The Manissance: A Booming Market Still Without a King
The rise of celebrity beauty brands for men is the growing wave of famous-fronted grooming and skincare labels targeting male consumers in a fast-expanding market projected to reach $115 billion, driven by changing attitudes to appearance, wellness-focused routines, and a new comfort with premium self-care among younger men.
Men’s beauty spending grew 9.9 percent in 2024, nearly double the rate on the women’s side, and the category is projected to hit $115 billion by 2028. The demand is not hypothetical; skincare for men is compounding at over 10 percent a year. In other words, the customer has arrived. Yet the standings show an odd gap: “The honest audit of male celebrity beauty brands finds famous founders everywhere and billion-dollar exits nowhere.” Until someone owns this space, “the market grows 10 percent a year with no owner.” That vacuum is the central tension: explosive male grooming market trends, but no male Rhode, no default brand that captures the habit and the wallet.
Humanrace, Pleasing and the Luxury Vineyard Experiment
If you want to understand how celebrity beauty brands men now define the cultural edge of grooming, start with the first movers. Pharrell launched Humanrace in November 2020 with a dermatologist partner and a focused three-product routine, wrapped in wellness positioning that arrived before most men were ready to admit they wanted skincare at all. Soon after, Harry Styles’ Pleasing appeared in 2021, selling nail polish and self-expression to fans who had waited years for visible permission to paint their nails. These brands made aesthetics and ritual, not machismo, the point.
Then came the vineyard play. Brad Pitt’s skincare line, built with the Perrin winemaking family, uses grape-based antioxidants from the same terroir behind the Château Miraval saga. The ambition is visible in the pricing: “The price point told you the ambition: serums in the hundreds, aimed at the anti-aging money usually spent by women.” Luxury skincare for men remains “a niche inside a niche, although the margins in that niche are spectacular,” but it proves that premium men's skincare has room for star-powered experimentation.
Fragrance First: From Surf Heritage to Scent-Led Entry Points
The smartest men's personal care brands are reading the same signal: scent is the male entry product, skincare follows it, not the reverse. Young men are driving much of the current “bottle rush,” and that makes fragrance the natural front door to grooming routines. In this context, even non-celebrity lifestyle labels are acting like beauty brands, using fragrance to extend their worlds.
Billabong, a globally recognized lifestyle brand rooted in surf culture, is expanding into men’s fragrance and personal care through a partnership with Broken Top Brands. Developed and manufactured in-house, their collection includes body wash, “Dude Spray” and solid cologne in four scents—Solar Musk, Break Water, Gripline and Salt Noir—each inspired by the textures and spirit of coastal life. Designed for modern coastal living, the range aims to capture a laid-back, ocean-obsessed lifestyle and give consumers a new way to experience the brand beyond apparel. This is the same playbook the male celebrity beauty brands will likely follow: own the nose, then own the shelf.
Why No Male Rhode Yet: Structural Problems and a Missing Price Band
Despite the noise, no male celebrity line has reached Rhode-level success. That is not about talent or fame; it is about structure. Men buy on replenishment, not discovery, so the viral flywheel that can launch women’s brands “barely spins” for them. Many celebrity beauty brands men launched with genderless positioning, which reads modern but can confuse a first-time customer who needs clear instruction, not ambiguity. Half the brands avoid saying “men” at all, solving no specific problem and therefore owning no specific habit.
Pricing is the other structural flaw. The category is split between extremes: Pitt’s serums in the hundreds at one end and John Legend’s drugstore-priced Loved01 at the other. The crucial $20 to $50 habit band—where Rhode and Cécred built their fortunes—“sits nearly empty on the men’s side.” That band is where a $34 moisturizer becomes a monthly reorder rather than a one-off experiment. Until a brand claims it, the male grooming market trends toward renting customers instead of keeping them. The result: plenty of press, no billion-dollar exits, and a wide open mid-tier for whoever is brave enough to own it.
Who Should Move Next—and What a Winning Play Looks Like
The market audit could not be clearer: “The standings live in the money rankings, where the male celebrity beauty brands wait for their first breakout entry.” While women’s brands like Rhode and Cécred show what happens when you own that habit price band, they have not yet launched dedicated men's lines, leaving an obvious gap. For men’s wellness, grooming, and medspa brands, that is “the opening.” Nobody owns the East End male customer yet, in editorial or in advertising, which means no one has locked in his skincare subscription or his go-to clinic either.
The data suggests the first breakout will follow a simple formula: lead with fragrance, add a tight three-product skincare routine, sell replenishment rather than novelty, and let a founder with Gen Z reach keep the story in motion. Celebrity or not, the winning men's personal care brands will pick a lane—luxury anti-aging, inclusive affordability, or coastal lifestyle—and own it without apology. The $115 billion opportunity will not reward brands that try to be everything; it will reward the one that teaches men a repeatable ritual and prices it where habits form.
