3X FEMALE CELEBS SWITCHING UP THE BRAND ZEITGEIST

Celebrity brands have grown up a lot since the late-noughties surge of ultra-bling, star-backed fragrances. Today, nearly every celebrity has a side hustle —whether in beauty, fashion, hair care, self-care, homeware, jewellery, or alcohol. And in response the market is reaching a boiling point. Consumers are growing weary of scrolling past yet another half-hearted celebrity brand launch that is likely to fizzle into irrelevance.

That said, carefully considered celebrity-backed brands can hold huge value. The strongest seamlessly weave their founder through the brand narrative, translating as true passion projects rather than mere cash grabs. These are the brands poised to withstand the test of time.

Here’s three female-founded celebrity brands that are reshaping the zeitgeist and demonstrating real staying power:

SIRDAVIS: HONING A LEGACY

Razor-sharp Beyoncé fans (official name: The “BeyHive”), began detecting rumblings of a possible whisky project when the multi-hyphenate star dropped her latest album, Cowboy Carter. With subtle hints sewn into the lyrics, Bey sang “Bottle in my hand, the whisky up high”. And as some fans correctly suspected, she wasn’t referring to any old bottle. She was teasing her latest brainchild, SirDavis Whisky.

Jing Daily cautioned that ‘95 percent of luxury brands fail miserably in storytelling.’ This weighted warning certainly doesn’t apply to SirDavis, a brand deeply rooted in powerful storytelling. Named after Davis Hogue, Beyoncé’s paternal great-grandfather, the project was born from generational legacy.

Hogue was a farmer in the American South with a penchant for moonshining during the Prohibition era. Beyoncé’s love for the deep copper liquid was fated. Grounded in authenticity, the SirDavis’ website features a handwritten letter from Beyoncé to Hogue that states his “legacy is a force that drives me.”

With beautiful design at the heart of it, the brand shuns stuffy old world whisky cues. It’s no easy feat for a female-founded whisky to show up in a predominately masculine sector, but SirDavis perfectly holds its own in the well-established category. Only a few weeks old, although years in the making, we can’t wait to see what SirDavis does next.

RHODE SKIN: GEN-Z’S BEAUTY PLUG

Hailey Bieber is the ‘it-girl’ of Gen-Z, so it’s no wonder that the model and entrepreneur’s beauty brand, Rhode Skin, has exploded in pop culture. With her star power and super sharp marketing rocket-fuelling the brand, Rhode is on a winning streak of stellar launches.

The beauty brand is a perfect blend of playful campaign imagery, product photography that looks good enough to eat and activations that land with a bang. All underpinned by an undeniable talent for turning Bieber-inspired trends into tangible products.

Those tuned into Rhode’s universe will be aware of the viral phone case with a built-in groove designed to hold the brands cult Lip Treatment. It sent the internet into a total frenzy, with some rendering the novelty item unnecessary, and others arguing its genius. In the end, the sales figures spoke for themselves when the drop sold out in seconds.

Winning with experience is a hard one to nail. Many brands struggle to hit the right balance between playful and slick. Rhode, on the other hand, makes it look easy. It’s Rhode Booths (dispensing lip gloss and brand-stamped photos) travel around the world, turning up in cool locations and delighting fans.

Over in New York City, hordes of Rhode stans queued outside its first ever pop-up store, celebrating the launch of its latest viral hit, the Pocket Blush. With Highsnobiety praising the space as ‘impossibly aesthetic’, it’s safe to say that the social-media savvy Rhode army was satiated.

SKIMS: INFLUENCER STRATEGY 101

If there’s one thing Kim K’s solution-clothing brand, Skims, has nailed, it’s picking the perfect brand ambassador at the perfect time. With a ~very~ well connected founder, Skims lives in pop culture’s orbit by spotlighting diverse talent in the right way at the right time - rolling out cut-through campaigns that the fans crave.

Sounds simple, right? In fact, influencer marketing is deceptively hard to crack. We’re living in an era saturated with influencers. Social media scrolling has diluted our attention spans, so when every other post we scroll past is a paid influencer ad, attention can stray and impact is lost.

Skims knows that to stand out it needs to think differently about its use of influencers. Instead of living in a paid ad on the influencer’s Instagram grid, Skims brings them into its world, going big with impactful campaigns. Ultra reactive to pop culture, Skims knows to stand out with influencers you need to move fast.

Take its partnership with spotlighted star of the Euros, Jude Bellingham for men’s Skims, hitting social media feeds just days before the start of the championship. Or its internet-breaking collection in partnership with star of Netflix’s Bridgerton, Nicola Coughlan. Launched the day the new season dropped; Skims jumped headfirst into the widespread Bridgerton fever.

And if you’re tuned into viral youth culture trends, you’ll know how huge it was when Skims recently got Charli XCX onside. Let’s just say the photoshoot was very bratty.

Words by Ella Palmer, Culture.

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