Thread Beauty has tapped Saucy Santana as its first celebrity ambassador.
It’s only fitting the empowerment-focused beauty brand would look to Santana, a rapper best known not only for viral TikTok anthems like “Material Girl” and “Walk Em Like a Dog,” but for challenging homophobia in hip-hop and beyond.
“When we launched Thread, we wanted the community to be the face of the brand,” said Melissa Butler, who founded The Lip Bar in 2012 and introduced Thread Beauty in 2022 as a Gen Z-focused offshoot. “When we thought of who could represent this idea of community — of us all being connected by a thread — we couldn’t find anyone more unapologetic than Santana.”
For Santana, who was a makeup artist before he began pursuing music full time, the partnership was a natural one.
“I started playing with makeup when I was 17 — I used to do my cousins, all my homegirls, then I got good and made it a profession,” said Santana, noting that what drew him to Thread was the brand’s emphasis on inclusivity. “Back in the day when I would get makeup, foundations would stop at certain colors. It would be like, ‘We got a million of these foundations and two dark skinned ones — y’all figure it out.’”
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Thread carries nine makeup stock keeping units to date, its most popular being the Face It complexion stick, which retails for $8 and comes in 26 shades. Like The Lip Bar, the brand is exclusive to Target “for the foreseeable future,” said Butler, who envisions Thread as a lifestyle brand and has introduced bags and apparel to its assortment.
“It’s actually not about the product — it’s about servicing the community in the way it needs to be serviced. We decided to launch makeup first because frankly, there weren’t a lot of makeup companies that were both affordable and super inclusive,” Butler said.
This aim to create visibility for communities who aren’t often granted it is where Butler and Santana’s missions collide.
“To be a beauty ambassador who is Black, feminine and gay — it’s going to do so much for our community and so much for boys like me,” Santana said.