Lady Gaga Talks Haus Labs' Major Makeover
Beauty

Lady Gaga Talks Haus Labs' Major Makeover

by Marie Lodi

Makeup has always been a powerful tool of expression for Lady Gaga. Throughout her 20-plus-year career, the singer and actor has undergone countless beauty transformations, whether she’s wearing pearl-studded face jewelry, bold sequin eyeshadow or a classic red lip. Which is why in 2019 it was a natural step to launch her cosmetics brand, Haus Labs by Lady Gaga. And while Gaga reinvents her look time and time again, now it's high time her brand follow suit.

Three years in, Haus Labs by Lady Gaga is having its own makeover moment; everything from the formulas, to the packaging, to the logo is getting an update. The brand also switched from Amazon to Sephora as its exclusive retailer. Seven new products (with almost 100 skus) launched today, June 9, on hauslabs.com, sephora.com, and in 25 Sephora stores, with more to come later this year. While Haus Labs by Lady Gaga's ethos remains the same, celebrating makeup as a vessel for creative artistry and self-expression for all, it’s also now focused on clean, high-performing, science-backed ingredients.

The seven new products that launched today include bronzer, highlighter, brow pencil, a multi-use pigment paint, lip oil, lip crayon and an eyeliner pencil, and they all contain innovative skin-loving ingredients, ranging from nourishing botanicals, to a particular, anti-inflammatory herb that Gaga has used in her personal life for years.

To celebrate the launch of the new and improved Haus Labs by Lady Gaga, PAPER chatted exclusively with the Mother Monster herself via Zoom to discuss what inspired the revamp, the special ingredient she fought for and which new products she secretly wore on the red carpet.

Haus Labs initially launched in 2019. What led you to want to relaunch the brand just three years later?

When I started this company, I always wanted to empower people through makeup and give people that experience of feeling uplifted by makeup and artistry. But I was very much more of an expert in my own artistry, like my stage makeup or my red carpet makeup, and I was less knowledgeable about the beauty industry. So, I spent a lot of time really being a student of the beauty industry, researching product development, and learning what's truly of value to a customer. What I realized is that we just hadn't taken this brand far enough. I didn't make something that I felt was groundbreaking. I didn't make something that I thought really mattered yet. And then it started to crystallize for me that I wanted us to push the boundaries of the beauty industry and the landscape of beauty by pushing what it means to be clean and what it means to be good for your skin. So we now are supercharged clean artistry. We put supercharged skincare ingredients into our makeup, we are cleaner than clean, and we removed over 2,600 ingredients from all of our products.

On top of that, we have a huge assortment of amazing colors that are extremely high pigment, and we have a Pantone library system of sustainable packaging. So it's easy for you to find your shade. You're never gonna get home from Sephora and go, "Uh-oh, I got the wrong shade," because you’ll be able to see the color on the package. And to me, this is what people deserve. Not "How can I get makeup that Lady Gaga wears on TV or that she wears in movies or onstage?" You know, I've been putting dirty makeup on my face for a really long time and I’ve been wrecking my skin, and I wanted to make something truly innovative. And Marie, everybody told me I couldn't do it. They told me you cannot innovate in the beauty industry. You can't make color that is clean in that bright of pigment. They told me that I couldn't put proprietary ingredients into products and we infused both of these products — the Bio-Radiant Gel-Powder Highlighter and our Power Sculpt Velvet Bronzer. These are both infused with a patent pending, proprietary, fermented arnica that we made in a lab in Korea that was then sent over to Europe. This is a true innovation.

That’s what I really want to talk to you about, the formulas. I don't think I've really seen arnica in makeup, and I know that having that ingredient in your products is personal to you.

It's really personal to me. I have been using arnica on my body for years to combat chronic pain and fibromyalgia, and it was always the thing that I turned to, even more than prescription topical medications. I thought to myself, well, if it works for joint pain, I wonder if it would work on the skin to combat inflammation. And, as you know, inflammation is the thing that bothers our skin the most. So I went to the lab and I said, can you take a look at arnica and see the healing powers of arnica on the skin? And they fermented the arnica into an oil. I was then told by a lot of people, well this would maybe work in skincare, but you'll never get this in color. You'll never be able to get this ingredient put into any color products. And literally, me and Gloria [Ryu], my head of PD, we were like, watch, we're going to make this happen. And we did. And now when I or if anyone wears this bronzer or highlighter, you're actually treating and soothing your skin throughout the day. It's 860% more potent than conventional arnica, and it's just the most beautiful product. With the bronzer, you can see that it just melts into the skin. And the glow that you get from that highlighter, it doesn't have that big, chunky glittery texture where you can see the line. It just melts in and it's so beautiful. It's nice because I have a lot of pattern redness, and I find that my skin actually looks better when I take my makeup off at the end of the day because it's been treated by that arnica all day.

I'm curious to know if you were secretly wearing any of the new products in anything that we might have seen in Instagram posts or on the red carpet.

Actually, yes. At the SAG Awards, I was wearing a white strapless dress that had sort of a diamante-encrusted corset underneath, and I had on a white eye and that was our Hy-Power Pigment Paint. Also, I wear this all the time, which is our white Optic Intensity Eco Eyeliner. It's very highly pigmented and clean. But it has argan oil and vitamin E in it so you're not going to get that — you know sometimes when you use [eyeliner pencil] in your waterline, it can get red and your eyes are irritated? That's not going to happen with this product.

I also wore this at the Critics Choice Awards. I wore a yellow Gucci dress that had black lace sleeves and a plunging neckline, and I wore this on my eyes. This is a high-powered pigment paint that works on the lip, cheeks and eye. I’m wearing it on my eyes today in the shade Mint Matte. It has hyaluronic acid in it and plant squalane, and the hyaluronic acid is a low molecular weight so that means that it actually seeps deeper into the skin. So, my eyes are being hydrated and nourished while I wear it.

Are there any other tips and tricks that you swear by aside from the white? I know that really brightens the eyes and makes it look more open.

I love doing that. I love making my eyes bigger by putting white in the water line. And I love our eyeliner obviously because it really really covers the inside of the waterline and it's safe to use. I also love our Edge Precision Brow Pencil, which Allure named as award-winning. It has vitamin E in it as well. You get perfect brow strokes; you also get that beautiful edge right at the bottom of your brow. I use this all the time on red carpets. But my tip is I actually love to use this as a lip liner because it's very, very fine and you can get that very light, light shadow. Our lip oil has prickly pear in it, which is very nourishing, and vegan collagen. What's great about it is, I love a stain, but very often lip stains are very drying, as you know. They just leave your lips feeling kind of varnish-y. But this is beautiful. It leaves a beautiful oil finish, and then once it seeps into your mouth it just leaves a little bit of a stain. What I'll do as a trick is I'll use this on my cheeks as well. So if you have just this in your purse, you're fine for a lip, cheek and eye.

What can you use to get a good cat-eye?

The Hy-Power Pigment Paint in Black Onyx Matte, which I'm wearing right now, is carbon-free and really safe in the water line. If you love MAC Fluidline, you're gonna love this product. It's a more creamy texture, so if you use an eyeliner brush, you can get a perfect wing. And if you use our Optic Intensity Eco Eyeliner, it comes with a brush on the other side so if you want to do a smoked-out edge, you can do that too.

Photos courtesy of Haus Labs by Lady Gaga