“I’m channeling Glinda today,” Ariana Grande tells me over Zoom. She’s wearing a fuzzy pink sweater, her blonde hair pulled up into her signature taut ponytail, all part of the method dressing she’s been doing (and living) since being cast as Glinda in the film adaptation of Wicked. Coincidentally, I’m her foil—wearing a black Simone Rocha puff sleeve dress with a smudgy cat eye, slightly annoyed by the jostling of my yellow taxi while heading downtown—very Elphaba. “Pink was never really a part of my life until I started collecting a lot of pink pieces during the audition process three years ago.”
The good witch-ification of the star started earlier this year, and since then we’ve only seen Grande in shades of blush designed by Thom Browne and Giambattista Valli. Today, she takes it all a step further: Grande’s three-year-old beauty brand, R.E.M. Beauty, is announcing a Wicked collection exclusively here, inspired by the founder’s upcoming role.
“I pulled inspiration for the collection from the stage show, the movie, and the books,” Grande says. “I am very much a nerd who likes to document things, like my fittings and hair and makeup tests.” And while her iPhone came in handy for certain moments, it’s the Hermès Kelly-size notebook—yes, that’s pink, too—that’s waiting right off-screen where much of that documentation lives. There are deep cuts for the fans too—like the packaging, which combines R.E.M. Beauty shapes with illustrations seen in the original L. Frank Baum books and on the scrim from the musical.
Some of the products in the nine-piece collection, like the pH adaptive lip oil that changes colors, are first-evers for the brand. “Of course, we had to come up with something magical for the witches,” Grande tells me. “I have a funny story about this product. One of my best friends, Doug [Middlebrook], had all of the testers because he loves to try everything and help me. He had the Glinda lip oil in his bathroom, and his friend saw it and thought, Oh, a beautiful little sheer shimmery moment and put it on. They looked in the mirror right before they walked out the door and had hot pink lips!”