While Alicia Keys had publicly given up wearing makeup to fight oppressive beauty standards, she decided to add a makeup line to Keys Soulcare, her cosmetics brand. A curious choice.
Although everyone does what they want, stars are often seen as spokespersons for important causes. This is the case of Alicia Keys who voluntarily gave up makeup to emancipate themselves from the normative criteria of beauty that have been right about their skin for years. But while we thought that this resolution was final, now the interpreter of » You don’t know my name » adds a makeup line to its cosmetics brand.
In partnership with Elf Beauty, this first collection notably includes a tinted lip balm, blushes and an eyebrow gel. All sold at prices ranging from $15 to $22. To present them properly, Alicia Keys took advantage of an event with great fanfare, the Met Gala, which will take place tonight.
But why is Alicia Keys getting into makeup even though she decided to give it up a few years ago? Well, she answers this question in the columns of the magazine WWD :
“I was adopting these extremely oppressive standards of beauty that I thought I somehow enforced when it came to perfection, and obviously I rebelled against that. I found my way to the fact that I can create my standard of beauty, I can choose what beauty means to me and how I want to express it. »
For his part, Kory Marchisotto, president of Keys Soulcare and marketing director of Elf beauté explains:
“It’s always a good time to create your own standards of beauty, and that’s really what we do with Keys Color. It’s a combination of moments that brought us here. »
A good deal helps to forget all the good resolutions?
In recent years, many stars have entered the cosmetics market. This tendency stems from the fact that it is a very lucrative industry where profits are quickly achievable when we already have a certain notoriety. But what is the price to pay? While some celebrities do not deprive their formulas of quality ingredients, others like Kim Kardashian with her KKW Beauty brand do not hesitate to reduce the quantities of products and pack them in cheap packaging to be able to gain in performance. We’re talking about quality here, but Alicia Keys is putting aside her resolutions taken for several years to offer her brand a makeup line in collaboration with one of the most powerful cosmetic brands on the market.
A risky choice which can discredit the artist in his future steps, even if it is true that the latter knows how to play with current trends to be able to better make us ingest his approach aimed at sublimating natural beauty.
Natural beauty: the right niche for Alicia Keys
For the past few years, make-up has been combined with skincare to offer the wearer a natural and glowing effect. This « skinification » as the Americans say, is part of a real cosmetic revolution in its own right which drastically changes the make-up offered a few years ago by the big brands, then little interested in the health of consumers and their general well-being. A pirouette that allows Alicia Keys to fit a little more into a market that seemed to her, until then far from the codes she defended.
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One image credits: @Aliciakeys.