Sephora’s holiday sale has quietly become the biggest battleground for celebrity beauty brands, and the discounts on offer right now tell a story about which star-founded labels are fighting hardest for your attention and which ones are simply coasting on name recognition.
A sweep of the retailer’s current promotions shows that brands backed by A-listers are dominating the sale pages, with markdowns that go well beyond the usual token percentage off. Fenty Beauty, Rihanna’s category-defining line, is leading with bundle deals and sitewide discounts that undercut its usual pricing strategy. Rare Beauty, Selena Gomez’s fast-growing label, is pushing value sets aimed squarely at gift shoppers, while Haus Labs by Lady Gaga has entered the fray with discounts on its complexion heroes a notable move for a brand that has historically stayed premium and full-price.
What’s most revealing is the strategy split. Some celebrity brands are discounting selectively, protecting their image while still offering entry points for new customers. Others are going deeper, treating the holiday window as a customer-acquisition blitz. Ariana Grande’s REM Beauty and Millie Bobby Brown’s Florence by Mills fall into the latter camp, with aggressive price cuts that suggest they’re prioritizing volume and trial over margin.
Industry watchers say the crowded field reflects a broader shakeout. With dozens of celebrity beauty lines launched in recent years, the holiday sale has become an unofficial stress test separating brands with genuine product loyalty from those surviving on hype. “The discount depth is a tell,” one retail analyst noted. “If a star brand is discounting heavily this early in the season, it’s telling you something about its sell-through.”
For shoppers, the upside is obvious: rare markdowns on brands that almost never go on sale. Fenty’s complexion products and Rare Beauty’s blush and lip sets are among the most sought-after deals, with several items already flagged as low-stock online.
The sale runs through the holiday period, but the smart money is moving fast. If the current pace holds, the most aggressive celebrity discounts will be gone well before the final shipping deadlines leaving the full-price loyalists and the bargain hunters to sort themselves out.
