Jennifer Lopez Brings Her Glow to the Masses With JLo Beauty

By The Citizen on December 2, 2020

Here’s everything you need to know about the famously age-defying star’s new skin-care brand.

Did you know that if you look up the word “glow” in a thesaurus, you’ll find “J Lo” listed as a synonym? (That’s actually a lie, but please consider this an official request for an update, Merriam-Webster). Long before our collective beauty lexicon included the phrase “glass skin” and well ahead of our fixation with looking “dewy,” there was Jennifer Lopez. The multi-hyphenate had harnessed her glow — a sort of lit-from-within radiance that seems to emanate from her soul, and then get topped off with bronzer — into a global signature.

Throughout the early aughts, as Lopez’s career flourished, so, too, did our association of her with the word “glow”: In 2002, she launched her soon-to-become-overwhelmingly-popular fragrance, Glow by JLo. Nearly two decades later, she is expanding her beauty empire and deepening her commitment to all things glow-y via her new beauty brand, JLo Beauty.

Launching at JLoBeauty.com on Jan. 1 (at least we already know there will be something worth celebrating in the new year!), it’s primarily a skin-care brand, with some products that also fall into the skin/makeup hybrid category, as well as an ingestible. Prices range from $18 for a single sheet mask to $79 for a serum, and the brand will also be available on Sephora.com, Sephora brick-and-mortar locations Amazon beginning Jan. 14. Per the brand, the collection “reflects three decades of research, two years of development and over 100 reformulations — until the result was finally worthy of [Lopez’s] name.”

It makes sense that this venture is years in the making for Lopez. Her signature glow aside, she’s also famous for being a real-life Benjamin Button. It’s almost impossible to believe that she’s 51 — and even more so to hear her testify, on a Zoom with editors, that she’s never had any plastic surgery or “work” done, including Botox or fillers. But having seen Lopez up close and in-person at a fragrance event last year, I can attest that this seems true; her face moves and creases in all the natural, human ways, but it also looks remarkably smooth, taut and, yes, glow-y.

So of course she’s been fielding the same beauty question for years: How? According to Lopez, her agelessness is the result of her lifestyle — healthy eating, hydration, minimal alcohol, positive affirmations and a near-religious devotion to sunscreen ever since her early 20s, when a dermatologist advised her to slather it on with abandon. Through JLo Beauty, she hopes to harness a bit of that holistic approach to skin care and offer it to anyone at any age, with any skin tone at a somewhat accessible price.

“I want people to know that this is deeply meaningful for me,
that it’s personal,” said Lopez in press statement. “I’ve made my own life better by making it more beautiful, by making it more simple. And now I want to share what I’ve learned with women everywhere. You want to know how I got my skin, how I look this way? This is how. This is how I live my life and it’s pretty simple.”

What that means for Lopez, apparently, is a lineup of eight products: a gel-cream cleanser, a serum, a sheet mask, a night cream, a daytime moisturizer with SPF (featuring a combination of both chemical and physical sunscreens), an eye cream, a shimmery, tinted “complexion booster” and a dietary supplement that supports skin health and fights inflammation. Each product incorporates her “old family secret” beauty ingredient: olive oil.

“My mom used to say that olive oil was the cure-all for everything. And it’s a secret I’ve used over the years because it really does work. So, when we went to do this, that was the first thing I said: It has to have olive oil extract as a basis,” explains Lopez. But these formulas are more complex than that; the brand combines extra virgin olive oil with fermented olive oil, olive leaf extract and olive-derived squalane for moisture.

To her credit — and in keeping with her reputation of hustling hard and owning her success — Lopez seems to have truly done her research in the field of skin care, more so than many of the other celebrities who have gotten into the market. During the Zoom call, she casually dropped the word “milia,” explained that inflammation is the key source of visible signs of aging and again stressed the importance of diligent sunscreen use.

Lopez oversaw each aspect of the product development; it took 26 reformulations of the brand’s hero serum to get it up to JLo standards. She also had a hand in designing the product packaging and brand aesthetic: The collection comes clad in aptly glow-y, reflective tubes, jars and bottles in a warm, metallic tone based off of a rose-gold antique Cartier watch from Lopez’s own jewelry collection. “It’s just so pretty!” she squealed almost giddily during the press event when she spoke about the bauble-like appearance.

We can, it seems, expect a whole lot more beyond these eight JLo beauty products in the future. Lopez hinted at plans to expand into body products, a gentle exfoliator, oils to target specific skin concerns and even a possible teen line down the road. So while we may not be able to travel back in time and force our younger selves to start wearing some damn sunscreen, we will soon have the opportunity to buy a little JLo glow-in-a-bottle.

JLo Beauty will be available jlobeauty.com on Jan. 1 and at Sephora stores, sephora.com and Amazon on Jan. 14. Click through the gallery below for a first look at every product in the debut collection ahead of the launch — plus pricing.