Ariana Grande Reveals Inspiration Behind Her New Beauty Brand

Allure’s October cover star is Ariana Grande.

The songstress enters a new realm of the beauty industry with the launch of her much-anticipated beauty line, r.e.m. beauty.

The “Side to Side” singer announced the news on her Instagram page on Thursday. In the exclusive Allure profile, Grande shares the detailed process of building product formulas, where she draws visual inspiration.

On gearing up to launch her makeup brand, r.e.m. beauty, Grande said: “Coveting the secret for the past two years and having testers and samplers in my purse, and people asking me, ‘Oh, I love your highlight, what are you wearing?’ And me being like, ‘I don’t know, sweating. It was so hard to keep a secret for this long.”

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The 28-year-old confirmed she’s structuring the release of r.e.m. beauty in stages, with eyes dropping first: “Our main gateways to our dreams, our emotions, our everything. They’re our main storytellers and sources of communication. I feel like you can emote more with your eyes than you can articulate sometimes.”

With female stars like Kylie Jenner, Selena Gomez, Lady Gaga, and Rihanna with lines themselves, Grande said of the competition: “I’ve thought a lot about this, of course, because I don’t want to just hop onto any bandwagons ever. I think that… I wear my peers’ makeup as well, just like I listen to their music. I’m not going to say, ‘Oh, there’s too many female artists.’ I love and I’m [a] huge fan of my peers that do both, and I think that it’s just another way to tell stories. Because you can never have enough makeup, just like you can never have enough music.”

The star said she seeks her style and beauty inspiration from the past: “I’ve always sort of gravitated towards the ‘50s and ‘60s and ‘70s for glamour references. I’ve always pictured myself in a different time period. I’ve always wanted to wear that makeup, wear that hair, wear those outfits, be those performers.”

On the full-circle moment of hearing her own music in HBO’s “Gossip Girl”: 
“Excuse me! Does anyone want to warn me when f**king titles are going to come in and Kristen Bell’s voice is going to start saying Gossip Girl stuff and my song’s going to be in the background? Does anyone want to just warn me? Because I had a heart attack. You know, like, I was a young girl watching Gossip Girl religiously growing up. And then I’m sitting here…”