Kylie Jenner Replaces Lip Gloss Wands After Superstar Beauty Vlogger Complains - Racked

Oct 23, 2024

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Jeffree Star, a beauty vlogger with nearly 1 million YouTube subscribers and a makeup line of his own, wasn't immune to the Kylie Jenner lip gloss hype.

But unfortunately for Kylie, the lip gloss Star bought was totally busted. As Allure notes, Star took a photo of the brush of his brand-new product, which looked like it had been through the wringer.

He tweeted a pic and his thoughts about Kylie's apparent lack of quality control for this product, and then started retweeting other Kylie lip gloss shoppers who had broken wands (including a really apt comparison of a brush to a Cynthia doll from the '90s cartoon Rugrats).

So I got the new @kyliecosmetics lip glosses.... SO disappointed in this product. That wand is unacceptable. pic.twitter.com/NCkkUer2aV

No shade but... How the fuck can a multimillion dollar celebrity, think this is acceptable?? Was there no quality control?

Those were brand-new straight out of the box, and I pulled them out for the first time and saw that… umm...

I've seen on her personal Snapchat, that she kinda addressed this issue and said the wand would be better next time… do I get a refund?

So the first customers were just guinea pigs? How is that fair for a consumer to get something shitty and then the next launch its fixed?

Just sad as a fan and a makeup customer.. Not what I expected. :(

If you have a voice, use it. I'm sick of celebrities getting away with half assing everything.

The average customer gets ignored with these huge companies. My timeline is full of horror stories about the lip glosses

Star wasn't the only one complaining about unusable lip gloss wands. Shoppers are not pleased that Kylie seems to be using paying customers as a focus group of sorts.

She's been changing aspects of her cosmetics on the fly with each launch: a shorter lip gloss brush, for example, and a "fluffier" applicator on her original liquid lipsticks. Some Instagram commenters even recommended not buying until the first or second round of product drops because of all the changes. This is not a strategy that would work for any other beauty company.

But because Jeffree Star has 511,000 Twitter followers, his complaints were heard, unlike regular people who were battling with customer service over the brushes. Kylie tweeted that everyone who ordered on April 1st would get new brushes.

@JeffreeStar from this to that real quick! pic.twitter.com/VY2w6Xpolx

Kylie even goes into how she's reformulating her products based on negative feedback in this Instagram apology:

This is an old video from snapchat for anyone who missed it. I care a lot about the quality of my products. As you can see from my matte lips.. I changed my entire matte formula in the first month to be less dry and thick and I changed the wand to be more comfortable because I listen to you guys, and I love perfection. So good or bad, I love hearing your feedback. When I saw the problem with my lip gloss brushes I stopped all production and changed it. Life is a learning experience and we learn from our mistakes. Only a small amount of the old brushes were sold and I can now confirm that next week we are sending new brushes/glosses to EVERYONE that ordered on 4/1 ... Only my new brush has been available since 4/1 and on the second release we sold over 200,000 of them .. so that's amazing Love you guys more than you know. I'm always listening. -Kylie

A video posted by Kylie Cosmetics (@kyliecosmetics) on Apr 17, 2016 at 11:02am PDT

And a recap of the whole thing from Star:

After my review on the @kyliecosmetics lip glosses went viral, they finally addressed the gloss wand issue and everyone who got a bad wand, is getting a new one for free... I think it's important to always be honest and express opinions on products, because the majority of consumers do not get a voice, and regardless of what everyone thinks of the situation, I was just being myself and expressing my feelings… Glad this can be put to rest now.. NO hate or beef with Kylie at all. My opinion and how I showed it, may be a little extreme for some to digest, but that's how I have always been. Love + Lipstick

A photo posted by Jeffree Star (@jeffreestar) on Apr 17, 2016 at 1:05pm PDT