Jennifer Lawrence Launches a Haircare Brand, and the Pitch Is That She Doesn't Have Time for Yours

Jennifer Lawrence spent three years building a haircare brand before anyone outside her inner circle knew it existed, and on Tuesday night at the Metrograph in lower Manhattan, she finally showed her hand. The actress launched mes° with three products, a dry-hair mask, a volumizing mist, and a restyling serum, priced from $34 to $52, alongside a brand film and the kind of press event usually reserved for a movie premiere, not a hair mask.

The idea traces back to a TED Talk by Jasmina Aganovic, the chemical engineer behind Arcaea, the biotech-beauty company that also built the fragrance brand Future Society. Lawrence, who has mostly lent her face to other people's brands, Dior among them, says mes° is the first one that is actually hers. "I had no agency over my hair at all," she said of the frustration that led her here, which is a strange thing to hear from a woman who has been professionally styled for fifteen years, and also exactly the point.

The brand's whole premise is a bet against the influencer-first playbook: no fussy routine, no ring light, just a busy person who does not have time for a blowout despite being photographed every time she leaves the house. It is also a bet against recent history. Scarlett Johansson's skincare brand, The Outset, shut down earlier this year, and a haircare label called Messy already exists with an uncomfortably similar name. Lawrence says she is approaching mes° as though she has "made the greatest thing on Earth." The market will decide if a movie star's name is still worth more than an algorithm's.

Source: Fortune

Kyle Duford, Founder & Editor, BRNDWIRE. More from Kyle →