MY GUIDE TO THE CELEBS’ SOUK
From Zeta’s selfie powder to Fergie’s farm food, the stars are cashing in by putting the bizarre into bazaar. So here’s...
CATHeRine ZETA-JONES, Victoria Beckham, the Duchesses Sussex and York, ellen DeGeneres, Rihanna and Reese Witherspoon are just some of the big name female celebrities with their own lifestyle brands. Some of them are well-established, others are still in the planning stage — and all of them are coming your way soon.
The products may be different but the mission remains the same. The stars and royals want to use their celebrity to boldly go and flog mascaras, lipsticks, face creams, fashion, pillowcases, shoes, assorted knick-knacks, entire belief systems and embroidered cushions to their worshipful fan bases.
How much is that doggy in the window? Do you mean the one on the Royal Doulton mug from the ellen DeGeneres range? Well, that is 14 of your english pounds, please. Yes, for each mug. Yes, in more ways than one.
From £1,400 ruffle dresses by Victoria Beckham to pearl belly chains (£204) from Rihanna’s Fenty range, there is a vast emporium of celeb product out there. A bazaar of the bizarre, if we are to include Reese Witherspoon’s blue gingham sunglasses (£77) and we must because, despite everything, i desperately want a pair.
For stars are smart when it comes to tempting and cultivating the spending power of their largely female fan bases. it is interesting that, while all of them claim to be feminists and dedicated to the global she-cause, the first thing all these women-supporting women do when attempting to make money is try to get other women to buy their overpriced crudola.
Don’t they make enough money being film stars, pop singers, television hosts and royal wives? clearly not. However, it is not all bad. Some of the items are rather lovely, while some of the profits are surely diverted to charity and good causes? Surely?
Yet the suspicion remains that everyone here has admired the success of Gwyneth paltrow’s much-mocked Goop brand and decided they want some of that wallet-plumping financial afterglow for themselves. Goop is now worth an estimated £190 million and remains unabashed about its rich girl exclusivity.
At the moment it is selling an £8,000 ‘wellness’ medallion (ready to ship in ten weeks) and a £700 cotton poplin sundress. You’ve got to laugh. especially if you are Gwyneth, en route to the bank.
However, is catherine Zeta-Jones really going to make the same kind of money with her Burnout Velvet bedlinen range — and is burnout really an appropriate word here, considering the state of some of these careers. Asking for a libel lawyer. So here is my guide to the celebrity lifestyle and beauty ranges — the ones that exist, and the ones i would like to exist, plus the best buys, Some real and some just my fantasies . . .
SPARKLE WITH MARKLE
Meghan Markle
A SPECIAL message from our founder: Hi there! Blessings and nourishments from my 12-bedroom mansion in california, complete with swimming pool and juicierie. And welcome to my new passion project and lifestyle company. i want it to be a community of inspiration bringing moments of discovery and the changes you want to see in the world. Together we can stamp out cruelty and institutional abuses in schools and jails and royal palaces.
it has got to stop. How well i remember that afternoon when the Queen gave me a ‘funny look’. H, i said, it is time to change lanes — and continents. i bless him for his faith and support.
click on my profile and select the tab for my thoughts on diversity, unconscious racism, mental health, female empowerment, Markle lives Matter, climate change, youth validity, justice for trans parakeets, international lawfulness, sexism, unfairism, tights at wedding-ism, worth-ism, meditation techniques, Minnie Mouse for president, speaking your truth and while we are here, the awfulness of Berkshire. i mean, they expected me to live there?
listen up, everyone. eat mindfully and think mindfully, too.
Give the hummus of your brain a swirl with the pitta bread of challenging thought. Repeat after me: bless the earth for providing me with everything i need to be healthy, happy, and finally free.
Harry and i might not be as engaging or captivating or as independently successful as everyone else on the motivational speaking circuit but give us a chance — and a donation. You won’t regret it.
FANTASY BUYS: Markle Sparkle Halo
Polisher (£28). Special Non-Royal exfoliating cream that burnishes your halo from desk to dinner and beyond. Glycerine Sparkle Tears (£15) Handy handbag-sized bottle so you can squeeze one out when you need to explain how horrible life was in England.
FOREVER AMBER HEARD Amber Heard
Amber has spoken of ‘feeling a sense of freedom in being able to wear glitter eyeshadow whenever I want’. That is why she has launched her new Forever Amber make-up range.
She feels that ‘all beauty products are tools but offering us tools to our identity is power’. Lipstick is empowering women.
She believes ‘a clean face is real important and eye cream’. but in an interview with Allure magazine conducted last year, she stressed she was not dependent on any products, not even lippy, but felt most beautiful ‘when my voice is heard’.
‘What’s the point of having a platform, what’s the point of having a microphone?’ she said. ‘What is the point of it if not to make it better for other people? A life of service is everything to me because I can’t think of why else we would do anything.’
FANTASY BUYS: Top-selling products in the Forever Amber Homewares range include Sheet brite Laundry Soak (£8) and a household bottle bank Recycling bin (Jumbo Size, £45).
CASA ZETA-JONES Catherine Zeta-Jones
Everyday to Extraordinary is what Catherine promises with her lifestyle company — and at least hers is the real deal. Products include everything from bedlinens to shoes, home décor and a beauty range, including eight different products to groom your brows.
Catherine’s goal is to ‘create products that exude the feeling of effortless elegance that surprises by being both practical and indulgent’.
Really? It is hard to think of any single product that could do that, and it’s certainly not her velvet Soft Signature Rose Slippers (which come in Seaglass and Champagne); 100 per cent polyester currently on sale for £6.70.
In Scotland, we would call them
Nan baffies, but in Wales they are probably worn on nights out. Catherine even sells something called a Celtic Knot bone China Illuminated Urn.
Who wants an illuminated urn anyway, except maybe some old guy who needs the bathroom in the middle of the night? Speaking of which, Catherine said on the QvC channel that the design on the top of the urn is also the design on the wedding ring she had made for husband michael douglas.
Classy! If you are interested, it is on sale for £17.
STAR BUY? Her butterfly Twist pumps (£55). That sounds like a terrible gastric condition or a mischief done on the parallel bars, but they are nice little flat shoes.
DUCHESS OF YORK Fergie Inc
Over the years Fergie has mounted several attempts to conquer the lucrative lifestyle brand market — bloody skirmishes with public affection that always result in little success and bruised feelings. Soon the realisation must dawn that despite her once royal status, Fergie’s lifestyle is one that no one wanted to buy into or emulate — then and now. Collaborations with diet teas, pudding teas, WeightWatchers and Wedgwood crockery all came to very little.
Over the decades she has also been a television presenter, an advertiser of cranberry juice, a lover of unsuitable men and the ex-wife of a disgraced Prince.
Her only success has been as the author of children’s books, perhaps because only the under-eights take her seriously.
Earlier this year there was much talk of a new brand called Fergie Inc which would somehow combine ‘glamour with passion’.
It was to include a label called Ginger & moss which would sell textiles, homeware and wallpaper; The duchess Collection of chinaware, preserves, jewellery, candles and fragrances; and Fergie’s Farm, a range of organic convenience foods.
So far not a single teapot has been sighted, nor a whiff Fergie’s Spicy beef bites in the Waitrose cold cabinets.
FANTASY BUYS: Fergie’s Putting A brave Face On It Kit. Contains blush-reducing creams to eradicate the perma-red face that results when one’s ex- husband becomes an international embarrassment.
QUEEN VICTORIA Victoria Beckham
QUEEN v already has the fashion and make-up range. Now she wants to branch out into homewares and lifestyle. Given the gasping prices of her clothes, I am imagining crepe de chine kitchen cushions at £1,000 each and bespoke asymmetrical curtains for the downstairs loo at £699 — but buyers must be prepared to hem the curtains themselves.
FANTASY BUY: A new Smirk Free Lip Gloss (£56) — containing premixed starch to freeze the lips into a miserable snarl — the essence of Posh, but in a tube. One slick and
voila — you too will look like a damp, unhappy turbot.