* Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing will collaborate with L’Oreal Paris for lipstick collection
* The collection will add to the popular Colour Riche lipstick line
* The debut is set to coincide with Paris Fashion Week in September
Balmain will collaborate with L’Oreal Paris cosmetics to create a capsule collection for the French beauty brand’s best-selling Colour Riche lipstick line. According to L’Oreal, one Colour Riche lipstick is sold worldwide every three seconds, making it their most popular lipstick line.
This will be the first time that the house’s creative director, Olivier Rousteing will work in the beauty and cosmetics realm. The collection’s debut is set to coincide with Paris Fashion week, expected to launch in late September this fall. Rousteing will be involved in virtually all creative aspects of the collection, including the advertising campaign, color selections and packaging design.
L’Oreal’s flagship cosmetics line has been sold in retailers like CVS, Target and other drugstores, at affordable price points ranging from $5-$20. A standard L’Oreal Colour Riche lipstick currently ranges from about $5 to $8, depending on the retailer. The Balmain x L’Oreal collection is expected to include 12 new shades and to be sold at the same retailers that already carry the popular lipstick. The collaboration will also include a presumably higher-end “jewel edition” collection with three distinct hues, to be sold at Balmain stores. However, as far as price points are concerned, whether or not Rousteing’s Color Riche collection will adhere to L’Oreal’s normal price range, is still unknown.
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In a statement today, L’Oreal Paris’s global brand president Pierre-Emmanuel Angeloglou said of the upcoming collab: “This collaboration builds on the partnership between L’Oréal Paris and Paris Fashion Week, which seeks to democratize runway beauty for everyone.” L’Oreal and Balmain already share many of the same spokespeople and models, including Karlie Kloss and Cindy Crawford, though the Balmain x L’Oreal Colour Riche collection’s model is also still unknown.
This announcement comes just a month after Rousteing’s revelation of plans for a directional shift for Balmain. As we reported last month, Balmain announced their plan to broaden their audience by incorporating more casual wardrobe pieces, including denim ad jersey knits into future collections. Adding beauty — and affordable beauty at that — to the mix may just be one more step in the label’s attempts to widen their audience.