The musician, artist, and designer talks skincare rituals and changing the wellness matrix with his sustainable, vegan skincare range Humanrace, which launches a new range of bodycare products
Last year – after seemingly defying age for the past two decades – Pharrell Williams launched his own skincare range, Humanrace. Revealing the secrets to his glowing complexion, the musician, designer, and artist teamed up with his long-time dermatologist, Dr Elena Jones MD, to release a cleanser, enzyme exfoliator, and humidifying cream. With vegan formulas and sustainable designs, the line was intended to simplify skin-care into a manageable “three-minute facial” ritual.
Now, Pharrell has added to the offering – dropping Humanrace’s first bodycare collection. “We’ve spent the last year encouraging you to care for your face, but there needs to be some sort of distinction between the time you spend on your body and the time you spend on your face, you can’t lump it all together,” Pharrell tells us. “You must take care of your body too.”
Photography Harley Weir
Akin to the skincare range, the bodycare products are simplified and straightforward. Approaching the collection with “the planet in mind”, the drop includes a Reenergizing Whiteclay Body Bar with kaolin, snow mushroom extract, and shea butter and an Energy Channeling Charcoal Body Bar with charcoal, rice powder, and jojoba seed oil – each packaged in FSC-certified paper cartons with vegetable ink, to ensure non-harmful packaging.
The bars – besides being vegan, fragrance-free, and cruelty-free – are designed to “balance, hydrate, and smooth” skin while balancing your body’s pH levels and maintaining a healthy dermal barrier. According to the Humanrace website, the ‘Whiteclay’ bar provides a daily cleanse and the ‘Charcoal’ bar should be used two to three times per week, for a practical routine.
Each product is also carefully crafted with character and function in mind. “The body bars are a custom shape that fits in the palm of your hand nicely,” he notes. Pharrell – who has previously noted his interests in Japanese culture – also released a ceramic dish to rest the products on, made in Arita, Japan. “We want it to look beautiful in your home but also be functional for you.”
Photography Harley Weir
Celebrating the products, Humanrace has unveiled a new campaign – created by visual artist Harley Weir – which features Pharrell lying naked in a marble bathtub. “I spend every morning taking a bath, it’s a part of my morning ritual and it’s where I get a lot of my inspiration and ideas from,” he says. “It was a natural decision to show the body bars in the bath with me in these images.”
Beyond the products, Humanrace hopes to inspire shifts in skincare’s usual monolithic standards – encouraging people of all races and genders to engage confidently with skincare and self-care. “The matrix is changing,” says Pharrell, explaining that he hopes to leave the skincare category better than the way he found it. “It’s changing every day. As time changes and things evolve, so do people’s horizons.”
“We can only get there by having one conversation at a time,” he adds.
