When did Ariana Grande start REM? Singer once said she was inspired by "Sci-Fi Vintage Horror Space Stuff"

Ariana Grande, who started working in the entertainment industry in her early teen years, has dabbled in various arts over the years. The we can't be friends singer has performed in musicals, acted on TV, released seven studio albums so far, appeared in movies, and recently starred in one, which is scheduled to release on Thanksgiving 2024.

So it doesn't come as a surprise that Grande is also running a beauty and skincare line called r.e.m. beauty. The cosmetic brand was launched on November 12, 2021, and has since attracted a lot of attention for its extraordinary feel, right from the packaging to the products themselves.

Ariana Grande and her brand, r.e.m. beauty, were featured in Allure magazine's October 2021 issue, where she opened up about the inspiration and experience of working in the beauty industry.

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Ariana Grande confessed that she didn't want "makeup to look like makeup"

In her 2021 Allure interview, when Ariana Grande was asked if she worried about the beauty market already being flooded with celebrity-owned brands, the singer-songwriter said:

"I’ve thought a lot about this, of course, because I don’t want to just hop onto any bandwagons ever. I think that...I wear my peers’ makeup as well, just like I listen to their music. I’m not going to say, ‘Oh, there’s too many female artists.’ I love and I’m [a] huge fan of my peers that do both, and I think that it’s just another way to tell stories. Because you can never have enough makeup, just like you can never have enough music."

Upon r.e.m. beauty's launch, the first collection Grande rolled out had a silver, space-like theme with a touch of futuristic vibe. Talking to InStyle about how it was important to her, the two-time Grammy winner revealed:

"I wanted to make sure that everything looked like a prop from Star Trek or Black Mirror. I didn't want it to look like makeup, and I'm a huge fan of sci-fi vintage horror space stuff. So I wanted to kind of create our own world with this packaging."

The Bang Bang singer's vision is clearly reflected in the first cosmic collection launched at r.e.m. beauty.

When Ariana Grande was asked if she found any similarities between the process of writing a song and creating a beauty line, she said:

"When you're writing a song, [you have to] spend time with the pre-chorus to make sure the notes set up the hook in the proper way or that the harmonies aren't fighting with the the bells or strings in the background; that everything is complimentary of one another. It's the same thing as putting together these formulas and making sure that each note is perfect."

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Ariana Grande started working on r.e.m. beauty two years before it was launched

In the Allure 2021 issue, Ariana Grande also revealed for the first time that she had been working on her beauty line for two years before it was launched. Opening up about how hard it was to "keep a secret for this long," Grande said:

"Coveting the secret for the past two years and having testers and samplers in my purse, and people asking me, ‘Oh, I love your highlight, what are you wearing?’ And me being like, ‘I don’t know', 'sweating.’"

Ariana started the project by meeting with Forma Brands, a beauty incubator born out of Morphe. Alex Alston, Forma's vice president, was impressed with the the boy is mine singer on her very first meeting, mostly because of the references she had brought to it—from Revlon's magazine ads to blush-tinted stills from her music videos.

Ariana's vision behind r.e.m. beauty was to "encourage others to feel even more beautiful, to create, to tell their stories creatively and express themselves."

The name of Ariana Grande's cosmetic brand also has a dreamy meaning. REM, short for "rapid eye movement," is the state of sleep where we usually dream. Grande also has a song with the same title on her fourth studio album, Sweetener, released in 2018. Perhaps it was no coincidence that the singer-songwriter started working on her beauty line shortly after her fourth album's release.

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Ariana Grande released her seventh studio album, Eternal Sunshine, on March 8, 2024.