The creative mind behind the multi-hyphenate musician Grimes is bringing his signature fantasy aesthetic to the beauty world.

The musician’s co-creative director Bryan Huynh, as well as co-founders David José and Mollie Gloss, announced the launch of new brand Hyrular Beauty on Wednesday. With visual elements of sci-fi, gaming and avant-garde fashion, the label’s first product is a multi-chrome-pigmented Nebubalm lip colour, $30, available exclusively via the brand’s direct-to-consumer site.

Grimes, known for her genre-bending music and high-energy performances, has been a big inspiration. “[She has] really opened my eyes to this whole world of image making that so many people do not believe exists,” said Huynh. The popular video game Final Fantasy has been his main influence from the gaming world on his creative work, which has includes Grimes’ “Book 1” album cover and her advertisement for Australian designer Dion Lee, as well as shoots with other pop stars including the girl group Aespa over the course of his photography career.

Huynh, the brand’s visual director, and José, its chief executive, started brainstorming beauty ideas during the pandemic. They eventually enlisted celebrity makeup artist Gloss, known for her surrealist looks on stars like the model Amelia Gray and actress Sadie Sink, as its director of beauty and product.

The co-founders solidified plans to launch the brand in 2022, which “was the moment where it was like, ‘This is something that we can create that fills a gap that we haven’t seen done yet,’” said José, who hails from the advertising industry and has worked with fashion and beauty brands.

Hyrular, a portmanteau of “hyper” and “spectacular,” is largely bootstrapped, with funding coming from friends and family. Its first campaign, directed by Huynh, is described as a journey into space.

“We all understood the point of view that each other had immediately,” said Gloss, who has been using the product on shoots with clients, citing the futuristic shades Halcyon and Nymphaea.

In the future, the team’s ambition is to expand into a full-fledged beauty brand with not only makeup, but skincare and fragrance. They aim to explore the visual language of video games further, including potential collaborations with gaming companies and work with streamers and unconventional influencers.

The aesthetic features a lot of computer-generated and digital imagery, but, according to Huynh, it will not include anything AI-generated.

“I just don’t believe that AI is the future,” said Huynh. “For us, the expectation is that Hyrular will incorporate AI, because it’s a video game-focused, techie-looking brand, but I am vehemently against it. It will delegitimise what we do. I also think AI is a cheap escape, and I’m not working on a cheap brand.”

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