The Morphe beauty saga isn’t all that pretty
The James Charles Palette, from the makeup company Morphe, had it all: 39 eye shadows in glittery pinks and blues, audacious neons and nonshimmery neutrals — and a solid gold tie-up with James Charles, the beauty influencer. It sold out several times and generated tons of attention for Morphe since the palette’s debut in late 2018.
But last year Morphe’s business relationship with Charles ended after accusations emerged that the influencer had sent sexual messages to underage boys, the latest in a series of controversies for Morphe and its parent company, Forma Brands. Forma also owns Morphe 2, a makeup and skin line geared toward Gen Z; Jaclyn Cosmetics, a label from the influencer Jaclyn Hill; and helped to create R.E.M. Beauty, Ariana Grande’s makeup line. (Forma Brands declined to comment for this article.)
Morphe, which gained popularity with its approachably priced eye shadow palettes (a 35-pan palette costs $25) and makeup brushes, is best known for its collaborations with the biggest YouTubers of the last decade. Makeup, especially eye shadow palettes, created with Charles, Hill and Jeffree Star, the beauty influencer, could sell out in less than an hour.
But most people outside of its dedicated online following never heard of the brand. Product drops and gossip about its collaborators remained largely within the confines of the devoted YouTube and Reddit beauty communities. Then, in 2018, news of Morphe’s partners started to seep into the mainstream media. A video had surfaced of Star making racist comments, and he later apologized. Complaints from customers that Hill’s lipsticks were poor quality went viral, and she offered a full refund. Last April, Charles, who was 21 at the time, admitted to sending sexually explicit online messages to 16-year-old boys, and said he did not know they were underage. (Star did not respond to requests for comment for this article. Hill and Charles declined to comment for this article.) Working with beauty YouTubers was proving to be risky business. Morphe’s public image started to suffer.
The company turned to content creators on YouTube to help sell its products, said Kirbie Johnson, a creator of Gloss Angeles, a beauty podcast. “Morphe is tying their name to specific people with huge followings, and then what happens when those people are irrelevant?”
At the same time, the beauty industry underwent a seismic shift. Makeup trends were changing; people wanted subtler “no makeup” makeup. When the pandemic hit, many stopped wearing makeup entirely. There was a new focus: skin care.
In 2020, Morphe reinvented itself as Forma Brands, a beauty “incubator” that would both make its own cosmetics and buy other brands. That year, the newly formed company introduced three brands in rapid succession: Morphe 2 in July; Such Good Everything, a line of vegan gummy vitamins, in September; and Bad Habit, a skin care label with the influencer Emma Chamberlain as creative director, in December. In 2021, Forma Brands got into celebrity with Grande’s R.E.M. Beauty, which came out in November.
Changing its name and model wasn’t as simple
as putting out a new eye shadow palette, however.
Forma Brands experienced a string of setbacks. Such Good Everything is no longer for sale on its website or on morphe. com, and Chamberlain is no longer involved with Bad Habit. Her one-year contract as creative director ended in 2021, a Forma Brands spokeswoman confirmed via email. R.E.M. Beauty, which wasn’t publicized as being part of Forma Brands, was met with mixed reviews.
Controversial creators
Morphe’s founders, siblings Linda and Chris Tawil, started the company in 2008 as a line of makeup brushes. The two expanded into makeup and opened their first store in Burbank, California, in 2013. Together, they transformed the label into a major player in online makeup, forging relationships and creating makeup collections with
up-and-coming and established makeup artists and YouTubers that attracted attention online.
In late 2017, Hill tweeted a milestone: 1 million of her $38 Morphe x Jaclyn Hill eye shadow palettes were sold that year. She became extremely valuable to Morphe, along with Charles and Star, who helped propel the company’s success through promotion of product collaborations and the many feuds that populated their social media channels. Hill got her own brand under the Morphe umbrella, Jaclyn Cosmetics, in 2019.
“At one point Tati Westbrook, James Charles and Jeffree Star were among the top channels in the beauty space,” Johnson, the podcast host, said.
“When Jeffree and James were partners in crime, their videos were constantly shading people and shading brands,” she said. “They may not have been ‘problematic’ at that point, but they were still doing things just to create drama.”
And drama drove sales — to a point.
Charles had a falling out with Tati Westbook, who is nearly twice his age, over gummy vitamins. Star took Westbrook’s side, creating a rift in the friendship between the two men. Then Westbrook spoke out against Star and blamed him for turning her against Charles in the first place.
Morphe eventually distanced itself from its biggest stars.
How Morphe lost Gen Z
The appeal of beauty YouTubers hasn’t inspired Gen Zers (or millennials) to spend.
Talia Turner, 18, said she isn’t influenced by “traditional influencers” like Charles, nor does she trust them.
“They are getting paid to do this,” Turner said. “They aren’t going to say it’s a bad product.” She stopped watching his content, as well as others who were “getting into a lot of controversial things.”
Turner started taking her beauty cues from TikTok. Clara Schloendorff, 18, also buys makeup because regular, or “real,” people post about it on TikTok. The shorter the video, the better.
This is how Morphe 2, a Glossier look-alike that sells more “natural” makeup, was born. Morphe’s sleek black packaging was replaced with clean white tubes and compacts, and instead of richly pigmented hot pink eye shadow, Morphe 2 sold skin tints and lip oils.
Also, instead of collaborating with top YouTubers, Morphe 2 hired Charli D’Amelio, the most followed account on TikTok at the time, and her sister, Dixie, as the faces of Morphe 2.