Selena Gomez on First Makeup Memories, Cementing Her Red Carpet Style, and What's Next for Rare Beauty
In conversation with Who What Wear.
When Selena Gomez isn’t inspiring us to book nail appointments with her red carpet manicures or jamming to Grammy Record of the Year-winner Kendrick Lamar (“I'm listening to a lot of [him],” she tells us IRL), you can find her paving new paths for her industry-disrupting brand, Rare Beauty. Gomez, 33, recently took to an Ulta store in El Segundo, California to celebrate the launch of Rare Beauty onto the mega-retailer’s shelves, and Who What Wear caught up with the star to dish on all things beauty, award season, and what this new partnership means to her, personally.
Gomez’s hair is cut into a sleek, jaw-grazing bob tucked cleanly behind her ear when she looks around the room at the matching fringe on each journalist present. “Wait, do I need to get bangs?” she jokes before settling into rounds of interviews, when she describes the “surreal” experience of seeing her own products in a store she’d grown up with. “My mom was a makeup artist for this tiny modeling agency in Dallas, Texas, so she would go to all of the stores,” she tells WWW.
According to an article on People, the brand’s arrival at Ulta marks a breakthrough moment for the retailer as its largest debut to date, with Rare Beauty’s bestsellers, hero collections, and two Ulta-exclusive kits launching online and in 1,500 brick-and-mortar stores on February 1. This is the first time Gomez has expanded her brand into another retailer—having launched Rare Beauty on its own site and in Sephora in 2020—making hers one of the few celebrity beauty brands to be sold at both retail giants, next to Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty, Lady Gaga’s Haus Labs, and more.
However, it wasn’t industry domination that the “Bluest Flame” singer set out to achieve when she built her beloved brand. Makeup has been a core aspect of the multi-hyphenate’s artistic expression ever since childhood, when she followed her makeup artist mother around the glamorous aisles of local beauty stores—absorbing her mother’s techniques and noting the brands she’d use on models at shoots.
“I remember MAC being a huge one,” she recalls. “That was the one that all the girls were into… I remember all the colors and being like, ‘Wow, this is crazy,’” she adds. (We point out that it seems like a colorful MAC Cosmetics single eye shadow is a teenage beauty-lover’s rite of passage. “Mine was blue,” she agrees.) “I remember being little—like, curious—[and] playing with that, and then it became a part of my life,” she adds.
Though Gomez’s approach to beauty and fashion has evolved since her Texan department store days—we joke about her viral “got some blue going on” interview moment from a Teen Vogue party in 2007—her love of makeup has remained. “It's a ritual, it’s part of what I do,” she explains. “It's natural that I feel connected to my brand because it's very simple.”
Aside from Rare Beauty’s wildly successful debut at Ulta, Gomez’s schedule is stacked thanks to award season. The star recently stepped out at the 2026 Golden Globes in a custom Chanel gown and vintage-inspired bob, complete with a vampy red lip—à la Rare Beauty and her makeup artist, Hung Vanngo’s, eponymous makeup brand—and was recently nominated for a Grammy with her now-husband, Benny Blanco. She calls this look her most “recent favorite” award show look because of its timelessness, which she channels at every award show as she carves her legacy.
“I love that feeling of old Hollywood, and I love bringing that to the red carpet,” she indulges. “You take photos, and you want your kids and grandkids to see the pictures, and think they're classic.” The star pauses for a moment before adding, “Well, trust me, they'll see some not-classic ones from my Converse days on the red carpet.”
As Gomez gears up for more eventful red carpet appearances over the next few weeks—she is up for an Actor Award for her work on season five of Only Murders in the Building—the star reveals her beauty (and emotional) essentials before any award show.
“The biggest one is our liquid contour,” she states. “Because I like to tan my body, I don’t like to tan my face, so I always keep my face out of the sun.” She calls the creamy formula, available in seven flexible shades, “so yummy” because it nixes her need for foundation. “I just put a little dot on each side,” she says, mimicking the placement on each cheekbone, “and then it warms up my face.”
While the liquid contour is her mainstay in the glam chair—along with a speaker blasting Sabrina Carpenter, Rosalía, and Lamar (“I genuinely love to listen to nice, mellow music or straight hip hop,” she divulges. “It's one extreme or the other.”)—Gomez swipes the Rare Beauty Find Comfort Lip Butters for her bag at award shows. “I used that at the Globes,” she recalls. “I was in the car, and I love being able to just throw something on simple.”
While the Lip Butters aren’t yet available at Ulta, there are 35 Rare Beauty must-haves in stock and ripe for taking—including the best-selling Soft Pinch Liquid Blush, the Positive Light Liquid Luminizer (which Gomez also uses as body shimmer), two Ulta-exclusive kits, and so much more. There’s no better time to shop than now, because from now until February 28, patrons can make a donation with their purchase that will go to both the Ulta Beauty Charitable Foundation and Rare Impact Fund, both of which support youth mental health services.
Shop some of Gomez’s favorites and more standouts from Rare Beauty’s official selection, now available at Ulta.
Shop Rare Beauty at Ulta
