On a nondescript kitchen counter in a nondescript office building on the outskirts of Los Angeles sits a two-tiered cake covered almost entirely in glitter. Lip glosses—real ones—are lined up like tiny soldiers along the upper tier as if guarding the perimeter. A handwritten note propped up at the base of the cake reads, in all caps, “Do not touch.”
Unless, of course, you’re Selena Gomez.
In just a few hours, Gomez will preside over the cutting of the cake during an office-wide celebration of Rare Beauty’s Positive Light Luminizing Lip Gloss, on the day it hits shelves at Sephora. Rare Beauty is just a few months shy of its fifth anniversary, but this is its first lip gloss, which is equivalent to a stationery company waiting five years to launch envelopes.
But Rare Beauty—and its founder—didn’t get this far by following the typical celebrity-beauty-brand playbook. Gomez launched the brand in the fall of 2020, and marked the occasion with an Allure cover, for which she did her own makeup (using Rare Beauty products, obviously) because of pandemic-era safety precautions. “I was a little stressed,” she told us then. “I was definitely proud to be wearing [my brand]. I was just like, ‘I hope I did this right.’”
Like most things Gomez has done with Rare Beauty, she did everything right. In the five years since, she has cultivated a brand that is centered more on product innovation and community-building than its celebrity founder. Although, millions of fans who hang on Gomez’s every word have probably helped a little.
Today’s festivities are also something of a homecoming party for Gomez, who has been in New York for four months filming season five of Only Murders in the Building, the hit Hulu show she stars in alongside Steve Martin and Martin Short. “I’m sorry that I decided to be an actor and a singer now,” Gomez later tells the crowd of employees who have gathered in the company kitchen, “because I wish all of my time could be here.”
For anyone under the age of 30, it’s probably hard to remember a time when Selena Gomez wasn’t on your screen or in your earbuds. Gomez, now 33, was born in Grand Prairie, Texas, and landed a spot on Barney & Friends at age 10. But her big break was at 14, when Disney came calling and she was cast as teen wizard Alex Russo in Wizards of Waverly Place. The show ran for four seasons; Gomez was 19 when the finale aired.
Since then, Gomez has released chart-topping songs like “Hands to Myself” and “Lose You to Love Me” and taken her acting talents to bigger screens, in films like Spring Breakers and, more recently, Emilia Pérez. She earned a Golden Globe nomination for the latter, the same year she received her third nomination for Only Murders in the Building.
Through it all she’s never tried to bury her Disney Channel roots. “I was in these crucial years of my brain developing,” she recalls of her time on Wizards. “And all of those people that are on the show with us have grown and evolved, and I want them to be in my life. I think that’s why I always go back.”
By “go back” Gomez means appear as a guest star on the recent reboot, Wizards Beyond Waverly Place, for which she also serves as an executive producer. “I genuinely feel like I owe a big part of my life to that show,” she says. “It’s a home. It’s safe. And my sister just gets a kick out of it, so half the reason I’m doing it is for her.”
Gomez’s sister Gracie is a preteen, so I have to ask: Is she (like seemingly every 12-year-old on the planet these days) already into makeup and skin care? “She’s majorly into beauty,” says Gomez, though “she isn’t allowed to wear anything outside the house other than a little blush and lip gloss. That’s it. But she’s able to have fun…. And trust me, when she’s here [at the office], I can’t get her out of the product closet.”
Gomez continues, “My favorite part about her, though, is that she wants nothing to do with my [other] job. I was so worried when I had a sister…I didn’t want anything to cloud her vision. But she’s such a kid being a kid. I didn’t get to do that. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but I’m just glad she has a bit of a childhood.”
Gomez and her mother have gone to great lengths to make that possible for Gracie, including shielding her from social media—the perils of which Gomez knows all too well. Around 2021, she took a three-year break from Instagram because, she says, “I found it to be very icky.”
She still takes social media breaks now and then. At the time of our meeting, for example, she’d been off Instagram for about three weeks (her team keeps the account active in her stead, posting pre-approved messages and promos for projects). “I want to feel content in whatever position I’m at in my life, and I want to be present,” Gomez explains. “Taking a break from social media helps do that for me.”
“I’m sorry that I decided to be an actor and a singer now, because I wish all of my time could be here [at Rare Beauty HQ].”
The difference now is that Gomez doesn’t feel the need to announce when her breaks start and end—or anything else, for that matter—to the world. “I finally feel like I’m in a place where I don’t need to be apologetic for every single thing that I do,” she says.
Of course, Gomez also acknowledges that having the means to connect with more than 418 million people is a massive privilege. (As of this writing, she’s the third most-followed person on Instagram, right behind Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.) But for now, she says, “I like that I am a little unaware of things happening, and that I’m not so blinded by all the fakeness of it.”
She gets updates from her friends and family the old fashioned way: by talking to them. Gomez has fewer relationships now, she says, but they are of higher quality: “My group has gotten a lot smaller the older I’ve gotten.”
“I try to make people feel seen so they don’t feel what people say ‘crazy’ is.”
One of the loudest and proudest members of that group is Benny Blanco, Gomez’s music producer and fiancé. The pair have been together since 2023, but they met when Gomez was just 16 and navigating her first record deal. Fast-forward 17 years, and the couple have released an album together, I Said I Love You First, which celebrates their love story.
Is she glad their relationship began when it did and not, say, five or 10 years ago? “Definitely. I don’t think I would have been remotely mature enough,” she says now. “It’s weird to think that only five years ago I wouldn’t have been in the right place, but I’ve learned so many lessons [since then] that led me to being the best partner I could be for Benny. And I believe the same with him.”
She adds, “He’ll say, ‘Gosh, why did we waste so much time?’ And I always say, ‘You wouldn’t have liked me back then.’ I was all over the place.”
Fortunately, Blanco seems to really, really like Gomez now—and she him. “I appreciate his heart, his kindness, his quirks…” she says, smiling to herself as her voice trails off. “He’s one of the most grounding people in my life, and he makes me feel very normal.”
At this point I feel moved to tell her that the entire Allure team is in awe of Blanco’s toenail art, which has, in the past, involved turning his big toes into realistic-looking eyeballs, complete with lashes, or having all five toes painted like mini Persian rugs, including fringe. “Yeah, he just did one with bows all over each toe,” says Gomez. “I always ask him, ‘Does that not hurt?’”
“I’ve dealt with a lot of weight issues in my life, and that’s something I’m very sensitive to.”
As the couple prepares to move into a new home in Beverly Hills (which will include an office so Gomez can work on Rare Beauty without needing to commute), she also appreciates that Blanco shares her taste in interior design and manages to find “way cooler home stuff” than she does. “That’s the fun part of creating a life with someone,” says Gomez. “Being able to pull inspiration and combine your view with theirs.”
Much of her own inspiration comes from scrolling through Pinterest. “I have all my folders of inspiration for the wedding, for cooking, for style,” she says.
And there it is: the W-word. While she doesn’t want to not talk about it, at the time of our interview, Gomez says, she and Blanco are simply “not sure what route we’re going to take” wedding-wise. (Recent speculation suggests the event could happen as soon as the end of this month.) It does seem clear, though, that Gomez’s longtime makeup artist, Hung Vanngo, will be part of the festivities: “If I find [a makeup look] I like on Pinterest, I lean into that, and then I’ll get a suggestion from Hung and combine it all,” she explains. “It’s a process.”
Speaking of creating new combinations, Gomez tells me it was “really fun” testing lab samples and experimenting with different notes while creating her brand’s first fragrance, called, fittingly, Rare. The final blend has notes of pistachio, caramel, pink pepper, vanilla, and ginger—”all my favorites,” she says.
“I have all my [Pinterest] folders of inspiration for the wedding, for cooking, for style.”
The fragrance packaging—like that of all the products in the Rare Beauty line—was designed with accessibility in mind. Instead of a removable cap, the new scent is dispensed via a wide button that can easily be switched from a locked to unlocked position, then gently pushed to trigger a spritz. “I deal with a lot of [dexterity issues] myself, and it can get frustrating,” says Gomez as she thumbs the tab on her Diet Coke. “Even just popping open a can can hurt…. I know what that feels like.”
In 2013, Gomez was diagnosed with lupus, an autoimmune disease that causes pain and inflammation throughout the body. At the time, she was on tour and had to cancel the remaining stops to seek treatment, including chemotherapy. Four years later she had to undergo a kidney transplant due to the disease.
“I deal with a lot of [dexterity issues] myself, and it can get frustrating. Even just popping open a can can hurt…. I know what that feels like.”
Lupus is a chronic condition with no known cure, but Gomez is currently in remission, though flare-ups are still possible. In a painful scene that appears in her 2022 documentary My Mind & Me, Gomez says, “When I wake up, I immediately start crying because it hurts—like, everything.”
The film also captures Gomez’s road to being diagnosed as bipolar after a period of psychosis that led to treatment at a mental health care facility. She told Rolling Stone that she’d been to four such facilities over the course of her 20s. In that same interview she revealed that she almost didn’t sign off on the release of the documentary; today she’s grateful she did.
“I’m very glad it came out, but that’s not necessarily who I am now,” she says. “To be honest, I can’t watch it. But it’s only because I’m not there anymore.”
Gomez refers to the film as a “time capsule,” one that she hopes “helps people understand or be willing to figure out what’s going on with themselves” by watching her do the same in real time. “Oh, that really dark thought? I thought that. Those really high highs? I’ve had those,” she says. “I try to make people feel seen so they don’t feel what people say ‘crazy’ is.”
“I got stung by a person saying I was fat. Why is that [emotion] coming up?”
Today Gomez tends to her own mental health through dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), which the Cleveland Clinic characterizes as a form of talk therapy focused on “helping people accept the reality of their lives and their behaviors, as well as helping them learn to change.” She describes it as “peeling away layers” and connecting the dots.
“I got stung by a person saying I was fat. Why is that [emotion] coming up?” Gomez recalls, demonstrating the sort of dialogue she has with herself when a bad feeling arises. By the way, that’s not a hypothetical example—Gomez says comments about her body have always been particularly triggering: “I’ve dealt with a lot of weight issues in my life, and that’s something I’m very sensitive to.”
It was DBT, she says, that gave her the tools to unpack why: “Oh, now I understand, that’s stemming from that one time when I was going through some medical stuff and I had gained weight….”
Some therapists even provide “little cards [you can pull out] when you feel a certain type of emotion, with questions to help guide you through understanding it,” she adds. “You just definitely have to be willing to do the work, and that part can be tricky.”
“I finally feel like I’m in a place where I don’t need to be apologetic for every single thing that I do.”
Gomez is, of course, no stranger to doing the work in all facets of her career, including her beauty brand. “I am going to be in this moment. And who knows, in a couple years I could be done, and that’s fine,” she says. “I just need to make sure that while I’m here, I do the best I can.”
That means trying to “give each of these projects—whether it’s film, music, anything—my undivided attention. But,” says Gomez, “it’ll always go back to Rare and the fund because that’s something I deeply care about.”
She’s speaking of the Rare Impact Fund. Rare Beauty funnels 1% of gross sales into its philanthropic arm, which allocates the money to nonprofits that provide mental health education and resources to young people. And at the rate the brand is growing—early last year Business of Fashion reported it had exceeded $400 million in net sales in the previous 12 months—the fund is well on its way to reaching its goal of mobilizing $100 million to its partner organizations.
“We’re like the little engine that could,” says Gomez of her brand, as she sits cross-legged on a couch in her office wrapped in a peachy-pink chenille blanket, “and we’re still going.”
That afternoon, as she addresses her team (Rare Beauty has grown to 170 employees) and says thank you for their hard work, she tells them never to hesitate to speak up if they’re uncomfortable: “I want all of you to feel good.”
In this new season of life, that’s what Gomez wants for herself too. “I want to keep evolving and getting better in every area of my life. And I want to experience everything, so it’s important for me to keep myself in check,” she says. “I’m so stoked that when an emotion pops up, I’m able to acknowledge it and be a part of it, then let it go.”
