Courteney Cox Made a Good Celebrity Brand
Courteney Cox for Homecourt / Courtesy of Homecourt
By Cheryl Wischhover
There are a lot, nay, a ridiculous number, of celebrities who launched beauty brands in the last several years. A handful have done well and also make sense for the celebrities who launched them. Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty single-handedly made the beauty industry confront its lack of inclusivity in makeup shades. Harry Styles’ Pleasing, with its fun nail polish shades and groovy marketing, seems tailor-made for his rabid fans. Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty is a thoughtfully marketed and high-quality makeup line that she promotes in a way that isn’t gross. Ageless Pharrell making skincare? I accept this.
There are many, many more that are head-scratchers. Michelle Pfeiffer started a “clean” perfume line seemingly out of the blue. Millie Bobby Brown founded a skin care line and was skewered by the internet after posting a video where she seemingly faked actually using any products on her skin during a demo. And then there are the two middle-aged male celebs who are cynically trying to tap into the billions of dollars up for grabs in beauty: Brad “I’ve been a tourist [in skincare] at best” Pitt and Jared “I’ve never been really interested in beauty products” Leto.
Courteney Cox entered the fray about a year ago with her brand Homecourt. It’s not a beauty brand per se. She calls it “home care,” but it’s beauty-adjacent. There are hand soaps and lotions, candles and room deodorant (the newest launch), dish soap, and surface cleaner. They are available in a number of scents developed by respected fragrance house Givaudan.
Her co-founder and CEO, Sarah Jahnke, is a former L’Oreal fragrance marketer. Nick Axelrod, who helped found Into The Gloss and body-care brand Necessaire (a favorite of mine), was also involved early in Homecourt. It has the bonafides behind the scenes.
Most importantly, though, it seems authentic to Cox. She is best known for her role as Monica Geller, cook and neat freak, in Friends. How much of this she exploits on her engaging, accessible, and self-deprecating Instagram because it’s what the people want versus how much of Monica she’s absorbed into her own personality (or vice versa) is not clear. It doesn’t matter. She cooks in her beautiful kitchen and does pranks with her famous friends. While she likely has people who scrub her toilets and grout, I’m sure she probably washes a dish and wipes her own counter from time to time. I buy that Cox would use aesthetic cleaning supplies.
I started seeing the brand all over Instagram a few months ago, so I tapped into my network of current and former beauty editors and reporters. They are always up for offering withering assessments of celebrities’ brands when I ask. Homecourt, though, got unanimous praise and downright gushing. The one caveat they gave? It’s pricey for dish soap. Prices range from $20 for a surface cleanser to $65 for a candle.
I tried a bunch of products and I’m sorry to report they’re good. They are currently offered in four scents: Steeped Rose, Neroli Leaf, Cipres Mint, and Cece, which is in the Le Labo Santal 33 universe, spicy and smoky (and given Courteney’s own nickname). The Steeped Rose is especially heady and actually smells like roses. It really elevates the task of scrubbing out my oatmeal pot every morning. The Neroli Leaf surface cleaner puts a burst of citrusy freshness on everything. All the products are housed in understated dark bottles that won’t clash with your kitchen. The candles scent my entire apartment very quickly, and burn in tasteful clay pots with zero visible branding. Last fall, Homecourt released a holiday Balsam Fireplace candle. The scent was strong and vibrant, unlike the one I bought at Target from that damn irresistible minx Joanna Gaines’ Magnolia collection, which looked great but smelled like nothing when it burned. Laundry products may be on the way, which could be popular with consumers who were loyal to the Laundress products, a brand that has imploded after a bacterial contamination scandal.
Homecourt touts that some of its ingredients are non-toxic and sustainable, and this is the only area where I wish to bone-pick. It has become table stakes that beauty brands now call themselves “clean,” even though that term is meaningless. Homecourt publishes an “absolutely not” list of ingredients, with things like detergents, coal tar, and phthalates excluded from products. The new room deodorizer uses a form of zinc to “naturally” neutralize odors. But like “clean,” there is no single definition of “sustainable” in beauty and home care. After all, the best way to be truly sustainable is to stop launching and buying more products. The Homecourt packaging, minus the pumps, is made from post-consumer recycled materials. But it’s up to you to recycle them again, and we know the chances are low that they find a new life after housing dish soap. But this is a general beef that I have with the entire industry right now. I don’t know that anyone should be bragging about the sustainability of their eucalyptus leaves when they are shipping those ingredients all over the world on carbon-spewing planes. And I don’t excuse myself here, either, because there is nothing I love more than buying bougie stuff I don’t need. We are all trying.
Anyway. These products are perfect as a treat for yourself to uplift menial kitchen tasks and they would make great gifts. Whether they make your home merely clean or “Monica clean” remains to be seen.