These Celeb Beauty Brands Are Giving New Meaning To Having Skin In The Game
Diversifying your brand outside of entertainment is something that a lot of celebrities are taking seriously. We’ve seen it in the early 2000s when rappers began creating clothing lines such as Nelly with Apple Bottom and Jay-Z and Damon Dash with Rocawear, but now it’s all about beauty and skin. With Rihanna seeing massive success with her Fenty Beauty and now Fenty Skin line, other celebrities are looking to get into the health and beauty space as well.
While we love us some RiRi, it is perfectly fine to venture out and see what other Black celeb beauty and skin care lines have to offer. Check them out below:
S'Able Labs by Idris Elba and Sabrina Dhowre Elba
Hollywood’s sexiest couple Idris Elba and wife Sabrina Dhowre Elba have decided to dip their toes into the skin care world with S’Able Labs. S’Able is Elbas spelled backward and the products are genderless. Sabrina recently talked about her exciting new venture with her husband in Vogue, “We realized quickly that there was no one doing it in the wellness space that looked like, spoke like or felt like us—there was no representation for people of color who wanted to be into wellness and fit in,” she said. “Plus everything was gender-focused—I’d have conversations with my husband on products he didn’t think he could use [due to them being aimed at women], but could.”
Cay Skin by Winnie Harlow
Supermodel Winnie Harlow recently launched Cay Skin, which is a sun and body care brand. As a model, Winnie works long hours and sometimes she’s working those hours in the sun. In an interview with Essence, Winnie recalled suffering from sunburn after modeling in the Bahamas from sun up to sundown. She revealed that no one on the shoot wanted her to reapply sunscreen because “it didn’t look good.”
However, that experience motivated her to develop her skincare line. “I wanted to make sure it was good to use for people who have sensitive skin, who have vitiligo, who are light, dark, any color under the sun,” she said. “I wanted it to be beneficial for everyone because everyone needs sun care and protection from the sun.”
Kinlò by Naomi Osaka
Naomi Osaka also has a sun care line called Kinlò. The tennis star launched the line in hopes of bringing awareness to skin protection and skin cancer in Black and Brown communities. Naomi opened up about what she learned when developing the line. “I was shocked when I learned about the statistics of skin cancer in communities of color, particularly about how much higher the mortality rate is for those of us who are diagnosed with skin cancer,” she said in an interview with Oprah Daily.
“That really opened my eyes to the fact that protection for melanated skin is a real public health need, and I immediately wanted to facilitate a conversation around that to help debunk the myths about us not needing to wear sunscreen because we have natural melanin. That's not true.”
Humanrace by Pharrell Williams
Pharrell Williams' skin care line Humanrace is a vegan, eco-friendly and genderless line that he developed with his dermatologist Dr. Elena Jones. The musical genius shared the story behind the brand name Humanrace to High Snobiety. “When we started working on the shoe design [at adidas] we knew it was going to be something for the human race,” he said. “And so that just became the inspo. And here we were, making shoes with these positive affirmations on them and people were paying for them.”
“It was this amazing case study [where] people would pay for something positive coming from me and coming from my group. And there, the Humanrace concept was born. I suppose, everything after it, up until now which is skincare, we've just been literally thinking to ourselves what category makes sense next? For me, any category that we step into we want to make it better than the way we found it.”
SKN by Lori Harvey
Socialite turned beauty entrepreneur Lori Harvey dropped the secrets to her glowing skin with the launch of her five-step skin care system, SKN by LH last year. The clean, vegan, cruelty-free was inspired by Lori's journey to healthy skin after years of not finding products that suited her specific skin issues. She shared the why behind her brand with Vogue, "I have rosacea and would struggle to find the right products to use. Then I got into modeling, and between shoots and backstage at runway shows you have so much makeup being put on your face. My skin was constantly going through it. So after using, like, 20 different products on my face at one time, I felt like there had to be a simpler way for me to get my skin looking the way I wanted it to.”
"I’m someone who has extremely sensitive skin, so I wanted to create an easy, step-by-step routine for all skin types, but one that definitely catered to people with sensitive skin who want to achieve a radiant complexion but don’t know what to use to get it," Lori continued. Vitamin C, niacinamide, and hyaluronic acid serve as some of the line's hero ingredients. The core collection was released with much success and sold out in three days of its October launch.
EleVen by Venus Williams
Tennis great Venus Williams also got into the sun care game by adding sun care products to her lifestyle brand EleVen. In an interview with The Cut, Venus admitted that she “wasted the first 35 years of my years in full sun exposure” and now she wants others to not make that same mistake.
“In the beginning, my philosophy for choosing a sunscreen was always: the uglier, the better,” she said. “So if it had a horrible cast on my skin, and wouldn’t blend in, I figured, well, I’m getting even more sun protection … and that’s not necessarily the truth [laughs]. But you know, once you’ve been a deviant for so many years, you’re just trying to make up for lost time.” The champion said that her products won’t leave you with a cast like many well-known products.
Keys Soulcare by Alicia Keys
From soul music to Soulcare, Alicia Keys now can add skin care entrepreneur to her endless list of accomplishments. The mother of two launched Keys Soulcare and it is a “clean” line that aims to go beyond the skin and take care of your mind, body, and spirit. In an interview with Ulta, the singer opened up about why she decided to create the line.
“Personally, I’ve always struggled with my skin and eventually I realized it was because of the energy I was carrying, toxic emotions or relationships that played a big part in how I reflected from the inside out,” she said. “I realize self-care — self-love, really — has always been super important to me. And I know for a fact we aren’t often taught how to access it for ourselves. So, this is a new accessible way to look at the process.”
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This Black Woman-Owned Creative Agency Shows Us The Art Of Rebranding
Rebranding is an intricate process and very important to the success of businesses that want to change. However, before a business owner makes this decision, they should determine whether it's a rebrand or an evolution.
That's where people like Lola Adewuya come in. Lola is the founder and CEO of The Brand Doula, a brand development studio with a multidisciplinary approach to branding, social media, marketing, and design.
While an evolution is a natural progression that happens as businesses grow, a rebrand is a total change. Lola tells xoNecole, "A total rebrand is necessary when a business’s current reputation/what it’s known for is at odds with the business’s vision or direction.
"For example, if you’ve fundamentally changed what your product is and does, it’s likely that your brand is out of alignment with the business. Or, if you find your company is developing a reputation that doesn’t serve it, it might be time to pump the brakes and figure out what needs to change.
She continues, "Sometimes you’ll see companies (especially startups) announce a name change that comes with updated messaging, visuals, etc. That usually means their vision has changed or expanded, and their previous branding was too narrow/couldn’t encompass everything they planned to do."
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The Brand Doula was born in 2019, and its focus is on putting "the experiences, goals, and needs of women of color founders first," as well as brands with "culture-shifting missions."
According to Lola, culture-shifting is "the act of influencing dominant behavior, beliefs, or experiences in a community or group (ideally, for the better)."
"At The Brand Doula, we work with companies and leaders that set out to challenge the status quo in their industries and communities. They’re here to make an impact that sends ripples across the market," she says.
"We help the problem solvers of the world — the ones who aren't satisfied with 'this is how it's always been' and instead ask 'how could this be better?' Our clients build for impact, reimagining tools, systems, and ways of living to move cultures forward."
The Brand Doula has worked with many brands, including Too Collective, to assist with their collaboration with Selena Gomez's Rare Beauty and Balanced Black Girl for a "refresh," aka rebrand. For businesses looking to rebrand, Lola shares four essential steps.
1. Do an audit of your current brand experience — what’s still relevant and what needs to change? Reflect on why you’re doing the rebrand in the first place and what success would look like after relaunching.
2. Tackle the overall strategy first — before you start redesigning logos and websites, align on a new vision for your brand. How do you want your company to be positioned moving forward? Has your audience changed at all? Will your company have a fresh personality and voice?
3. Bring your audience along the journey — there’s no need to move in secret. Inviting your current audience into the journey can actually help them feel more connected to and invested in your story, enough to stick around as changes are being made.
4. Keep business moving — one of my biggest pet peeves is when companies take down their websites as soon as they have the idea to rebrand, then have a Coming Soon page up for months! You lose a lot of momentum and interest by doing that. If you’re still in business and generating income, continue to operate while you work on your rebrand behind the scenes. You don’t want to cut existing customers off out of the blue, and you also don’t want so much downtime that folks forget your business exists or start looking for other solutions.
While determining whether the rebrand was successful may take a few months, Lola says a clear sign that it is unsuccessful is negative feedback from your target audience. "Customers are typically more vocal about what they don’t like more than what they do like," she says.
But some good signs to look out for are improvements in engagement with your marketing, positive reviews, press and increase in retention, and overall feeling aligned with the new branding.
For more information about Lola and The Brand Doula, visit her website, thebranddoula.com.
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If you’ve never heard of the word “anorgasmia” before, it’s the technical term that is used for women who have trouble achieving an orgasm. Actually, if we’re gonna get super technical about it, women who have infrequent ones (check out “Why Are My Orgasms So Damn Inconsistent?” and “Why Do Orgasms So Often Seem Like A ‘Hit-Or-Miss’ Experience For Women?”) or women who experience orgasms that oftentimes lack intensity can also fall under this category.
And although everything from age and hormonal imbalances to stress/anxiety and even low self-esteem can play a role in why climaxing can be difficult, after touring with an organization that dealt with porn and sex addiction for almost 10 years, having countless sessions with married women and also researching and writing on sex for over two decades at this point, what I realize hasn’t been discussed enough is that a lot of women can have orgasms — just not vaginal ones via intercourse (check out “Ladies, Please Stop Pressuring Yourself Over Vaginal Orgasms”).
The next thing that should be brought up more in the discourse is the fact that many women have orgasms — they’re just not always earth-shattering ones (like the ones that you feel when you have, say, a blended orgasm).
Today, we’re going to hone in on the latter point. If you know (that you know that you know) that you have orgasms yet the more intense ones don’t happen nearly as often as you would like, there is something that you can do that has been proven to help you out — and the title of this piece is a huge hint as far as what that is. #wink
How Does Weed Help to Create More and Better Orgasms?
GiphyWeed and sex being a cool combination is not something that I haven’t addressed before. A few years back, I penned a piece for the site entitled, “7 Proven Ways Weed Makes Sex So Much Better.” So, why did I feel the need to write this one too? Because I think all of us (who’ve had sex before) can vouch for the fact that you can have a wonderful sexual experience and still not have an orgasm or the kind of orgasm that you’d prefer to have. And when that is indeed the case, well, something that can help you out is yep, marijuana.
For starters, did you know that there are literal studies to support that weed can help women to have more frequent orgasms? Yep. One article that I read stated that out of almost 400 people surveyed, 52 percent said that they had trouble climaxing; however, after a bit of weed use, orgasm frequency increased by almost 73 percent, orgasm satisfaction by 67 percent, and the ability to have orgasms more easily increased by 71 percent.
And since some of these individuals deal with something known as female orgasmic disorder (FOD), because the findings are so significant, there are some states that are actually pushing for FOD to qualify for medical marijuana treatment. Yep, that’s how effective weed use is proving itself to be in this realm.
So, just what is it about weed that makes climaxing a more probable experience for so many of us? For one thing, weed is seen as an aphrodisiac by many individuals. One reason is that it contains properties that help to relax your system as well as intensify the sexual experiences that you have by literally helping to make them feel more pleasurable.
Some studies also reveal that weed use can lower your inhibitions and increase the amount of time you spend engaging in foreplay too. If you add to that the fact that weed also amplifies the sense of touch — well, I’m sure that you get how all of this combined can help you to have not just more but better quality orgasms, for sure.
How to Effectively Bring Weed into Your Sexual Experiences
GiphySo, now that you know all of this, I’m sure some of you are wondering how to bring marijuana into your boudoir in a responsibly effective kind of way. Good question. For one thing, it’s definitely best to start off in small amounts (if you’ve never experienced weed before); you can probably do this best with edibles because many of them are sold in pre-dosed amounts. In fact, although you might think that, when it comes to weed consumption, “the more the merrier,” the reality is actually that overdoing it could decrease your libido instead of elevate it.
Also, it’s a good idea to remember that while CBD is good for ointments and creams that can help to reduce anxiety before sex or enhance afterplay (check out “Sure, Your Foreplay Game Is On Point. Now What About The ‘Afterplay’?”), THC — the active ingredient that is responsible for getting you “high” — is what has a stronger reputation for making sex itself a more pleasurable experience; especially as far as women go. So, what you might want to do is start out with something like a chocolate edible (since it also is an aphrodisiac) with a low amount of THC in it along with a CBD-based lubricant.
Just make sure to keep in mind that edibles can bea bit unpredictable (as far as how high you will get and how soon along with how you will feel once you come down from the high experience), plus, their effects tend to last longer than smoking (edible highs can sometimes last six or more hours while smoking ones are around four or more) — so, if it’s your first time trying all of this out, a night before going to work isn’t a good idea; wait until the weekend instead.
On the other hand, if you’d consider yourself to be a bit of a “weed pro” at this point, you might want to experiment with some different strains of weed. Ones that are somewhat popular in the sexual stimuli department contain what is called limonene. It is actually a chemical that isfound in citrus fruit; however, when it’s combined with weed, not only can it help the weed to taste better, but it canelevate your mood, reduce your stress, andgive your libido and energy levels a bit of a boost as well.
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Listen, if there’s one thing that I’m gonna do, it’s provide a hack to make sex better for you — and there is just too much data out in these streets to not shout out weed as far as achieving quality orgasms go.
That said, if weed ain’t your thing, don’t force it to be just because you read this. There are other ways to have amazing orgasms (check out “15 Women Share Their Personal Hacks For Better Orgasms (And Sex Overall)”). Oh, but if it is (or if you’ve always been curious about it), why not approach cannabis from a strictly sexual angle? At the very least, you’ll get a bit of a euphoric feel. At the most, you’ll have an avenue to experience more of the orgasms that you crave.
Hell, sounds like a win/win to me, sis.
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