Selena Gomez's Rare Beauty Is Turning to a New Category in Search of Its Next Viral Hit

Since its launch in 2020, Rare Beauty has proven itself a more-than-viable competitor to longstanding brands in the makeup category, recently reporting sales of $70 million annually in blush alone.

The brand, founded and owned by Selena Gomez, has built its flourishing reputation mostly with its complexion products. (Its blush and highlighter formulas, in particular, have gained cult followings.) Now that the company has tackled the face market, it's turning its focus to eyes. More specifically, the eyebrows.

The Brow Harmony Pencil & Gel was part of Rare Beauty's debut product lineup, but it didn't gain as much traction as other products — hashtags having to do with the Rare Beauty Eyebrow pencil are among the least viewed in comparison to the brand's other products. (#RareBeautyEyebrowPencil has around 180,400 views on TikTok, whereas #RareBeautyFoundation has 21.7 million views.)

In hopes of catapulting its eyebrow category to the same heights as the rest of its products, Rare Beauty is reimagining its original brow pencil by introducing the new Brow Harmony Precision Pencil and Brow Harmony Lifting Gel as two separate products.

"When we were developing the launch products, Selena really wanted to create a one-and-done brow product. She wanted less componentry — something she could throw in her bag and be on the go with," Joyce Kim, chief product development officer of Rare Beauty, tells Fashionista. "We wanted to use less packaging, so we thought, let's make a [pencil and gel] duo. We were trying to make something for the person who maybe didn't have the full makeup skillset and just wanted to fill in their brows as easily and efficacious as possible."

Unlike many successful brow pencils on the market, the original offering from Rare Beauty has a wider, more crayon-like tip, which can make getting detailed, hair-like strokes difficult. The formula itself is also softer and more pliable than a typical brow pencil, which makes the payoff a bit more difficult to control. Also, rather than providing a clean spoolie on the other end of the pencil (for blending and brushing), the original product instead featured a pomade-like brow gel to set brow hairs, but also bulk them up to a point many reviewers complained was too intense.

"We've gotten great reviews on our website and on Sephora.com, [but] people were either leaning towards loving one side or the other, which meant that multifunctional aspect of the product wasn't being utilized," says Kim of the OG product. "People would either love the pencil or love the gel, and they didn't really love the combination of them."

After gathering feedback from everyone from Sephora shoppers, to Gomez's own makeup artists, to the very active Rare Beauty social media community — which Kim says the company "religiously" watches — she, Gomez and the rest of the Rare Beauty team redeveloped a more precise version of the pencil, creating a brand-new formula and simple spoolie to go with it.

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"We made the pencil's actual formula harder, but still didn't want it to be too hard, where there wouldn't be enough payoff for people with [not-as-full brows]," says Kim. As for the new-and-improved brow gel, rather than focusing on achieving an opaque look, the brand turned its attention to the brow lamination trend — a technique Gomez has herself embraced in the last year.

"Brows are always evolving and changing. We decided to lean more into the laminated look because Selena was like, 'There are so many products like this, and I keep trying to find the best one that works, but they leave my brows stiff and crunchy and they flake.' So, we put all our efforts into making that one universal, lifting, holding gel that's going to eliminate all of those things," says Kim.

The resulting formula is a lightweight gel which, at launch, is available only in clear. It also features a larger brush than the original, with stiffer bristles that make it easier to grab and comb each hair into place. Like the previous version of Rare's brow gel, it's waterproof, with a long-lasting, strong hold.

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So far, consumers seem to be embracing Rare Beauty's new brow products rather enthusiastically. (You can watch my own review of them above.)

"The number of reviews is almost the same number as the original, and it's only been out for the last month. It's just been incredible feedback," says Kim. "For Selena and the rest of the team, it's like music to our ears when we listen to the community;  we're able to do it right and be proud of the fact that it didn't work the first time, which we're very transparent about. But hopefully, this is something that has longevity and becomes people's go-to [eyebrow products]."

Though the original product has officially been marked "unavailable" on the Sephora website and is being phased out, for the time being, it's still available on RareBeauty.com for those who love it, on sale for $11 from $23.

Rare Beauty's new Brow Harmony Lifting Gel is available on RareBeauty.com for $17 and the revamped Brow Harmony Precision Pencil is available for $19 on RareBeauty.com and Sephora.com.

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