Revisiting Ilia Beauty

Let's talk about their lip crayons

Hello, Gorgeous!

We all know how disingenuous the idea of achieving overnight success can be, which seems to be the case with Ilia Beauty. Suddenly everyone I know seems to be showing off their Ilia Lip Sketch crayons. But the clean color brand has been around for about 15 years at this point with well over 100 items in their beauty arsenal.

So, what’s up with the current obsession with their Lip Sketch crayons?

Ilia Beauty took a different promotion approach

Back in early 2020, Ilia took a completely different approach to promoting an indie beauty brand. As the pandemic became part of our everyday conversation, Ilia took to the streets. Instead of a heavy online or influencer approach, Ilia Beauty wrapped tourist buses and popped up on billboards in NYC and LA. The idea was to celebrate and show off a round of funding very publicly. That and promoting the launch of their serum skin tint.

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I may earn a small commission from sales made using the links in this post. (Probably not, since I’m kinda lazy about chasing down affiliate programs).

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Ilia as a brand hasn’t always been very open about their sales figures, which kind of ties into the idea of a billboard rather than digital approach. The efficacy of a digital approach is theoretically easier to track. I say theoretically since we all know how equally effective bot enthusiasm is to invest in. Then again, when Ilia started their campaign in 2020 they had 196k Instagram followers, now they’re over a million. But back to Lip Sketch.

Ilia Lip Sketch Hydrating Crayon

I think that some products achieve cult adulation randomly. I’m pretty sure that’s what happened with Lip Sketch, though for all I know there was a ton of money poured into promoting it.

Lip Sketch feels like your lips, only more subtly defined. It’s easy to carry around. And while it’s a product in pencil form, it’s creamy. You don’t feel Lip Sketch at all when wearing it and there are some seriously fun ingredients including sea succulent and hyaluronic acidto plump and soften. Seaweed extract is there ostensibly to improve definition. I don’t get that one, but I’ll go with it. And of course, we all love the fact that this is a cruelty-free and vegan brand without any of the most common nasty ingredients.

Does Lip Sketch deserve to achieve cult status? Maybe. I’ve been using Banquette and it’s a really nice minimalist yet finished look. It also deserves a spot in your makeup case if only because it’s so lightweight and takes up barely any room and is both gym-friendly and Zoom friendly. ($26, Amazon).

Have you tried Lip Sketch or Ilia in general? Let’s meet in the comment section to discuss!

Rachel, Your beauty concierge 💋