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The most common question Jennifer Lopez has been asked for the last 30 years is this: What is your skin-care routine?
The answer involves a combination of health-minded practices — living and eating well and, yes, you must remember to apply sunscreen daily. That which ties it all together, though, is Lopez’s philosophy on beauty.
“I’ve always used the quote, ‘Until you’re 25, you get the face God gave you. After that, you get the face you deserve,’” Lopez told WWD in a recent phone call. “I always found that quote to be profound. You want to be beautiful on the inside because that’s going to show on the outside.”
Such is the essence of JLo Beauty, the skin-care brand Lopez has been dreaming up for nearly a decade that will launch in North America on Jan. 1. Lopez started dropping hints about the brand on Instagram in November via @jlobeauty, which has racked up nearly 175,000 followers — none of whom fully knew until now what the brand would entail.
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The brand will be sold direct-to-consumer via Jlobeauty.com, with Sephora as a retail partner. JLo Beauty will be available to purchase via Amazon starting Jan. 14. Prices range from $18 for an individual face mask to $79 for a serum.
The trademark for JLo Beauty was filed under Ascendant Beauty LLC, a joint venture between Lopez and Guthy-Renker, which has helped Cindy Crawford’s Meaningful Beauty reach $100 million in annual sales.
Lopez has previously done licensing deals — most notably for her fragrance franchise worth more than $2 billion. This time, she wanted to be a co-owner.
“Artists have done [licensing deals] for a long time, and they don’t have any ownership in the things that they create,” Lopez said. “It’s important for me, at this point in my career, to own. [Guthy-Renker was] a great partner in also understanding what it is I wanted to do.”
Speaking to WWD via phone, Guthy-Renker cofounder Greg Renker called Lopez “a global cultural icon,” adding that he and his team had pursued her for “at least four years” before signing a deal.
“The opportunity to be in business with Jennifer is literally a dream come true for Guthy-Renker,” he said. “We were somewhat relentless in our persistence because we wanted to be in business with her so much.”
Renker noted Lopez’s “powerful” social reach in the U.S., calling it “a new ballgame for us relative to how prepared we have to be to meet her standards,” as well as consumer demand.
“I think one of our bigger issues may be whether or not we’ve created enough inventory on Day One,” Renker said. “We better be darn well prepared.”
Renker declined to offer a sales estimate for JLo Beauty, but industry sources expect the brand to do as much as $150 million at retail in North America in 2021.
JLo Beauty is expected to do as much as $150 million in North American retail sales in 2021, according to industry sources. Courtesy of Ana Carballosa / JLo Beauty
For JLo Beauty, Lopez helped develop an olive complex consisting of squalane, fermented oil, extra virgin oil and leaf extract. The complex was inspired by a beauty secret shared with her by the women in her family.
“My mom, my aunt, my grandmother, all of them used olive oil as a beauty product [on] hair when it got too dry, on your face and your body, on the belly when you’re pregnant,” Lopez said. “What it does for the skin is amazing, [but ] nobody wants to smell like a salad. So, it was like, how do we take the olive and create something that is proprietary to us?”
That Star Filter in an Instant Complexion Booster is the brand’s skin-care-makeup hybrid, $39, that is meant to give a “finishing touch” to a no-makeup or full coverage look, Lopez said. The dietary supplement, $36, is meant to combat inflammation and signs of aging via ingredients like olive extract, vitamin E, manganese and copper.
The inclusion of both of these products in an otherwise straightforward skin-care assortment reflects a broader blurring of the lines between skin care, makeup and wellness in the beauty industry at large. Lopez plans to expand JLo Beauty into other categories, such as body, via creams, oils and bath items.
“There’s an expansion here that goes beyond specialized creams for different skin types,” Lopez said. “What I wanted to do for this initial line was to provide simple skin care that is about natural beauty and feeling great in your own skin.”
While the pandemic presented hurdles for JLo Beauty in the form of production delays, it also incited a realignment for Lopez in terms of personal priorities — which eventually trickled down to the brand’s messaging. Lopez said that during COVID-19, she has been “paying more attention to the basics,” which include her self-care ritual.
“I think we all had a reprioritization of what was most important,” Lopez said. “At the beginning of the pandemic, I was like, ‘I’m going to let my hair rest during the quarantine. This will be good for me because I’m such a workaholic.’ I don’t have to get my hair blown out and three different colors for two different movies, and my skin can rest. I don’t have to be touched up 35 times a day. I was like, ‘I’m going to take care of myself, I’m going to relax more, I’m going to take time to just sit there.
“During quarantine is when we were finishing up and going through the formulations and packaging for JLo Beauty,” she continued. “As I talk about it, and my philosophy on beauty and life and skin care and feeling great and being able to glow from the inside out, it’s all very informed by this last year, for sure.”
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