your Brand Founder Is Almost Famous

Welcome back to Haul of Fame, your must-read beauty roundup for new products, new ideas and 3D printed eyelashes. (Really!)

Included in today’s issue: Ami Colé, ColourPop, Doll 10, Forvr Mood, Glossier, Hairtamin, Lacoste, Maed Beauty, MakeUp Eraser, Milk Makeup, Nature Spell, Ouai, Parlux, Sézane, TAD Beauty, and what Billie Eilish’s perfume maker is doing next.

But first

Emotions don’t always justify economics. Startup founders and professional artists often have to reckon with this fact in blunt, sometimes scary ways — and right now, actress Teyonah Parris is both the chief executive and creative lead of her very first beauty line.

“Of course this feels like a big leap,” Parris said from a hotel room in New York City. “But that’s my life!”

Parris is best known for playing astronaut Monica Rambeau in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. She is also a Juilliard graduate, a new-ish mom, a veteran of prestige TV like “Mad Men,” and, as of this week, the head of Blūm, a line of hair extensions for naturally curly, kinky, and coiled Black hair.

“It puts texture at the forefront,” said Parris, who was encouraged to “keep” her naturally kinky hair by film directors—until their beauty teams couldn’t find extensions or partial wigs that matched her strands, making it impossible to build a consistent look for her characters. “Nobody knew what to do with my hair, and it actually made me feel like a burden,” Parris, 37, explained. “And I had all the resources of a Hollywood film set! What if you want to go into a corporate space or even just go to the park with a ponytail, and you have natural hair?” Parris said that although the Black hair extension market is valued at $2.8 billion, according to Fortune Business Insights, “there just aren’t enough quality options for naturally textured extensions.”

But like a promising new actress at a movie audition, Parris is heading into a field that’s already got some proven talent. In 2016, celebrity stylist Takisha Sturdivant-Drew introduced TSD Hair, a line of extensions that includes $200 clip-ins for coiled and Jheri-curled textures. In 2020, Glossier helped incubate Melanj Hair, a company that sells “perfectly blended hair extensions” for around $275. Former tech consultant Osahon Ojeaga raised $2.5 million in seed money in 2022 for her plant-based hair line Nourie, which claims to “deliver nutrients to the hair and scalp” while making braids thicker and shinier.

What sets BlÅ«m apart? Parris said her extensions boast the highest quality and strength, and are literally more diverse — Blum has more textures, more colours, more degrees of thickness. But her real point of differentiation might be Irene Moore, a British consultant in the Hollywood beauty space who has helped steer the turnaround of Lady Gaga’s Haus Labs line following its 2022 rebrand and Sephora launch. Moore is also the UK strategy lead on Beyoncé’s hair care line Cécred.

Of course, Beyoncé and Lady Gaga come with different built-in branding than Parris, who has the kind of fame that gets you 452,000 Instagram followers, but doesn’t get you chased down the street. That might work to Parris’s advantage. There’s always a sense of cynicism when mega-stars try to open a new revenue stream; Parris’s more niche level of fame could work well for her startup by lending the products more credibility.

The actress is betting big that it will. When I asked her about outside investors, she laughed. “Oh, I’m inside and outside! Who owns this company? I do. I own 100 percent.” Parris will not tell me what that investment looks like beyond “tens of thousands of dollars.” And she understands that in the megabucks playland of beauty startups, that might not sound like a formidable number. “Maybe it isn’t a lot for a big beauty company,” Parris says. “But it is a lot for me.” And as brands like Topicals and Bread Beauty Supply have shown us, if the product is actually good and honestly useful, it can help when labels have the force of a megaphone but not the more-anonymous reach of a microphone.

I’m rooting for Parris, honestly. It takes guts to say “I can do this” and then actually, you know, do it. More of us should go that way when we can.

What Else Is New

Skincare

Speaking of near-famous founders, former soap star Denise Vasi has launched her own line, Maed Beauty. It debuted on Sept. 24 with four lip-focused products—a scrub, a serum, a moisturiser and an intense red liquid lipstick—that retail for $26 to $36. Welcome, Maed!

Isle of Paradise introduced its Beautifully Balanced Body Oil on Sept. 24, with a “woodsy amber” scent and fast absorption properties. It’s $22, and meant to be a sibling for the brand’s cleanser and body butter, which all share a fragrance and lagoon-blue packaging.

Makeup

Stunt beauty continues! On Sept. 26, ColourPop unveiled a Stranger Things collab featuring Instant Crush Cream Blush, which appears to be a charred purple shade until you swipe it on your skin. Then it turns into a soft pink.

On Sept. 25, Doll 10 dropped their reformulated TCE Super Coverage Serum Foundation ($46) and Concealer ($32) with a new peptide-rich formula “for mature skin.” TCE stands for “this covers everything” — that’s the claim, anyway — and the facewear comes in 10 shades with no-nonsense names like “Fair” and “Deep Rich,” which is appreciated.

MakeUp Eraser’s super-creamy remover, Cloud Cleanse, debuted on Sept. 25. It’s a dense balm that helps dissolve thicker makeup formulas like high-coverage foundation and waterproof mascara, and has ingredients like cherry extract, hyaluronic acid, and some vague probiotic goodness, because as Liz Flora notes, kombucha is the secret muse of beauty chemists.

Milk Makeup launched two new shades of Cooling Water Jelly Tint (a baby pink and a soft peach, both $24) on Sept. 26. If they sell out immediately online, you can buy them at Sephora stores starting Oct. 4.

On Sept. 23, TAD Beauty released the first-ever 3-D printed false eyelashes, which it claims are more precise and comfortable than regular faux blinkers. They cost about $50 per pack.

Ami Colé rolled into all US Sephora stores on Sept. 20, with its eyes on the UK market next. The beauty brand, founded by L’Oréal and Glossier vet Diarrha N’Diaye-Mbaye, has some extra cash now that it’s got an infusion from L’Oréal’s Venture Capital Fund, BOLD. How are they spending? In part, by beefing up the executive team. If you want to work for a surging startup, hit up N’Diaye-Mbaye on LinkedIn!

Hair Care

On Sept. 27, Nature Spell introduced its Batana Treatment Oil ($12) to “nourish your hair’s elasticity and help prevent breakage.” Batana has nothing to do with bananas, alas — it comes from South American palm trees and has a lot of fatty acids.

Hairtamin launched its snoozy gummy, called Sleeptamin, on Sept. 20 for $26. It’s a doze-off supplement with melatonin, ashwagandha, saffron… the usual suspects. This is fine, but I gotta ask: Is there a reason we can’t get a supplement that combines a sleep cycle reboot with hair growth help? Yes, twice the products, twice the income. But consumers appreciate efficiency and brands could still charge a bit more for the double dose of “wellness.” Quotes intentional.

Ouai debuted 17 tidy travel sizes as Ulta Beauty online exclusives on Sept. 21. The price range is $26 (for a hair mask) to $14 (for sprays, shampoos and conditioners) and the brand says the mini-me products were requested over 2,000 times by shoppers.

Commence wants me to let you know that they moved their Shine Enhancing Detangler launch to Sept. 25. Meanwhile, I want you to know that the font on its bottle is pretty rad. More mid-80s nostalgia design, please?!

On Sept. 24, Jupiter launched its Dry Scalp System, a $50 shampoo-and-conditioner duo and intensive moisturiser to treat flakes and redness without dulling your actual hair. The range is sulphate-free and safe for keratin and colour treatments. It’s also one of the only medically-aimed topicals I’ve tried that looks and smells like nice, “normal” hair stuff. Smart.

Fragrance

Glossier rolled out two new fragrances on Wednesday evening, ferrying guests out to New York’s Long Island City neighbourhood to celebrate the launch of You Rêve, which has a sweet, gourmand scent, and You Doux, a woody white floral. Both cost $78, and will be available on Glossier.com and Sephora on Oct. 3.

YouTuber Jackie Aina made a fragrance for her Forvr Mood collection called “Hard to Get” and — amazingly — it became very hard to get! The citron, jasmine and vanilla concoction sold out at Sephora this spring. On Sept. 20, it got restocked, along with its sister scents I Am Her, NDA and You Remind Me.

If you love a lavender man, hit up Lacoste. The luxury tennis junkies have released an Original Eau de Parfum, a $99 bottle which has notes of the provincial herb, plus pink peppercorn, bergamot, and cardamom.

Sézane’s first fragrance, L’Eau Sézane, quietly hit U.S. shelves on Sept. 18. It has hints of lemon, neroli water and mandarin, and also claims to include “white muck.” Yes, Sézane almost certainly means “white musk,” which I’d describe as “sexy baby powder.” The bottle is chic but low-key; the price is $65.

And here’s a teeny exclusive for you. Sam Edelman is relaunching its perfume division, now in partnership with Parlux, whose portfolio spans fragrances by Billie Eilish, Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton and Pierre Cardin. If you’re in Cannes on Sept. 29, you can smell it at the TFWA conference. Otherwise, Spring 2025.

And Finally

DotDash Meredith has a Google Questionnaire for people who want to test beauty and fitness products for them. It is right here.