Rapper, fashion designer and potential 2024 presidential candidate Kanye West has his sights on the beauty industry. On June 2, West filed a new trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office under the name of his luxury streetwear brand Yeezy, for a host of new products that include makeup and fragrances; skin, hair and nail care products; face and body glitter; baby wipes; and hair removal cream.
In addition, the potential new line may include wellness items such as scented ceramic stones, aromatherapy pillows, essential oils, bath crystals and scented pine cones.
A Yeezy beauty line would bring West into competition with his wife, Kim Kardashian-West, who owns KKW Beauty; and sister-in-law, Kylie Jenner, who sold a majority stake of her brand Kylie Cosmetics to Coty for $600 million last November.
While the 2000s saw a boom of celebrity fragrances, from Paris Hilton, Mariah Carey and Britney Spears, among many others, this decade has seen the dominance of celebrity beauty and wellness empires including Gwyneth Paltrow’s GOOP, Jessica Alba’s Honest Company and Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty. By 2023, the global beauty market is expected to be worth more than $150 billion.
This isn’t the first time West has shown interest in starting a beauty line. In 2017, he filed a trademark for beauty products under his company Donda, named for his late mother, but never moved forward with a launch.
West has spent a decade building a name for himself in fashion, with two defunct clothing lines – Pastelle Clothing, and DW by Kanye West – before his successful sneaker and streetwear collaboration with Adidas, Yeezy Season 1, launched in 2015. Since then, Adidas and West have followed up with four more “seasons,” with Season 5 debuting at New York Fashion Week in 2017.
West’s other ventures have been more fraught. In 2008, he struck a deal to open 10 franchise locations of burger chain Fatburger in Chicago, but only two opened, with one shuttering before the company bought the other one back. In 2019, he embarked on a project to house Los Angeles’s homeless population in prefab dome abodes inspired by the desert cave homes of planet Tatooine in “Star Wars.” Shortly after he revealed them, the prototypes on his land in Calabasas were torn down for violating building codes and West’s lack of property permits.
West has yet to announce any plans for a Yeezy beauty line, but if he does it will add to his expansive portfolio of brands and projects and his newly minted billionaire status. In April, Forbes finally confirmed West had reached the milestone after the hip hop artist accused the magazine of intentionally snubbing him – and once claimed he would change his name to “Christian Genius Billionaire Kanye West.”
