EXCLUSIVE: Sephora’s ‘Next Big Thing’ Is a Cosmetics Brand Rooted in Red and Ritual

When Denise Vasi steps into a room, chances are she’s wearing a red lip.

It’s more than a signature; it’s the foundation of Maed, the ritual-driven lip care brand she launched in September 2024 in Los Angeles. Now it makes its retail debut at Sephora on Aug. 18., available first online before expanding into 80 stores on Aug. 25 as part of the retailer’s “Next Big Thing” display.

The bold color didn’t just define her look, it was an element of her career. She began as a model — a face of beauty brands like Bobbi Brown and L’Oréal — before transitioning to acting, and eventually starring in VH1’s “Single Ladies,” a comedy-drama that premiered in 2011 and ran for four seasons.

“The red lip was my thing,” Vasi said, recalling her role. “I helped create the whole look.”

Red lipstick wasn’t often seen on screen, because it was hard to sustain with production demands, she went on: “It was very difficult to maintain for 17 hours, taking it off, putting it on, keeping it looking great.”

Vasi began to see how red lip formulas fell short, often failing to hold up over long hours and drying out lips, she explained. A longtime beauty lover, she first launched Maed in 2017 as a digital platform focused on “clean” beauty and wellness. With about 150,000 Instagram followers at the time, she’s grown a built-in audience that continues to follow her journey to this day. (She now counts 261,000 on the platform.)

With Maed beauty, Vasi brought together everything she’d learned to create a “clean,” vegan, cruelty-free and performance-driven brand that prioritizes care, long-wear color, and is rooted in ritual.

“I was constantly asked, ‘How are you always in a red lip like this?’” she said. The answer was exfoliation and hydration — a personal routine she turned into Maed’s three-step system. “Our serum is the secret sauce,” she continued. “It’s meant to seep into the skin and actually treat the lip barrier.”

She also learned from makeup artists, she added: “The best artists never put a look of color on my face until they did some version of care.”

Sephora will offer her four core products, which are all formulated with cherry coffee seed oil and the brand’s bioactive complex — a hydrating, reparative and protective mix with bio-identical collagen peptides (structurally identical to the collagen found in the human body), ceramides and plant stem cells. Made in the U.S. and Italy, Vasi follows E.U. “clean” standards.

The line showcases: the $26 Reveal Lip Polish, a scrub that melts into a balm with dissolvable sugar crystals; $36 Reset Lip Serum, made with lemon peel oil; $32 Revive Day + Night Lip Balm, with squalane and raspberry stem cell, and the $36 Signature Lip Pigment, a creamy, matte red liquid lip that promises to compliment every skin tone. It’s made with maca root, tucuma butter and jojoba esters.

The retail launch also marks an exclusive expansion for the brand, introducing two new tinted versions of the balm: “Vow,” a nude, and “Reckon,” a plum hue with brown undertones.

Sephora is expected to contribute an estimated 65 percent of overall sales in the Maed’s debut year, according to industry sources. 

What’s next? Eventually, a full expansion into color cosmetics.

“Coming down the pipeline are a couple more lip products,” Vasi said. “We have a few core products that we need to hit before we can technically claim to be the authority in the lip category, and that’s my goal. And then from there, you know, we’re a cosmetics brand, so we will go on and move into other spaces.”