Urban Decay (cosmetics)


Urban Decay, an American cosmetics brand headquartered in Newport Beach, California, is a subsidiary of French cosmetics company L'Oréal.
Current products include lip, eye, complexion and body products. They are most well-known for their Naked collection, which includes twelve different eye shadow palettes. Its target market is women, although it is not limited to this range, and is also designed to appeal to customers who wish to purchase cruelty-free makeup. Its products are sold at large department stores in the United States such as Macy's, Sephora, Ulta, Nordstrom, and from the official website, as well as in several other countries such as Mexico and Germany.

History

Pink, red, and beige tones dominated the beauty industry palette until the mid-1990s. In 1995, Sandy Lerner, a co-founder of Cisco Systems, and Patricia Holmes were at Lerner's mansion outside London when Holmes mixed raspberry and black to form a new color. Then, they decided to form a cosmetics company, which they named Urban Decay. Launched in January 1996, it offered a line of ten lipsticks and 12 nail polishes. Their color palette was inspired by the urban landscape, with names such as Roach, Smog, Rust, Oil Slick, and Acid Rain.
In 2000, Moet-Hennessy Louis Vuitton purchased Urban Decay. In 2002, the Falic Group purchased Urban Decay. In 2009, Castanea Partners acquired Urban Decay. On November 26, 2012, L'Oréal announced it would purchase Urban Decay Cosmetics. L'Oréal acquired the company in 2012. L'Oréal paid an estimated amount of $350 million for Urban Decay.
In Spring 2015, Urban Decay expanded its social media presence with a Tumblr site, The Violet Underground. It features collaborations with young artists such as Baron Von Fancy.

Collections

The Naked Collection was released initially with the Naked Palette, a set of 12 full-size eyeshadows in neutral, matte, and metallic earth tones and an eyeshadow brush from the company's signature synthetic brushes.
The collection later expanded to include other eyeshadow palettes like Naked Basics, Naked 2, Naked2 Basics, Naked 3, Naked Smoky, Naked Ultimate Basics,, Naked Heat, Naked Heat Petite, Naked Cherry, Naked Reloaded and Naked Honey. A sub-collection of the original Naked collection, Naked Complexion, includes other skin products like foundations, concealers, blushes, highlighters, bronzers and makeup tools to accompany them.
Urban Decay also features collections from collaborations with celebrities like Gwen Stefani. The collaboration with Stefani is part of a larger female-empowerment initiative, The Ultraviolet Edge, that Urban Decay launched in order to reach a goal of donating $750,000 to organizations that benefit women in 2016.
In 2018 Urban Decay collaborated with beauty influencer Kristen Leanne, an advocate for cruelty-free cosmetics, to launch the UD × Kristen Leanne collection. The collection included two eyeshadow palettes, a single eyeshadow, lipsticks and a face palette.
The company also released two limited edition eyeshadow palettes inspired by the live action Disney films Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass.
In early 2017, Urban Decay announced its Vice liquid lipstick collection would be released. The name of Vice became a real business card of this brand after they introduced their lipstick palette. In their Revolution lipgloss series, tone with this name became the most popular out of the whole lineup having gained 5 out of 5 stars rating among the Amazon buyers.