Sephora Is Ending Its Olivia Jade Collaboration
Well, that was quick. The beauty retail giant Sephora is officially ending its partnership with Olivia Jade Giannulli, the daughter of Full House’s Lori Laughlin and the designer Mossimo Giannulli. Loughlin and Giannulli were two of the many parents named in a fraud indictment earlier this week that alleges that they and other wealthy families paid William Rick Singer tens of thousands of dollars to arrange bribes in order to get their kids into elite schools, either as recruited athletes or by faking standardized test scores. As the scandal unfolded, Olivia Jade, already something of an influencer and beauty vlogger, became the face of the privileged students who may or may not have been fully aware of the scam. As part of the scheme to get her into USC as a crew recruit, Olivia Jade posed for pictures on a rowing machine, even though she’s not a rower. She has a popular lifestyle vlog that included sponsored content from Amazon Prime showing her as she decorated her USC dorm, and she’s publicly said that school and education are not among her priorities.
As the story about OJ grew and spread, many online commenters flooded her YouTube page and Instagram profile to call her out for her privilege and to ask Sephora to end its collaboration with a young woman who had benefitted from fraud. To date, the 19-year-old Olivia Jade has released and promoted the Olivia Jade x Sephora Collection Bronze & Illuminate Palette, which is no longer available online, per NBC News. Sephora said in a statement, “After careful review of recent developments, we have made the decision to end the Sephora Collection partnership with Olivia Jade, effective immediately.”
She also did sponsored content for the store on Instagram, which presumably won’t be happening anymore. Perhaps the few remaining Olivia Jade x Sephora products will become collector’s items, like a Fyre Festival wristband or a “Dewey Defeats Truman” newspaper.
As for her partnerships with Smile Direct Club and Amazon, it remains to be seen. We do commend Sephora for its quick action, but we also have to wonder: Does anyone care if the girl who sells them bronzer rowed crew at USC?
