Prada Beauty made its European debut in August. On January 15, it hit Sephora.com and Nordstrom.com. And on February 9, the brand feted its U.S. debut with a party held in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg. It was attended by the brand’s “U.S. Partner,” Sofia Richie Grainge, as well as Maude and Iris Apatow, Katie Holmes, Avantika Vandanapu, Charli D’Amelio, Dylan Sprouse, and Meredith Duxbury. The day before, Prada Beauty opened its first U.S. retail base, within Nordstrom’s 57th Street store. Later this month, it will launch in 26 U.S. Sephora doors. And in March, it will launch in Bloomingdale’s, both online and in-store.
Prada Beauty was developed under L’Oréal, after the beauty conglomerate acquired the Prada Beauty license in January 2021. The new brand encompasses skin care and makeup at a prestige price point: a lip balm set to become a hero SKU retails for $50, while the brand’s serum sells for $410.
Richie, who has 11 million followers on Instagram and 3.6 million on TikTok, has a yearlong contract with the brand, which will see her posting paid content and attending brand fashion shows and other events on behalf of the brand. “She has this youthful, refreshing and sophisticated energy and fashion sense that resonate with her audience and the Prada Beauty audience,” said Laura Hibbard, avp of brand engagement for Prada Beauty & Couture Brands at L’Oréal. The brand has also paid influencers including Meredith Duxbury and Steph Hui to create content on TikTok around its lip collection.
In addition, the brand is focused on seeding products to U.S. influencers. The product it’s seeding most is its Colorless Smoothing Lip Balm, referred to internally as the Prada Balm. The sleek packaging and Prada-coded tint of the product have made it a hit on TikTok, Hibbard said. It is showing up in TikToks alongside other cult-favorite lip balms like Rhode’s Peptide Lip Treatment. The brand has seen 700 posts across TikTok and Instagram resulting from its seeding of the lip balm about a month ago. “TikTok is where we see these communities giving their most honest, authentic reviews. And it has been amazing … to see our balm have a big moment within this community,” she said.
Despite the brand’s higher price points, it sees Gen Z as a core target, along with young millennials. It’s been established that Gen Z, and their younger Gen-Alpha counterparts, are willing to spend on luxury beauty. “This [demo] is not only fans of makeup, but they’re also craving the latest and greatest innovations that come to the market. … And they’re the consumer [who wants to] discover what designer brands are coming out with,” said Laura Azaria, gm of Prada Beauty & Couture Brands at L’Oréal.
Gwen Gindre, the brand’s svp of marketing at L’Oréal, noted that the products are refillable and the makeup features skin-care benefits, both of which are attributes known to appeal to younger beauty consumers.
But Prada Beauty is also keeping its “Prada diehards” in mind, Azaria said. To that end, the lipstick bullets are embossed to resemble the brand’s signature Saffiano leather, and the eyeshadow palettes were designed to harken back to the brand’s archival prints and colors.
For now, Prada Beauty is focused on its color cosmetics, which encompass 19 Soft Matte lipsticks, 18 Hyper Matte lipsticks, 33 shades of foundation, 6 eyeshadow quads palettes and the aforementioned lip balm. Later, it will increase its focus on its skin care by partnering with derm-influencers, Hibbard said.
In July, Prada Beauty announced Lynsey Alexander as its global creative makeup artist and Inès Marzat (aka Inès Alpha) as its global creative e-makeup artist. The latter created a series of Instagram and TikTok filters allowing potential customers to virtually try on its makeup at the time of the brand’s launch. “Tech is a really important part of Prada Beauty. It’s one of our key differentiators as a brand,” Hibbard said.
