Jaclyn Hill is ready to win your trust back — maybe sooner than we all thought.
On May 30, Hill officially went from beloved YouTuber to business owner with the launch of her highly anticipated beauty brand Jaclyn Cosmetics. Less than a week after her line of nude lipsticks hit the market, though, "one of the most unfortunate things that can happen to a cosmetic brand," as Hill calls it, occurred. What was thought to be hairs, fuzz, and other foreign bodies were found in some of the lipsticks. Others were melty, had a bubbly texture, or smelled off. All were subsequently pulled from the market (even though she proved they were safe to use).
"At the end of the day, I was not ready," Hill tells me over the phone, as she gears up to make a major announcement. "I was not equipped for what was about to happen. We sold through six months of inventory in three hours, and we were not prepared for that. I was not prepared for that whatsoever. And things fell through the cracks."
Soon after the fallout, Hill went dark on social media. During this time she went to therapy and received advice from other beauty entrepreneurs, like Ouai Haircare's Jen Atkin and Norvina of Anastasia Beverly Hills.
"It meant so much to have those two women who are so successful really have my back behind the scenes," she shares. "And it's encouraged me because I felt like my life is over. I'm never going to try again. I'm done. Having them tell me their stories and support me was incredible and helped me to get my groove back."
Straight after everything happened, Hill started focusing on her second launch, too. A holiday collection, complete with three powdered highlighter formulations and three brushes to sweep them on with, will drop on November 26 — almost six months after the ill-fated lipstick launch.
"It's been enough time to me personally to get my shit together and to get my brand in a better place," Hill says. "When I left social media for 30 days, I didn't just sit there on the couch and cry. I mean, I did some of that, but for the most part, we immediately started rebuilding and going through every single outlet and being like, OK, this needs to change. This can be better. Even things that were good were like, OK, well let's make it great."
Now, Hill is feeling confident in herself and her brand once again. In fact, confident seemed to be the word she fully wants to get across to me throughout our interview. Before the lipsticks were released, "I was so confident in my brand that I was almost cocky," she recalls. And with the relaunch of Jaclyn Cosmetics less than two weeks away, Hill is admittedly nervous. However, "I'm still so beyond confident," she says. "I'm more confident in this than I was in my lipsticks because I was so humbled by my lipsticks that this time around I just, I know that people are going to get them into their hands, and they're going to be like, 'Oh wow, these are actually incredible,' and I get to just start that process getting trust back."
Since she started her YouTube channel in 2010, Hill's glowing skin has become her signature. Let's not forget Becca's Champagne Pop was born out of a collaboration with Hill in 2015. And she brings up an interesting fact: She was the first person to ever hashtag #highlightonfleek on social media. "The first person of all time," Hill stresses. I couldn't confirm this, but it has been hashtagged almost half a million times on Instagram since she started saying it in her videos four years ago. So when planning her second Jaclyn Cosmetics launch, highlighters "just made sense for me and my brand and who I am as a person," Hill adds.
They were a part of her plan before Jaclyn Cosmetics even debuted. Hill reveals she got the first samples of them in January. They even illuminate her cheeks in the video she made to announce the lipstick launch. She's had them in the works in a lab in Italy — luckily, different from the one that made the lipsticks — since January.
"So we didn't have to cancel it. We didn't have to push it back, we didn't have to make any changes," Hill reveals. "But, in general, we have an entirely new process. We've added over 20 people to Jaclyn Cosmetics to make sure that what happened in the past never happens again and it can be a successful launch, and I can prove myself as a brand and as a CEO."
With an entirely new quality control and operations team, new customer service processes, and management in the works, Hill took a closer look at the highlighters in the lab, flying to Italy with her team to do so. At one point, they were looking at the products under a microscope. "At the end of the day, it's not necessarily about formulation," she says. "It's about making sure we're working with the right labs who specialize in what we're trying to create and also making sure that we have our own team in place so that if there is a mistake I personally can see to it and I can fix it and make it right."
I ask Hill if she feels comfortable sharing any aspects of the highlighters she had to give closer inspection — she doesn't. Fair enough. "If I say it, then people are going to be looking for it," she explains. "Then, things are just going to be made up and not even true. So I don't want to talk about that."
For these same reasons, Hill is taking her time with her next lipstick launch. Yes, Jaclyn Cosmetics will release lipsticks once again. The exact timing hasn't been decided, though.
"I really, really have PTSD, and I'm kind of scarred from lipsticks, so we are really going to take our time diving into that," Hill explains. "I did not want to try to rush anything. I want to make sure that when I launch my lipsticks they are perfect and start a whole new meaning to Jaclyn Cosmetics — falling off the horse and getting back up after it takes some time to really perfect that. With the highlights, it was neat because we were already working in Italy. We are already working with different labs so we were able to keep the ball rolling. But with lipsticks, we are literally starting from scratch."
Although three powder highlighters may seem excessive, Hill believes each is essential to creating her signature glow. "I'm always applying more than one type of highlighter and more than one type of shade," she explains. "I love to mix different colors together. I love to mix different formulas together, and highlight does not just have to be exclusive to only the cheekbones."
Hill starts off by telling me about the Accent Light Highlighter Palette, which houses four creamy powders in a white-and-silver beveled compact. She likes to put the radiant hues all over her cheeks — "from the round apples of my cheek, all the way up to my temple, just a beautiful sweep of all of that." It comes in two different colorways that Hill says she narrowed down from nearly 30 shades after working with a focus group.
For areas that need a more intense twinkle, reach for one of the five shades of the Beaming Light Loose Highlighter. Although it comes in a tiny, 0.14-ounce jar, Hill swears a little goes a long way. She dabs it on the inner corners of her eyes, along her browbones, and the center of the apples of her cheeks. "That way when you smile it's like, bing," she explains. "It makes your smile radiant."
The largest jar is Mood Light Luminous Powder, which comes in five different shades at the moment. Hill combines it with setting powder to set her whole face with it. "It just gives you that soft inner glow," she says. "It's so beautiful on mature skin, especially, which was so important to me when I launched this collection. I don't want to just launch one type of highlight that's only going to look good on a girl who has perfect skin. I want everybody to be able to use something from this collection. That's kind of my motto with everything Jaclyn Cosmetics going forward."
Hill's confidence comes up again when she tells me about her mantra for the relaunch. "The message of this is, 'The future is bright' because it just worked out perfectly," she says. "I'm so confident in it. You got to just leave the past in the past and move forward."
She first made this reference in a post on Jaclyn Cosmetics' Instagram back in August. After apologizing and stating the lipsticks were not up to the brand's standards, the letter ended with "the future is bright, and we're excited for what's to come."
These sentiments are echoed in a note that will be included with every order. "Life has its challenges, but those are the times you learn the most," it reads. "And even in my darkest moments, I've learned to find the light. Here's to brighter days ahead. XO Jaclyn."
Writing this letter was a grueling process for Hill. "I've been just so worked up and so nervous and so triggered from my first collection that it was really hard for me to just get personal with any of the notes that I'm writing," she says. "So it wasn't easy, but I'm very comfortable and very confident in it, very comfortable in my skin right now just talking about what happened and just trying to inspire people and encourage them to keep going."
Read more about this year's holiday collections:
- Fenty Beauty Just Dropped Four New Shades of Its Gloss Bombs
- The 11 Best Sephora Gifts at Every Price Point
- MAC's Holiday Collection Is Perfect for the Leo in Your Life
Now, watch Jaclyn Hill try nine things she's never tried before:
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