The company has teamed up with Chicago-based luxury chocolate maker Vosges to offer free bars of chocolate to help promote the new range. The chocolate and packaging will be specially designed to tie in with the identity for the makeup.
Founder and chief executive Bobbi Brown, said that the range would be sold alongside the chocolate bars in both Vosges outlets in Chicago, New York and Las Vegas, while the company aims to offer what it terms a healthy Beauty Bar through its online portal.
In a Reuters report Brown was quoted as saying that she personally adored chocolate and that incorporating the bars into the new range was 'a no-brainer'.
The Bobbi Brown cosmetics company, which launched its first lipstick range in 1991, is owned by Estee Lauder and specializes in makeup and skin care ranges that focus on natural-based products and subtle hews. It also specializes in ethnic cosmetic ranges, for which darker richer colors are more popular.
Chocolate shades have long been a mainstay of Bobbi Brown lipstick and eye shadow ranges, with the current line up including Exclusive Chocolate Eye Shadow, together with Milk Chocolate and Chocolate Cherry Pot Rouge for lips and cheeks.
As well as color, chocolate, or rather its base ingredient, cocoa, is also included in a range of cosmetic products, as both a colorant as well as providing functionality such as anti-oxidant and exfoliant properties.
Cocoa butter is also used in a number of hair care and skin care products to add moisturizing properties to formulations.
The sweet smell of cocoa has its attractions in cosmetic products too, a factor that has been taken one step beyond the actual cosmetic product to penetrate packaging. At the end of last year Eastman Chemicals launched a chocolate-scented polymer-based packaging concept designed to help promote cosmetic products.
The cosmetic industry's love affair with chocolate and cocoa all forms part of a move towards incorporating more natural ingredients into cosmetic ingredients. Many industry experts have noted that this has also coincided with a rise in the number of food-based ingredients that has created a blurring between cosmetic and food products.
Will we find ourselves increasingly tempted to eat our cosmetics products in the future? Either the Willy Wonkas of the cosmetics industry are likely to have a field day.