“Is that all of chapter one?” Ariana Grande gasps. “I just left my body and I'm back now. What happened while I was gone? Was it okay? No, I'm kidding. That's chapter one. I'm so excited.”
Ariana Grande has just spent the last half hour talking GLAMOUR through the first drop from her new beauty line, r.e.m. beauty, over Zoom. And if Ari’s having an outer-body experience, you can imagine how it felt to be on the receiving end of her guided tour.
“I was so nervous to even discuss stepping into the beauty space because of course there are so many amazing fellow people,” she confides. “I don't ever want to just jump into something that is popular or whatever, it has to feel super intentional and super fuelled by passion. It has to feel authentic to me,” Ariana explains. So, just how did r.e.m. beauty come about? Well, Ariana dreamt it up. Quite literally.
The Positions hit-maker had met up with Forma (the beauty incubator behind Morphe and Emma Chamberlain’s Bad Habit) for initial discussions. “They were like, let's experiment, let's dig in and let's play with some products and I thought, wait a minute, these formulas are really spectacular. I went home that night and I had this vision for my line and it ended up being exactly how I sort of dreamt it would be that night in my head,” she says.
Sounds fairytale perfect, right? But it’s been a labour of love. Perfecting the formulas to the point that they're at has been a process that’s taken over two years, Ariana admits.
“Everything feels so forward and fresh and new. I'm very proud of it all. It took a lot of back and forth, a lot of rounds of going to the lab and me over-expressing myself as always, and working with these incredible artists, scientists and geniuses to get it where it needs to be. We made sure it’s vegan, it’s cruelty-free, it smells delicious and lasts over a long time. Just being able to hold the finished products in my hands is thrilling,” she beams.
Making that dream a reality is a theme that Ariana’s followed through into the brand's name – r.e.m. – which references a dream-filled sleep, while slipping her nickname, Ari, into the first two syllables and paying homage to her song R.E.M.
“I decided to name it r.e.m. because I feel like that song really encompasses a lot of my favourite parts of my sound. But also, r.e.m. – rapid eye movement – focuses on dreams and the eyes which are our main storytellers. They’re our most emotional communicators,” she explains in her famous sing-song voice. “Like you can say more with the way that you look at someone than you can say with words sometimes. Our eyes are what we use to dream and rest. So much beauty happens there. I sort of love that,” she nods.
It follows that the first makeup drop, or chapter one, centres predominantly around the eyes. There’s the at the borderline eyeliner marker “I love this marker because it's super precise. And I like that you can make the perfect little simple cat eye with it, but also create more graphic looks with it,” Ariana explains. There’s three at the borderline kohl eyeliner pencils in Midnight Black, Teddy Bear (“an awesome brown”) and So Mod, a retro white. “A lot of my inspiration is from sixties mod – you know, Twiggy, Barbarella, stuff like that. So you can create more vintage stuff with this, or just use it on your waterline whenever you want,” says Ari.
There’s three midnight shadow eyeshadow palettes, 21 shades of midnight shadow liquid eyeshadows in mattes and lustres, two sets of faux mink dream lashes and two mascaras. “This was a big debate because mascara is so important and also so personal. So many people want all the coverage, all the depth, all the drama, then some just want… [something more natural], even depending on the day. So I wanted us to launch with two: one [the lengthening mascara] that’s clean and separates the lashes, while also giving the pigment. But another one that's a bit more drama, which is the volumising one,” confirms Ariana. “It’s the coolest mascara ever. Totally vegan. Totally amazing.”
But lips and cheeks get a look in, too. The on your collar matte lipsticks come in six nudes. “I love this formula. It's matte, but also creamy and hydrating at the same time,” notes Ariana. The on your collar plumping lip glosses come in nine shades and are Ari's low-key obsession. “It's super plumping! I have to say, it's one of my favourite glosses I've ever used in my life,” she confirms. “The plump was very important to me because I just remember being in middle school and having Lip Venom, or remember that gloss, Big Mouth? To me that was the best feeling,” she says. “This one, Chuckie, is one of my favourites. It has this purple sparkle that reminds me of Chuckie Finster from the Rugrats."
There's a clear gloss top coat that's in a category all on its own. “It's called the utmost importance plumping lip gloss and it's just the perfect clear top coat. It's one of my favourites. It's so nineties,” Ari explains. “My favourite thing to do is pair this with my other favourite in chapter one, the practically permanent lip marker. It's a stain. I've always loved stains more than lip liner or lipstick because I feel like it's going to be there for you. You know, we gotta go, we gotta work. We gotta do things. It doesn't move. And so my favourite combination is the marker with the Utmost Importance Plumping Gloss. I'm wearing it now,” says Ariana.
Rounding out the line-up is the interstellar highlighter topper which comes in 10 shades. “We wanted to do a lot of them. You could use them to create fun eye looks, or really anywhere. That's the thing about a lot of the products in this line – they're kind of multifunctional. You can use them as eyeshadow if you want, you can use it as a cheek if you want, or even with some of the liquid eyeshadows,” Ariana nods.
Beyond the formulas, the packaging was equally important. “I wanted to make sure that everything looked kind of like a prop from Star Trek or Black Mirror or something. I wanted to treat it like an Apple or Tesla situation. I didn't want it to look like makeup,” reveals Ariana.
“I’m a huge fan of sci-fi, vintage, horror space stuff so I wanted to create our own world with this packaging. I like the idea of transporting us to another time.” The look of the products was a focus of Ariana’s from the brand’s inception. “I remember one of our earliest meetings, I put together these three huge mood boards that had hundreds of images and references of everything – iPhones, Macbooks, the Harper's Bazaar magazine cover that we referenced for one of the main campaign images, the Barbarella gun, the solar system and pictures of colours and tones,” she says.
“One of my favourite pieces is the eyeshadow palettes,” Ariana adds, lifting up a slim space-silver compact. The same goes for the interstellar highlighter toppers. She holds the packaging up to her ear “Am I putting on makeup or calling Mars? To be determined, you know?,” she jokes.
The hands-down winner on the packaging front, though, is the lipstick which looks like a teensy astronaut, complete with the round, clear face-visor. “I'm obsessed with this packaging in a way that I don't even know how to articulate,” Ariana grins. “It's our little space human alien pod. It's kind of the cutest thing I've ever seen. I love that you can peek through and see the colours. It's spacey and fun.”
But Ariana’s favourite part of the process – “other than seeing the packaging come to life” – would have to be the product naming sessions with Ray, her manager. “Whenever I would get manicures, I would always wonder: who names these and can I shake their hand? So to be doing it myself is so funny,” she smiles. The highlights? “There’s an eyeshadow shade called Plumbledore, in case you had any questions regarding my involvement,” Ariana laughs. Her obsession with Harry Potter is well-documented. She even named two of her dogs Snape and Lily. As if on cue she pauses. “Oh, there's a siren. My dog might start howling any second,” she says. “I just want to warn you because when he does it, it's really beautiful, but also powerful. He has a beautiful voice,” she says gently.
“Another shade is Cheeky Hijiki,” Ari continues. “[The dried seaweed] is one of my favourite things to snack on.” As for the babydoll eyeshadow palette, “that was what my grandpa used to call me and my nonna calls me that. I gave it the most personal name because this is sort of the neutral, you know, more warm.”
Sunset in Gildone, another shade is named after the hillside town in Italy where her nonna’s side of the family are from. “We’ve got cannoli in the principessa palette. Boca Mocha is a shade that’s named after my hometown Boca Raton. Then the other palette, midnight snack, is kind of a curve ball,” Ari goes on.
She remembers she’s supposed to be swatching the shades and becomes flustered. “I always see the girls on Instagram being like [she holds the product up to the camera with her hand out flat behind it in the OG YouTuber stance]. That's me now. I'm going to do it all as Jennifer Coolidge to make myself more comfortable,” she announces. “Is that alright?” she asks before launching into a hilarious impression. “Shall I move on?,” she says awkwardly after a couple of minutes looking off-camera toward her management team. “They're like, ‘wrap it up, Ari,’” she cringes.
She recomposes herself to describe her experience of creating makeup vs making music. “The obvious answer is they're incredibly different. They're both totally different outlets of storytelling, but they kind of hold hands in a weird way. I think the similarity is the attention to the construction. So when you're writing a song, making sure the notes set up the hook in the proper way, or that the harmonies aren't fighting with the strings and everything is complimentary. It’s the same as putting together these makeup formulas and making sure that each note is perfect. Does that make sense?,” she asks. “Every part of it, although so wildly different, feels so similar because it's the same sort of meticulous time spent with formula.”
Before we finish, she reveals one of the hardest parts of building her new brand. “Just keeping it a secret has been tough,” she grins. “I’ve been wearing a lot of the chapter one products like the lashes on The Voice and I’ve…” she yelps and stops for a moment before deciding whether or not to go on. “Oh, I'm going to tell you all the secrets,” she giggles mischievously. “I’ve even been wearing stuff that's coming in later chapters like our foundation, which is my favourite. We spent so long getting the formula right. And we want to make sure that it's perfect. We wanted to save it for later, but it's one of my favourite things in the world. I use it all the time. It's the best,” she nods.
“There is so much more coming, but we wanted to do drops instead of giving you everything at once because we want it to be super selective and intentional,” Ariana explains. She parts by sharing her hopes for the brand. “It feels so honest and so true to me. I've spent a lot of time in makeup in my life. I've spent a lot of time in the makeup chair, so just to redefine my relationship with makeup and have my own version of it – and hopefully be able to inspire people to express themselves in a new way and have these beautiful products come to life – is thrilling,” she beams. “I’ve been smiling so hard, my teeth hurt.”
Ariana's r.e.m. beauty line is priced between £15-£22 and will be available exclusively from rembeauty.com from 12th November at 2pm UK time.
For more from GLAMOUR's Beauty Editor, Elle Turner follow her on Instagram @elleturneruk
