For the price of more than 235 pints of milk, or nearly 90kg of rice, you can get your hands on the new Louis Vuitton lipstick. For £160, 55 shades – 27 satin and 28 matte – will go on sale in the UK, marking a new high in the redrawing of lipstick from relative mundanity to hyper-luxury product.
The lipstick is part of Louis Vuitton’s debut makeup collection, which goes on sale this weekend and also includes eyeshadow palettes (£250) and lip balms (also £160).
The lipstick has been designed in partnership with the makeup artist Pat McGrath, who has worked backstage at Louis Vuitton shows for two decades and also played a role in developing makeup lines for brands such as Gucci and Giorgio Armani.
It follows a clutch of brands releasing lipsticks that cost as much as many people’s weekly shop. Celine last year launched its first lipstick for £62. Chanel has one in a glass case, inspired by the mirrors that line the stairs in Coco Chanel’s Paris apartment, for £145. Hermès, famed for its multithousand-pound Birkin bag, launched one for £81 in 2020. In 2023, Dior launched a special-edition lipstick priced at $500.
Big fashion brands have been turning to makeup more generally. According to Daniela Morosini, a senior beauty correspondent and special projects editor at The Business of Fashion, “beauty products make lots and lots of money for fashion house brands. The margins are great”.
Victoria Beckham is one notable example. The brand broke the £100m sales mark this week, despite widening operating losses, in a surge that is largely being credited to the strong performance of beauty, and in particular a £32 eyeliner, which is reportedly sold once every 30 seconds worldwide.
For customers, makeup is a – relatively – accessible way of buying into luxury brands, particularly given the hugely inflated current price of high-end fashion – a Chanel medium Classic Flap bag, for instance, that cost $4,900 in 2015 now costs $10,200.
Made from upcycled wax, smooth to apply, with a punchy pigment, the Louis Vuitton lipsticks carry the scent of mimosa, jasmine and rose. The weighty black and gold packaging – the work of industrial designer Konstantin Grcic – is magnetised, easing the sliding of the LV-embossed lipstick back into its case with a satisfying low click.
Still, if £160 for a lipstick sounds extortionate, according to Philip Graves, the founder of consumer psychology group Shift Consultancy, “it all depends on your frame of reference … if you’re normally someone who goes into Boots and buys No 7 lipstick, you’re not going to become someone who goes into Louis Vuitton and spends £160 on lipstick.” However, “if you’re someone who goes into Louis Vuitton every now and then and buys yourself a £4,000 bag, now you might go in and go, ‘That lipstick’s fantastic.’ You’ve just, in inverted commas, ‘saved’ yourself £3,800.” Plus, “it’s probably the cheapest thing in there by some considerable distance. From a consumer psychology point of view, that gives you a framing advantage.”
For Morosini, the relative cheapness compared with LV suitcases, say, “does kind of open the aperture to a newer customer”. Louis Vuitton is, after all, the brand that famously launched a $1m handbag in 2023.
Having McGrath involved is a boon. “Her signature, at least in beauty and fashion circles, really means something,” said Morosini. For Hannah Coates, a beauty, wellness and lifestyle editor and brand consultant, “with McGrath at the helm, I expect the formula is excellent quality and the colours flattering on an array of different skin tones.” Although, notably, McGrath’s own makeup line sells lipsticks in Harrods for £27.
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According to fashion psychologist Dr Dion Terrelonge, price point, rather than a hindrance, “is a big part of the appeal”. Lipsticks like this, she says, “are being used as a social signifier of class and wealth and standing”.
For Dr Anastasia Kārkliņa Gabriel, a culture critic and author of Cultural Intelligence for Marketers, “aggressive pricing creates an added layer of exclusivity that becomes desirable to consumers … Being willing to pay £160 for a lipstick becomes a way to express something about who you are in the world, or who you aspire to be.”
Coates thinks we “could be seeing LV’s bid to tap into the ‘lipstick index’, which is the theory that sales of luxury cosmetics – particularly lipstick – tend to rise during times of economic downturn”. While Graves is sceptical of the lipstick index, “not least because the person who coined the term was someone who owned a lipstick company”, as a broad principle, “people do find other ways to get a sense of reward when times are hard.”
It helps that lipstick is a product you can be seen to use. “For something to have status value, other people have got to see it,” said Graves. “Of course you can go and tell people, but that’s generally not as effective. Much better that you casually take it out and top up your lipstick.”
Refillable, it is being framed as an object to keep, which Gabriel thinks is a big part of its appeal. “The refillable lipstick product becomes the product to purchase for its material benefits, while the case carries that symbolic access to the world of luxury that is meant to feel exclusive, exquisite and deeply aspirational.”
The packaging is key, as well as the sensory experience of the product. Morosini remembers the New York-based makeup artist Kirsten Kjaer Weis once saying she wanted her brand’s compacts to have a clunk when they shut that sounded like the trunk of a Mercedes-Benz being closed.
If some people are outraged by the price of this top-end lippie, that may also be part of the equation. “This pricing strategy, while bold even by luxury standards, also serves the brand’s marketing purposes by driving awareness and generating attention around the product and the brand,” said Gabriel.