Harry Styles is getting into the beauty business. The 27-year-old singer and actor has just launched Pleasing, “a life brand that moves to wherever there’s something Pleasing to be found.” So far, only a handful of nail and skincare products have been announced.
The beauty brand, which is Style’s first business venture, is intentionally broad and open for innovation and category expansion. The brand’s website states that Styles’ mission with this late-2021 launch is to “bring joyful experiences and products that excite the senses and blur the boundaries,” with an aim of “dispel[ling] the myth of a binary existence.”
The first drop from Pleasing, titled “Perfect Pearl,” is a tightly curated range that includes four nail polishes, an illuminating primer serum and a dual-ended eye serum and matte lip oil pen. Per the brand, this initial collection will be “released in three stages and limited quantities.” The products, which are already available for pre-order ahead of their official launch on November 29, will retail for between $20 and $65 on the brand’s own website.
Styles announced the news in an exclusive interview with Lynette Nylander for Dazed, which was accompanied by a (instantly iconic, we must say) photo shoot by Rafael Pavarotti, styled by Ib Kamara. “There was a time when I was younger, and I was in the band, when I would have been afraid for everything to have stopped. I didn’t necessarily know who I was if I wasn’t in the band,” Styles tells Nylander. “Now, the idea of people going, ‘We don’t like your music any more, go away’ doesn’t scare me. I think there was a time when it did. It gives me the freedom to kind of go, ‘Great!’ I’m not working from a place of fear. I’m working from a place of wanting to work stuff out, and try different things.”
Pleasing is one such “thing,” and although the beauty industry today is absolutely overrun by celebrity beauty brands, one from Styles feels authentic and, well, actually makes sense. Not only does the performer often flout archaic notions the gender binary in his personal style, but he also often wears nail polish (and has been doing so for some time, even before so many other male celebrities have begun to follow suit). “It’s starting with nail polish, because that was kind of the birth of what it was for,” Styles tells Dazed. “Me seeing a color on a flower or a wallpaper or something and thinking, ‘Oh, I wanna put that on my nails.'”
Like so many who started side hustles and new creative ventures during the tumultuous past few years, Styles credits the pandemic as an impetus for Pleasing: “It was a fun little project, but during the pandemic, and when we eventually named it Pleasing, it felt like it was so much more than nail polish,” he says, adding, “I’ve always found that the moments in my life which have brought me the most joy are the small ones…. It’s always those moments that I find have the longest-lasting effect on me, in terms of sparking something wonderful in me. I really think that the essence of Pleasing is finding those little moments of joy and showing them to people.”
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