Glossy Pop Newsletter: Makeup brand Merit just launched earrings — here’s why it makes sense

December 6, 2024 Mary

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Ahead of Merit’s launch in January 2021, the team’s mood boards were not filled with inspiration from other makeup brands. Instead, they featured fashion images from the ‘90s, said Aila Morin, the brand’s CMO.

When Merit finally launched it included a brown corduroy mini-bag dubbed the Signature Bag with every customer’s first order. It read as a more grown-up, sustainable evolution of the pink bubble pouches first made famous by Glossier seven years prior. Later that year, for the holidays, the brand rendered the Signature Bag in black velvet, intending for it to be something customers would carry solo, rather than solely in another bag.

“[The Signature Bag] started from a place of solution, [but] it developed into [something] much more fashion-minded,” Morin said, noting that the tie closure was used versus a zipper to make the bag more washing machine-friendly.

Merit has since created collaborative iterations of the signature bag with the fashion brands Proenza Schouler and Tove. Both collaborations were only available as part of kits that included Merit products, or as gifts with purchase. Since 2022, Merit has also made itself a backstage regular at Fashion Month, partnering on makeup for brands including Proenza Schouler, Altuzarra, Brandon Maxwell, Diotima, Tove and J.W. Anderson. Add to that the brand’s minimalist aesthetic and the fact that it’s enlisted fashion icons and fans including Grace Coddington and Kelly Rutherford to promote it on social media, and you start to see the story it has told to position itself as the makeup brand for the fashion girl.

On Thursday, as a sort of second chapter to the successful October launch of its first fragrance, Retrospect, the brand launched two pairs of earrings with the U.K.-based jewelry brand Completedworks. One pair is silver with pearls ($248) and the other is gold vermeil ($189). This rollout marks the first time the brand has taken part in a product collaboration that is actually for sale.

The idea for the collaboration came about organically, Morin said. Merit has long used Completedworks pieces in its marketing photoshoots. The earrings were inspired by the Retrospect bottle, which, itself, was inspired by jewelry. Prior to Merit, Morin worked at the jewelry brand Mejuri marketing jewelry for nearly four years.

“The bottle design of Retrospect took two and a half years total [to finalize] — about as long as the fragrance did,” Morin said. “We went through so many versions, and they’re all 3D Renderings until you model it. That process was very similar to [making] jewelry; [looking at] the bottle over and over again was the same thing as reviewing jewelry CADs. I was like, ‘Why aren’t we doing jewelry?’” She decided to reach out to Completedworks.

Initially, Completedworks’ founder Anna Jewsbury was surprised by the request, Morin said. “But, once we explained what we had in mind, and once we shared Retrospect’s CADs, it [clicked],” she said.

On Wednesday night, at a small dinner in Brooklyn celebrating the collaboration, Jewsbury echoed Morin’s description of her thought process. “There’s a similarity with jewelry and makeup and fragrance — it’s intimate. And you put it on, and it acts as armor. And so when Merit came to us with the idea to design some earrings, it made so much sense. And we’re very grateful to them for trusting us. … Collaborations allow for this beautiful synthesis of two very different creative universes, but always very much with shared values.”

The collaboration is limited in availability. Only a “few hundred” pairs of each pair have been produced, said Vanessa Krooss, Merit’s brand director. Meanwhile, $92 Retrospect is nearly sold out, after selling through eight months’ worth of inventory in its first month on the market. “We bought very aggressively,” Morin said of the brand’s order for Retrospect.

As for the earring collab, “We went into this with a lot of creative goals,” said Krooss. “[It is an] extension of this world we were building [around Retrospect] — and financial, business goals were not at the forefront of this moment. We obviously want the collaboration to sell well, and we think there is an opportunity through earned media and social media buzz for new people to find Merit and fall in love with our brand.”

Though some consumers may be shopping for gifts right now, Krooss and Morin posited that most customers will buy the earrings for themselves. The earrings are available in bundles with Retrospect, but Krooss expects those wanting the earrings will be women who have already purchased the fragrance for themselves. Merit has 550,000 followers on Instagram and 213,000 on TikTok. In 2023, its sales totaled over $100 million, the brand confirmed with Glossy.

There is no big campaign marketing the earrings, and though they were seeded to influencers, the distribution was lighter than for a typical product launch, Krooss said.

“And on social, we’re just going to tell the story [of the collaboration],” Morin said. “We find it really effective to share the thesis for our launches with people.”

Many Merit diehards may have just shopped its Black Friday-Cyber Monday sale. The brand sold out of its gift with purchase — a tiny light-blue velvet Signature mini-bag — on Monday morning. 150,000 were produced. In addition, on December 2, the brand wrapped its 20% off annual sale — the only sale it hosts all year.

“It’s important for us to give that back to our customers, especially people who are so loyal and purchase from us so frequently,” Krooss said. “[This launch is] pure creative expression — that’s really what this is. It’s outside what you normally see from brands, and it’s kind of a last statement [for the year] around who we are.”

Collab of the week

Becky Malinsky x Alex Mill

Alex Mill tapped Becky Malinsky, the stylist and Substacker behind 5 Things You Should Buy, to co-create a capsule collection of sparkly, pretty things, some of which could be worn to a holiday party. The collection encompasses sparkly, sheer T-shirts, a tiered taffeta skirt and lavender velvet pants. “We have had a love affair with Becky for quite some time,” Somsack Sikhounmuong, Alex Mill’s creative director, told Glossy. “She approaches everything she does with such a keen eye and fun edit, which perfectly combines with our aesthetic at Alex Mill. We design the perfect pieces to make getting dressed easy, and with Becky’s collection, she did the same for holiday dressing. There are eight pieces in this collection, but with Becky, we styled over 30 looks using them. You don’t need so many pieces for the holidays — you just need the right pieces.”

L.L. Bean x Tibi

If you thought the Boat and Tote was going anywhere, think again. Maybe you can’t reinvent the wheel, but Tibi’s Amy Smilovic reinvented the L.L. Bean classic with a simple black belt looped around its top. At $475, however, it will set you back more than the plain ol’ L.L. Bean versions, which run around $30-$55.

Of the collab, Smilovic told Glossy, “It first debuted on our Spring 2024 runway as our reimagined version of the classic tote. It’s a bag that our team wears a lot, and [L.L. Bean is a] brand I grew up with — memories flood me of my grandfather, my high school years, and my big move from Georgia to New York. The Boat and Tote is full of utility but has Tibi’s core elements of being chill and modern and classic.”

A few weeks ago, Lands’ End popped up in New York City offering myriad options for customizing its own canvas totes. This was a younger, less affluent demographic, but it does suggest that canvas totes — with a twist — will continue to be a carrier of choice.