Another Celebrity Haircare Brand - But This One Feels Genuine?

Jennifer Lawrence is the latest A-lister to enter the beauty business with mes°, a biotechnology-led haircare brand developed alongside scientist Jasmina Aganovic. And while another celebrity beauty launch might ordinarily inspire a little scepticism, this one has a backstory worth paying attention to.

There was a time when a celebrity launching a beauty brand felt exciting. Rihanna gave us Fenty Beauty, Hailey Bieber made glazed skin a global obsession with Rhode, and Beyoncé brought her lifelong relationship with hair into Cécred. Today, however, the celebrity-to-beauty-founder pipeline has become so well established that barely a month seems to pass without another famous face unveiling a serum, fragrance or shampoo collection. And while some of these ventures have developed into genuinely impressive businesses, others leave you wondering whether the world really needed another bottle with a celebrity name attached.

So, when Jennifer Lawrence announced that she was launching a haircare brand, mes°, I was prepared to be underwhelmed. After all, what could another Hollywood actress possibly bring to an already saturated haircare market?

Quite a lot, as it turns out.

Launched on 27 October, mes° (pronounced mess) is a three-product haircare collection developed with Jasmina Aganovic, the MIT-trained chemical and biological engineer behind beauty biotechnology company Arcaea. The brand promises to make looking after your hair easier, combining treatment and styling benefits in products designed to work with the realities of everyday life.

So far, fairly standard beauty-brand territory. But dig a little deeper into how Lawrence and Aganovic came together, and the story becomes considerably more interesting.

The scientist who didn't want to meet Jennifer Lawrence

Perhaps the most refreshing thing about mes° is that its co-founder initially had absolutely no interest in working with a celebrity. According to an interview with Beauty Independent, Lawrence came across Aganovic after watching her 2022 TED Talk on biotechnology and its potential to transform beauty. Fascinated by her approach, the actress sought an introduction.

Aganovic, however, was reluctant. "I did not want to meet her," she told the publication.

At the time, Aganovic was building Arcaea, a biotechnology company exploring how biology could unlock new possibilities for beauty ingredients and formulations. She was also preparing for maternity leave, and a Hollywood partnership was hardly at the top of her priorities.

Lawrence persisted, making it clear that she was willing to wait years if necessary. Eventually, the two met, and what followed was a collaboration that would take approximately three years to bring to market. When Beauty Independent asked whether the concept had come from Lawrence herself or her management team, Aganovic's response was unequivocal: "No, it was Jen."

There is also something compelling about Aganovic's position within the business. With a background spanning chemical engineering, biotechnology and cosmetic innovation, she brings considerable expertise to a market increasingly crowded with brands promising breakthrough science.

And rather than remaining the relatively anonymous scientific mind behind a celebrity founder, Aganovic has become a visible part of the mes° story.

Jennifer Lawrence actually seems to care about the products

It's easy to be cynical about celebrities who insist they have spent years developing their beauty brands. We have heard variations of that story countless times, usually accompanied by claims about personally testing every formulation and painstakingly selecting the perfect packaging.

Lawrence, however, has shared some surprisingly specific details about the development process. In an interview with The Cut, she revealed that she sent the brand's restyling serum back to the laboratory for revisions almost 150 times. She also took fragrance training, tested products during film productions and became heavily involved in everything from packaging shapes to the brand's visual identity. At one point, an early version of the hair mask apparently left her hair smelling so unpleasant that her husband suggested she find a hotel room if she refused to wash it out - hardly the glamorous product-development story you might expect from an Oscar-winning actress. Yet it makes the brand feel more believable.

Lawrence's relationship with haircare also goes beyond simply having enviable hair. Years of colouring, heat styling and elaborate transformations for film roles have left her dealing with damage firsthand. Following The Hunger Games, she famously cut her hair into a pixie after repeated processing had taken its toll. Her frustration with traditional styling products, and the amount of time required to maintain healthy-looking hair, helped shape the mes° concept. The result is a collection built around a deceptively simple idea: what if your hair products could do more, so you could spend less time using them? It's hardly a revolutionary thought, but coming from someone who has spent a significant portion of her career in a hairstylist's chair, it feels like a reasonably authentic starting point.

The products are interesting, too

Another detail that catches attention is the decision to launch with just three products. No shampoo, no conditioner, no elaborate ten-step system promising to transform your hair overnight.

Instead, mes° has introduced a tightly edited collection designed to address specific frustrations. The Multitask Repair Mask can be applied to dry hair, doubling as a conditioning treatment and a styling product for sleek looks. The Good Roots Volume Mist is designed to lift roots while tackling excess scalp oil, incorporating Arcaea's proprietary ARC-5 technology. And the Off-Duty Restyling Serum aims to refresh second- or third-day hair, reducing frizz and making restyling easier. The formulas attempt to bridge a gap that many of us will recognise: wanting our hair to look freshly styled without having to wash, blow-dry and start again every morning.

Aganovic's biotechnology background is central to the development process, with the company drawing on research into hair lipids, proteins and the scalp microbiome to create multifunctional formulas. Of course, we've heard plenty about revolutionary hair science before. Terms such as biomimetic, microbiome-balancing and biodesigned have become increasingly familiar in prestige beauty, and they can sound rather more impressive than the evidence supporting a finished product.

Mes° also reports some notable performance results, including reduced breakage, less frizz and improved root volume.

So, is celebrity beauty finally getting more interesting?

For all its promising qualities, mes° is still a commercial venture with one of Hollywood's biggest stars attached. Celebrity recognition brings immediate publicity, an existing audience and access to opportunities that most independent beauty founders could only dream of.

There is also a degree of irony in a brand built around doing less asking consumers to discover an entirely new category of products. But what makes mes° stand out to me is the apparent curiosity behind it. Lawrence didn't simply decide she wanted to become a beauty entrepreneur and find someone capable of manufacturing a product. She encountered a scientific approach she found genuinely interesting, sought out the person behind it and spent years working towards a shared vision. Aganovic, meanwhile, appears to have approached the collaboration with the same seriousness she brings to her biotechnology business.

Their partnership also speaks to something increasingly important within beauty: the value of giving scientists and formulators a recognisable voice. As consumers become more knowledgeable about ingredients and performance, it feels encouraging to see scientific expertise positioned as an integral part of a brand's identity rather than a convenient marketing detail.

None of this guarantees that mes° will become the next great haircare success story. A fascinating development process means little if the products ultimately fail to deliver, and the true test will come when the initial excitement surrounding Lawrence's involvement begins to fade. But I do think there's something different about this launch. Perhaps it's Aganovic's initial reluctance, Lawrence's determination to work with her or the unusually focused collection. Perhaps it's simply that the two founders seem genuinely interested in what they're creating. Whatever the reason, mes° has managed to make another celebrity haircare launch feel unexpectedly worth watching. And in a beauty industry increasingly crowded with famous names and ambitious promises, that is already quite an achievement.