The ultra-defined eyeliner looks and glamorous pouts modelled by the reality TV star Kylie Jenner on social media will soon be available to buy on the high street after it was announced her Kylie Cosmetics brand is to be sold in Boots.
After recording steep sales declines at the height of the pandemic, the UK’s biggest beauty retailer is eager to attract shoppers back to its beauty halls and on to its website. Jenner, a scion of the Kardashian clan, is a powerful social media star with 246 million followers on Instagram alone.
The 23-year-old’s influence over the spending habits of generation Z was recognised two years ago when the US beauty group Coty, which owns Max Factor and Rimmel, took control of the brand in a near £1bn deal.
Jenner had launched her cosmetics brand in 2015, selling “Kylie Lip Kits” – a collection of lipsticks paired with lip liners – so fans could recreate her trademark overlined lips. The debut product sold out in less than a minute and she continued to expand the range, moving into skincare in 2019.
Coty, which says Kylie Cosmetics is the “most-followed beauty brand in the world”, has just relaunched the products with new formulas described as “clean and vegan”. A new direct-to-consumer website that will sell Kylie cosmetics and skincare brands side-by-side for the first time is due to launch in the UK next week, when they will also be available in a handful of upmarket department stores.
Before the interregnum caused by the health crisis, Boots had embarked on a plan to reinvigorate its beauty halls with new features such as YouTube studios and high-profile brands such as Rihanna’s Fenty. The Kylie range would go into “selected stores” and on its website from the autumn, the retailer said.
The Kylie brand adds to the more than 50 new names introduced in the past year. Alice Rafferty, its premium beauty senior buying manager, described the launch as a “big moment”. “We are always on the lookout for the best beauty brands to bring to the high street,” she said, adding that Boots would make the Kylie brand more accessible to UK customers than ever before.
