While cosmetics brands raise or consider raising prices in light of tariffs, Louis Vuitton (MC.PA) is completely redefining the price a luxury lipstick might fetch.
The LVMH-owned (MC.PA) fashion house partnered with renowned makeup artist Pat McGrath to launch its first permanent color cosmetics collection, which includes 55 lipsticks and 10 lip balms priced at $160 each. The La Beauté collection also features eight eyeshadow palettes priced at $250 apiece.
After a digital pre-launch on Monday, the lipsticks will be available online and in select Louis Vuitton stores on Aug. 29, 2025. But is anyone buying at those prices?
“There’s virtually no market for a $160 lipstick,” Pauline Brown, former LVMH chair of North America, told Yahoo Finance on Wednesday. “So I think this was a strategic play to try to reinforce their market position and their market lead. … I think it’s way premature to suggest that this is going to be a success for LVMH.”
Hermes (RMS.PA), widely known for its Birkin bag, previously held the top of the cosmetics market with its $85 lipstick. Tom Ford and Chanel also have a piece of that market, with their standard lipsticks priced at $65 and $50, respectively.
Even Louis Vuitton’s refill prices — $69 for its lipsticks and $92 for its four-pan eyeshadow palettes — are still more expensive than some competitors’ brand-new lipsticks. Louis Vuitton maintains that its bold pricing strategy targets the most affluent and most aspirational potential customers.
“The strategy of Vuitton is focusing on always delivering the most sophisticated and qualitative product to retain the most important client and get some others from the upper segment,” LVMH CFO Cécile Cabanis said on the company’s latest earnings call.
Cabanis added that the other part of the strategy is to “continue to recruit from the younger generation, and that is not around down trading or doing cheap products, but it’s around using the firepower and the DNA and the desirability of Vuitton and replicating it on more accessible categories.”
Louis Vuitton’s prestige cosmetics launch will be tested as luxury brands continue to face a slowdown in demand and as customers have pushed back against higher prices.
In its most recent quarter, LVMH reported another quarter of declining sales, led by fashion and leather. Sephora offered a bright spot, however, and gained share amid mounting competition. LVMH recently underwent a restructuring and cut 10% of its workforce.
But tariffs from the Trump administration are creating another test as they squeeze the margins of many beauty brands across segments.
Read more: What Trump’s tariffs mean for the economy and your wallet
E.l.f. Beauty (ELF), known for its affordability, just raised prices for the third time in its history, this time by $1 across its portfolio. Estee Lauder (EL) executives also said they started adjusting prices on the company’s earnings call.
“I do think there’s going to be more pricing in the beauty category in the US in the next 12 months,” Citi research analyst Filippo Falorni told Yahoo Finance. “I think companies are going to be somewhat judicial in terms of how much to price higher, given the consumer environment remains a little bit choppy with the potential to trade down to mass [market].”
In the first quarter, Circana data showed revenue for US prestige beauty sales remained flat year over year, while mass market cosmetics sales grew 3%.
“It’s more interesting to think about the floor than the ceiling,” Brown said about fluctuating beauty price points.
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