Blake Lively has officially dipped her toes — or should I say her hair — into the celebrity beauty-brand pool with her new hair-care line Blake Brown Beauty, which hits Target shelves on August 4.
And if you are thinking, Another week, another celebrity beauty brand, you are not wrong. (There are so many we even made a guide to them all.) But Blake Brown Beauty is trying to set itself apart from the many hair lines out there by including only two main categories: shampoos and masks. The line also included a pre-shampoo mask, a dry shampoo (which I tried myself, and it smelled … amazing), a leave-in conditioner, and a mousse. Yes, you read that right. No conditioner.
“Conditioner is just like a diluted mask,” the It Ends With Us star said last night in front of a group of journalists at an intimate loft soirée set up to resemble a ’70s-inspired hair salon. “So I condition, but with a mask.”
And that was all well and good until the comments started rolling in from people.
“But her hair always looks dry and damanged,” one Instagram user commented under Lively’s Blake Brown campaign image. Another commenter added, “Please don’t go around telling people not to use conditioner.” Yikes! “This dry ass hair is not selling me on it, sorry.”
Lively, famously known for her role as Gossip Girl’s Serena van der Woodsen, seemed well aware of the messy and dry comments about her hair but seemed blissfully unbothered by them. (The star admitted that her hairstylist was a little “upset” about the dry-hair comments.) She confirmed that she prefers the undone, messy look to a sleek quaff.
“I like things that are pretty and perfect but also imperfect. I like things that have a unique personality. That’s what I like with hair — I’ll do it, but then I’ll just mess it up,” she said. “I’ve always had beachy hair, I guess. Hair is the way through which I express myself most. If I want to just breeze through the city and be anonymous, I just tie my hair up. Oddly enough, just my hair being in a bun makes me anonymous.”
Lively told the story of creating the line, which she developed over seven years, and recalled a Gossip Girl meme poking fun at her all-over blonde locks. “Serena van der Woodsen didn’t have a job, didn’t have anything but berries for breakfast, didn’t have a degree, and didn’t have a hairbrush. Oh, thank you.”
Lively, who shared that she was a longtime fan of Kérastase products, shouted out her own brand’s Milky Sandalwood Rich Reset Pre-Shampoo Mask for giving her “virgin hair,” the Blackcurrant Vanille Glam Mousse for her natural waves, and the Amber Vanille Dry Shampoo, which she “borrowed” from the event’s touch-up hair stations to spray into guests’ hair, demoing the instant volume and engulfing the room in its amber-vanilla fragrance.
Ultimately, the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants star said she wanted to create a sustainable hair product that was “cleaner, affordable, accessible, and beautiful” while reflecting her roots. She explained that Blake Brown was the name she was born with — her father’s last name.
“I’ve only ever been called Lively, but Blake Brown was on my birth certificate,” she said. “I didn’t want to use ‘Lively’ because I didn’t want people to think I was just trying to cash in a celebrity brand. I wanted this product to stand for itself and I wanted it to earn people’s respect.” She then made a joke: “I filed for Fenty, but I couldn’t get it. It was so weird.”
Should we check in with Rihanna? Just to be sure.
