Apparently Everyone Is a Skincare Founder Now

At what point did being famous become a qualification in skin biology?

I have a question.

Why does every celebrity eventually need a skincare company?

Seriously.

Is there a meeting you get invited to when your net worth reaches a certain level?

Perhaps someone slides a PowerPoint across the table.

Large addressable market. Excellent repeat purchase. Strong margins. Founder-led storytelling. Built-in audience.

And then somebody asks: “So, what are your thoughts on ceramides?”

Brad Pitt didn't even pretend to be a skincare obsessive

When Brad Pitt launched what was then called Le Domaine, Vogue asked whether he had always had a good skincare routine. His answer was essentially: no. When they asked him about gua sha, he said he didn't know what it was.

I actually respect that enormously.

At least the man didn't suddenly emerge from a vineyard claiming that at six years old he had been fascinated by transepidermal water loss.

And yet here we are.

Why is Brad Pitt the reason I am supposed to believe in a skincare formula?

Being extraordinarily handsome is not a formulation qualification. Neither is being photographed professionally for 35 years.

We have confused a face with evidence

Celebrity beauty works because the person becomes the proof.

You look at their skin, their hair, their clothes, their homes, their holidays, their apparently effortless existence in which nobody ever seems to be unloading a dishwasher while arguing with DHL.

Then someone puts a bottle in their hand.

Suddenly the bottle becomes a bridge.

We know perfectly well that celebrities have access to things that do not arrive in a 30 ml bottle: dermatologists, aesthetic doctors, professional facialists, make-up artists, lighting, retouching, time and money.

I am not interested in speculating about which celebrity has had which treatment. That is their business.

But I am interested in an industry that happily lets a professionally maintained face sit above a moisturiser as though one explains the other.

It doesn't.

And now we have Pamela Anderson

Sonsie launched before Pamela Anderson joined it. She later invested, became co-founder and co-owner, and subsequently became the majority owner.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that. Businesses get investors. Companies get new owners. People discover existing brands and decide they believe in them.

What fascinates me is how quickly the story becomes “Pamela Anderson's skincare brand.”

The famous person and the product fuse into one thing. The celebrity becomes the philosophy.

And suddenly buying a serum isn't just buying a serum. You're buying a little piece of Pamela's approach to beauty.

Perhaps the products are lovely. That is not really the point.

Celebrity ownership is not scientific evidence.

And can I ask the impolite question?

How much money does one person actually need?

Maybe that is my own envy speaking. Fine. I can live with that.

But when somebody already has wealth most people cannot even conceptualise, and then launches another consumer brand into an already saturated market, I do sometimes wonder what the actual motivation is.

Is it genuine fascination with formulation?

Is it legacy?

Is it because an agency or investor looked at a famous face, a gigantic audience and the repeat-purchase economics of skincare and said: you cannot lose?

I don't know. And I am not going to pretend I know somebody else's motives.

But I think consumers are allowed to ask the question.

Follow the money and the whole thing becomes less mysterious

Hailey Bieber's rhode launched in 2022. In 2025, e.l.f. Beauty agreed to acquire it in a transaction worth up to $1 billion. At the time of the announcement, rhode had generated $212 million in net sales over the preceding twelve months.

There is your answer to at least part of the mystery.

And to be clear: rhode is a very clever brand.

The visual identity is clever. The timing was clever. The community-building was clever. The product-market fit was clever. The distribution was clever. The marketing was clever.

Look at what I just listed.

That tells you quite a lot about modern beauty.

Sometimes the greatest innovation is happening outside the bottle

This is the part that increasingly annoys me.

I see a launch and think:

Beautiful bottle.
Beautiful typography.
Beautiful campaign.
Beautiful founder.
Beautiful photography.
Beautiful influencer seeding.
Beautiful paid social.
Beautiful PR story.

Then I look at the formulation and think:

Not bad. Not dangerous. Not necessarily ineffective.

Just… ordinary.

And that is the magic trick: £100 worth of desire can sit around a perfectly competent formulation.

Consumers can see the bottle. They can feel its weight. They can watch the unboxing. They can recognise the celebrity. They can admire the bathroom, the campaign and the life surrounding it.

Formulation quality is much harder to photograph.

Meta doesn't care whether your serum works

A brand pays Meta to show you an advert.

If you don't buy, you see another one.

Then a founder video. Then a testimonial. Then a creator. Then your basket follows you around the internet like a needy Labrador.

Eventually you buy.

Meta got paid. The agency got paid. The creator got paid. The payment processor got paid. Everyone has a dashboard demonstrating success.

And your skin?

Your skin wasn't in the meeting.

Yes, I understand the irony

I own a skincare company.

NAYA advertises. NAYA has packaging. NAYA tells stories. NAYA needs customers. I want my company to grow. I want more people to discover it. And yes, I would quite like NAYA to make a lot more money.

I am not sitting in a forest hand-grinding calendula while morally transcending capitalism.

I sell skincare.

The difference I care about is what comes first.

Did we identify something worth formulating and then work out how to explain it?

Or did somebody identify something worth selling and then work backwards until there was a formula inside it?

Those are not the same process.

I want us to become harder to impress

Not cynical.

Harder to impress.

The next time somebody famous launches a serum, don't ask only who it is.

Ask what is in it.

Who formulated it?

Why was it formulated?

What is actually different?

Does the product have finished-formula evidence, or are the claims borrowed from individual ingredient studies?

Would anybody care about this formulation if the celebrity's name disappeared from the bottle tomorrow?

That last question is my favourite.

Because if the answer is no, perhaps the product isn't really what was being sold.

Celebrity isn't expertise

If Brad Pitt launched a dental implant, I would still want a dentist involved.

If Alicia Keys launched an anticoagulant, I would not assume musical success qualified her in haematology.

If Pamela Anderson launched a suspension bridge, I would hope somebody had called an engineer.

But skincare occupies this peculiar cultural space where fame itself somehow lends technical authority.

Why?

Luxury has always sold fantasy. There is nothing wrong with enjoying beautiful things, a beautiful bottle or even a little piece of somebody else's world.

Just know what you are buying.

You may be buying skincare.

You may also be buying aspiration, identity, storytelling and proximity.

The problem begins when we pretend all of that is science.

Because your skin doesn't need to meet Brad Pitt.

It probably just needs a decent moisturiser.