LV’s initial makeup collection joins top-end collections by Dior and Hermès, offering relatively accessible social status.
The new Louis Vuitton lipstick is available for the price of more than 180 pints of milk or approximately 60kg of rice. 55 hues – 27 satin and 28 matte – will be available in the UK for £120 ($160), marking a new high in the redrawing of lipstick from relative mundanity to hyper-luxury goods.
The lipstick is part of Louis Vuitton’s debut beauty line, which will go on sale this weekend and includes eyeshadow palettes (£190) and lip balms (also £120).
The lipstick was created in collaboration with makeup artist Pat McGrath, who has worked backstage at Louis Vuitton presentations for two decades and has helped establish cosmetics lines for labels such as Gucci and Giorgio Armani.
It follows a slew of brands producing lipsticks that cost more than many people’s weekly groceries. Last year, Celine debuted its first lipstick for £62. Chanel offers one in a glass case for £145, inspired by the mirrors that line the stairs of Coco Chanel’s Paris apartment. Hermès, famous for its multi-thousand-pound Birkin bags, will release one for £81 in 2020. In 2023, Dior released a $500 special-edition lipstick.
Big fashion brands have begun to focus more on makeup in general. According to Daniela Morosini, a senior beauty journalist and special projects editor at The Business of Fashion, “beauty products generate a lot of money for fashion house brands.” “The margins are excellent.”
Victoria Beckham is a noteworthy example. The firm exceeded £100 million in sales this week, despite increasing operating losses, in a jump attributed mostly to excellent success in cosmetics, particularly a £32 eyeliner, which is apparently sold once every 30 seconds globally.
For clients, makeup is a reasonably affordable method to invest in luxury brands, especially given the current price of high-end fashion: a Chanel medium Classic Flap bag, for example, cost $4,900 in 2015 and now costs $10,200.
The Louis Vuitton lipsticks are made from recycled wax, are smooth to apply, and have a bold pigment. They are scented with mimosa, jasmine, and rose. The substantial black and gold packaging, designed by Konstantin Grcic, is magnetised, allowing the LV-embossed lipstick to go back into its casing with a pleasing muted click.
Do you think £120 for lipstick is too much? Shift Consultancy founder Philip Graves explains that it all depends on one’s perspective. If you usually go to Boots and purchase No 7 lipstick, you won’t become someone who goes to Louis Vuitton and spends £120 on lipstick. However, “if you’re someone who goes into Louis Vuitton every now and then and buys a £4,000 bag, now you might go in and say, ‘That lipstick’s fantastic.'” You’ve just’saved’ yourself more than £3,800. Furthermore, “it’s probably the cheapest thing in there by a significant margin. This provides you with a framing edge in terms of consumer psychology.”
According to Morosini, the comparatively low cost compared to LV luggage “kind of opens the aperture to a newer customer.” After all, Louis Vuitton is the brand that famously announced a $1 million handbag for 2023.
Having McGrath participating is a plus. “Her signature, at least in beauty and fashion circles, really means something,” Morosini told me. Hannah Coates, a beauty, wellness, and lifestyle columnist and brand strategist, stated, “With McGrath at the helm, I expect the formula to be of excellent quality and the colours to flatter a wide range of skin tones.” However, McGrath’s own beauty line sells lipsticks at Harrods for £27.
Price is not a barrier, but rather “a big part of the appeal,” according to fashion psychologist Dr. Dion Terrelonge, who claims that lipsticks like this “are used as a social signifier of class and wealth and standing.”
“Aggressive pricing creates an additional layer of exclusivity that becomes desirable to consumers,” stated Dr. Anastasia Kārkliņa Gabriel, a cultural critic and author of Cultural Intelligence for Marketers. When you are prepared to spend £120 on a lipstick, it becomes a means of expressing who you are or want to be.
According to Coates, we “may be witnessing LV’s attempt to capitalise on the ‘lipstick index,’ which is the hypothesis that sales of high-end cosmetics, especially lipstick, tend to increase during economic downturns.” Although Graves has doubts about the lipstick index, “people do find other ways to get a sense of reward when times are hard,” in part because the individual who came up with the phrase was a lipstick firm owner.
Being able to be seen wearing lipstick is beneficial. Graves stated that anything must be seen by others in order to have status worth. “You can definitely go and inform others, but that usually doesn’t work as well. It would be much better if you removed it with ease and applied more lipstick.
Gabriel believes that Louis Vuitton lipstick’s attractiveness stems in large part from the fact that it is refillable and presented as a keepsake. While the case offers symbolic entry to the world of luxury, which is supposed to seem exclusive, beautiful, and profoundly aspirational, the refillable lipstick product becomes the thing to buy for its material benefits.
Along with the product’s sensory appeal, the packaging is crucial. According to Morosini, makeup artist Kirsten Kjaer Weis, who works in New York, allegedly stated that she wanted her brand’s compacts to have a clunk that resembled a Mercedes-Benz trunk closing.
It might also be a factor if some people are offended by the cost of this high-end lippie. “This pricing strategy serves the brand’s marketing objectives by creating awareness and attention around the product and the brand, even though it is bold by luxury standards,” Gabriel added.
