On Tuesday, fashion house Louis Vuitton unveiled its modern debut makeup collection, La Beauté Louis Vuitton, designed in partnership with the famed makeup artist Pat McGrath, originally teased in March. The range includes 55 lipsticks and 10 lip balms at $160 each and eight eyeshadow palettes, priced at $250. The line will launch on Aug. 20 in China, followed by a worldwide digital pre-launch on Aug. 25; it will then be available from Aug. 29 online and in select Louis Vuitton stores globally.
The range has all the trappings of luxury, incorporating elements of the fashion house’s Monogram and Damier motifs in packaging created by the industrial designer Konstantin Grcic, known for his conceptual furniture pieces. Refills are $69 and $92 for lips and eyes respectively. (Circularity is, of course, another luxury.) A range of small leather goods, including a lipstick pouch and a wallet to house blotting papers, will also be available; the eyeshadows are imbued with ingredients like camellia oil, while the lip balms use an upcycled mimosa wax sourced from the perfumery district of Grasse in France.
La Beauté Louis Vuitton is not a complete outlier in terms of price. Fellow LVMH stablemates Dior launched a special edition lipstick priced at $500 in 2023, the same year Guerlain released its limited fragrance at an eyewatering $27,000. And of course, Louis Vuitton’s existing perfume range starts at $350, with an ultra-premium range called Louis Vuitton Les Extraits Collection from $670.
But at $160 for a permanent collection of lipsticks or balms, it’s almost twice the price of Hermés Silky Lipstick, $80, which raised elegantly shaped eyebrows when it debuted in 2020, and blows past The ($113) Precious Lipstick from Japanese brand Clé de Peau Beauté, often the ne plus ultra of price.
“There’s always going to be a market for a desirable heritage asset,” said Marigay McKee, co-founder of beauty brand incubator Violet Lab and former chief merchant at Harrods and Saks Fifth Avenue. “[Louis] Vuitton has waited such a long time to offer cosmetics that customers are terribly excited… The heritage is there. But quality has to be there, not just the aesthetic.”
Louis Vuitton’s choice to launch the products at such a premium price represents something of a divergence from the traditional designer beauty playbook. Historically, while still pricier than their mass or masstige counterparts, products from the likes of Chanel or YSL Beauté are priced at a more accessible level than their leather goods or fashion lines. A standard Dior lipstick, for example, is around $47.
Many premium beauty brands are finding it harder to grow their sales as price-sensitive customers trade down to cheaper alternatives or reduce their purchase frequency. According to The State of Fashion: Beauty Volume 2 report by The Business of Fashion and McKinsey & Company, 63 percent of consumers do not consider premium brands to be higher performing than mass brands, and 24 percent of customers have traded down to cheaper products in the last 12 months.
With a price tag that will deter many customers, Louis Vuitton is more able to focus on what it clearly identifies as its core customer: the ultra-wealthy.
Who Wants to Spend $160 on Lipstick?
Much like in the luxury fashion world, the prices of prestige beauty products have tracked up since the end of 2021, with companies taking advantage of new pockets of wealth and renewed interest in categories like skincare and fragrance.
However, customers have become increasingly attuned to value for money. Lower-priced brands such as E.l.f. Beauty and Kiko Milano, while not necessarily direct competitors with fashion house brands, have proven they can compete on performance. McKee said that Louis Vuitton’s competition is in some ways more artistry-led brands than fashion house brands — the likes of Westman Atelier and Fara Homidi, and even Victoria Beckham Beauty, which has become arguably more popular than its clothing enterprise. Pat McGrath also has her own prestige line, Pat McGrath Labs, which offers weighty $128 eyeshadow palettes and $69 foundation.
“[Louis Vuitton] is up against the expertise of the best makeup artists in the world,” said McKee. “Some people will just pay for the branding, but it can’t just be hype. The product has to live up to the expectation, or they’ll only have good sales at launch.”
The line will likely benefit from the operational muscle of its parent company.
While lines such as YSL Beauté and Gucci are crafted via license agreements with conglomerates like L’Oréal and Coty respectively, within its parent company LVMH, Louis Vuitton is able to utilise the same capabilities that power the likes of Dior and Benefit Cosmetics.
Distribution will be another piece of the puzzle. While the line will be initially available only in Louis Vuitton’s owned retail stores, where its presence and visual merchandising can be tightly controlled, some extension into speciality or department stores will likely be necessary to scale up and become a meaningful part of the company’s revenue: Hermés has subsequently entered the likes of Macy’s and Nordstrom after initially being available only in its own stores. McKee said she expects the company will still control it meticulously: “It’s going to be a long-term game of chess, not a quick game of checkers,” she said.
In a press release, McGrath acknowledged the exacting nature of luxury beauty.
“I have always been obsessed with the smallest of details: the perfection needed in product texture, the precise application methods… how products should make you feel,” she said.
“I always like to push boundaries with makeup — and this métier is no different.”
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Disclosure: LVMH is part of a group of investors who, together, hold a minority interest in The Business of Fashion. All investors have signed shareholders’ documentation guaranteeing BoF’s complete editorial independence.