Can Gaming Go Glam?
In a bit of beauty industry news that could read like the result of a very niche Mad Lib: The actress Chloë Grace Moretz and the pop star Rina Sawayama have created a cyberpunk cosmetic line, called Godmode, catered toward female gamers.
The label is the first to launch from Closer Brands, the incubator beneath the UK-based Closer Group, The Business of Beauty has learned. Godmode's first collection comprises five products, including a cool-toned highlighter called Genesis Glow that approximates the pallid blue light cast off by screens; it will debut in early June on a direct-to-consumer website. On Tuesday morning, the brand teased an 'unlock' code on its founders' Instagram channels as well as its own, and intends to keep the exact launch date a secret for now.
The launch reflects a broader effort on behalf of the beauty and fashion industries to engage female gamers, a growing segment of the population aided by the pandemic. While plenty of beauty brands have collaborated with popular coed games like The Sims or Roblox, Godmode seeks to integrate the two worlds more fully, creating a cast of characters and a universe of lore through marketing and a makeup collection. Godmode, itself, is not an actual video game or affiliated with one.
'Female gamers are everywhere,' said Mark Loy, the founder and executive chairman of Closer Group and the founder of Spring Studios. 'But brands barely speak to them.'
Gender parity in the gaming population has narrowed significantly in the past few decades; in the US about 53 percent of gamers identified as male, 46 percent as female and 1 percent as non-binary, according to a 2024 report from the Entertainment Software Association. When it comes to preferences, however, there are some distinctly gendered trends; while about half of men who game play 'live service' titles like Fortnite or Grand Theft Auto, nearly 70 percent of women prefer mobile games, according to a 2024 Deloitte survey. The brand's first drop, Genesis, includes the Genesis Glow Highlighter, which approximates the pallid blue glow of a screen's light. (Godmode)
Godmode achieves a more unusual milestone in the beauty industry as the first brand of its era to be fronted by not one but two celebrities, though Loy is reluctant to use the c-word.
'It's important to us that it's not seen as a celebrity brand,' he said.
With celebrities or without them, Godmode will need to create something more explorable, more tangible and more playable than gamified product drops paired with hyper-lush marketing imagery to gain and maintain credibility with its gamers.
'Rina and I have the ability to build a new world for beauty that isn't just, 'Oh, you like this product, buy this product,' right?' Moretz said. A Perfect Match
The realm of video games, only a handful of decades old, has historically been a place where brands go to meet men: the cult bar arcade game Tapper was a branded effort from Anheiser-Busch, and brands like Mercedes-Benz have more recently sponsored esports leagues and made its S-Class available in Mario Kart.
Fashion and beauty companies, by contrast, have only recently entered the category. In 2020, MAC Cosmetics gifted a batch of 12 makeup looks to users of The Sims, which has also offered paid expansion packs sponsored by H&M (in 2007) and Moschino (in 2019). Meanwhile, a number of brands including E.l.f. Cosmetics and Givenchy, and most recently the fragrance and flavors conglomerate Givaudan, have created minigames for Roblox, the online game with 90 million monthly average users. Givaudan's 'The Garden of Memories,' in which players help a cute woodland creature craft perfumes, has logged about 60,000 players since it launched in France in January.
Many of these are attempts to hook young consumers, rather than consumers who game, which has required a carefully calibrated approach by Closer.
Godmode crystallised in 2023, as the incubator sought out celebrity partners. Moretz and Sawayama were deemed a perfect match for the gaming-inspired brand — the former had expressed interest in working on a beauty label to her agents at CAA, while the latter is an ambassador for Playstation. The two met for the first time in New York when they convened to shoot promo photography. Co-founder Chloë Grace Moretz appears as Chroma, her Godmode alter ego, with makeup by Daniel Sallström. She is partial to the brand's Level Up Lip Liners.
The uncommon dual-founder structure was not lost on the greater public when news broke earlier this month that Moretz and Sawayama were collaborating on a beauty line. A representative example, from X: 'I don't think I would have put them together, but hey, good for them!'
The co-founders corral audiences from different fields of the entertainment industry, but are also passionate gamers themselves, they told The Business of Beauty. Sawayama is a fan of tycoon-style titles like Two Point Museum, while Moretz enjoys open-world roleplaying games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Final Fantasy XIV. 'Once I realised how much you can customise and go deep into this character lore and create your own story, it's just a whole different form of gameplay,' Moretz said. A promotional still from Godmode's launch film animated by the production company All of Us Here. (Godmode)
Loy pointed out that the two are 'emotionally and financially invested' in Godmode, but declined to elaborate on the partnership structure. He also hinted at forthcoming collaborations that could see Godmode entrench itself in the world of gaming beyond a product that is 'rebranded with somebody's IP.' There will also be immersive spaces, similar to the ones Closer has designed for brands like Louis Vuitton and Miu Miu.
For the brand's debut, the co-founders will reveal their Godmode alter egos, with the brand's product drops — beginning with 'Genesis' in the summer, and another planned for the fall — released as chapters of an intergalactic series.
'If you're not a gamer, it's hard to understand the fantasy,' Sawayama said.
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