SHANGHAI, CHINA – MARCH 7, 2024 – Citizens attend a lip balm promotion event organized by Canadian makeup brand M.A.C in front of Jiuguang Department store in Jing ‘an District, Shanghai, China, March 7, 2024. The two staff members wore red and black lip hoods, which had a dramatic effect on the busy streets. (Photo credit should read CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images) By Kimberly Wilson ·Updated February 25, 2026 Getting your Trinity Audio player ready…

When I first saw that MAC Cosmetics was entering Sephora, my first thought was “this is a recession indicator, for sure.” And that thought says a lot about the state of MAC right now then it says about the state of Sephora.

16-year-old me remembered when these two stores were fierce competitors. I had to go to MAC for my Riri Woo, and then I had to go to Sephora for my Illamasqua foundation (before they sadly discontinued it), and it was always annoying because I had favorite products from both brands that I couldn’t give up.

If only both stores were combined into one.

Well, a decade plus later, my wish has finally come true. And I’d probably be more excited about it if the reason it’s happening wasn’t so obvious (i.e. the world is currently being on fire).

Beauty is in a strange place right now. The so-called “lipstick effect,” is the reason every brand from Rhode to Eadem to Maybelline has released a new lip product over the past several years (to be clear, I love all of these brands lip products, I’m just saying). For those unfamiliar, it’s the idea that people trade down to small luxuries during a recession instead of making big purchases like an expensive foundation, serum or fragrance. It has been a talking point in the industry for years, and it’s increased only recently now that we’re in a lip product frenzy. Because things have gotten bad! Real bad, Michael Jackson (in the words on Kanye). 

Prestige beauty had a massive run post-pandemic and brands like MAC that didn’t fully capitalize on that window are now playing catch-up in a market where consumers are simultaneously being more intentional about spending and more influenced than ever by what they see on social media (editor’s note: TikTok has influenced me to buy more things than I’m willing to admit). Drugstore is having a real moment again, dupes are mainstream in a way they weren’t five years ago, and legacy brands sitting on decades of goodwill are finding out quickly that goodwill alone does not move product.

MAC posted a $15 million operating loss in its most recent earnings cycle, and if you’ve been paying attention you could already feel it coming. The brand that once had you lined up for limited edition collections and made you feel like a professional just for stepping up to the counter had been fading from the conversation for a while. Not gone, but quieter than it used to be, and in the current beauty landscape quieter means losing ground fast.

So the Sephora move, which goes live March 2 in more than 100 stores and on sephora.com, plus every Sephora at Kohl’s location, is very clearly a distribution play designed to fix that. It’s an opportunity for more doors, more eyeballs, and more chances to get back in front of a younger shopper who may have scrolled past MAC entirely in favor of whatever Rare Beauty or Charlotte Tilbury is doing that week. 

And they’re not wrong for trying it. MAC did the same thing with ULTA back in 2017 and became one of that retailer’s better performing makeup brands fairly quickly. More distribution can absolutely move numbers in the short term, and right now MAC needs to move numbers.

The harder question is whether any of this addresses the actual reason people drifted away in the first place. MAC’s decline wasn’t really a distribution problem, it was a relevance problem, and relevance, especially for a brand that Black women, drag artists, and working makeup professionals built from the ground up, requires more than new shelf space.

Now, there are some genuinely encouraging signs on that front. Nicola Formichetti came on as global creative director and the Sephora launch campaign starring Chappell Roan alongside Gabbriette and Quenlin Blackwell shows someone is paying attention to culture. The concept, showing Roan stripped down with just a sculpted 90s MAC lip on one side and full maximal glam on the other, works because it reminds you what MAC actually does better than almost anyone. And it’s worth noting that the person most responsible for rebuilding MAC’s cultural credibility before this moment, Aïda Moudachirou-Rébois, who served as global head of brand and championed the Doja Cat era campaigns that finally made MAC feel plugged in again, quietly left the company in January with no named successor. The brand is in better creative shape than it was two years ago partly because of her work, and whoever stewards that going forward has a real foundation to build on.

And then there’s the Kohl’s component, which I don’t think is getting enough attention in the conversation around this launch. On one level it makes sense. MAC was never supposed to feel exclusive, it was always the brand that showed up for everybody, the girls in the mall, the working makeup artists, the people who needed their actual shade actually matched. Sephora at Kohl’s reaching into neighborhoods that didn’t always have a Sephora fits that history. What I keep thinking about though is that you didn’t go to a MAC counter just to shop. You went because whoever was behind that counter could beat your face and actually explain why every product they used worked for you specifically. That was the whole experience. And I genuinely don’t know how that travels to a self-serve shelf.

In this economy, I’m rooting for every business to win. And with MAC, I genuinely want them to turn things around. Their most recent campaign announcing their launch into Sephora is good, the creative energy has seemingly gotten consumers excited, and who knows, maybe the girl who only knows MAC from TikTok will walk into Sephora and fall in love with it the way I did at 16.

The post MAC Cosmetics Is Coming to Sephora—And It Might Say More About the Economy Right Now Than Beauty appeared first on Essence.

Author: Kimberly Wilson

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