The Jeffree Star Empire Is Collapsing: Report

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Remember Jeffree Star? The makeup mogul, YouTube villain, and casual racist who always seems to benefit from controversy, made (presumably) immortal by petty feuds? His empire is collapsing, so reports Insider.

According to the publication, Star has been struggling on YouTube. Despite having a whopping 17 million subscribers, his latest video, November 15’s “Confronting All The Drama… Blood Money Transformation ft. India Ferrah” took more than a week to surpass one million views, a metric he used to reach with incredible ease. (In fact, he reportedly hasn’t had numbers so low since 2016.) His cosmetics brand seems to be floundering, too, and the irony is not lost here: Jeffree Star cosmetics, which once sold out in minutes, have been spotted on the shelves of TJ Maxx—a discount department store chain the YouTuber has mocked in the past.

In 2018, he quote-tweeted a post about ex-friend Kat Von D’s makeup being sold at Marshall’s, a company owned by TJ Maxx, with a disparaging declaration of “CAN’T REALTE. AT. ALL.” Later, he added, “KVD will be a TJ MAXXX exclusive in 2019 I heard!!” in an apparent attempt to further belittle her brand. Last year, he even posted a video to his YouTube channel titled, “Trying TJ MAXX Makeup For The First Time,” which he began by stating, “In today’s video, I’m so scared. This is probably going to be the scariest video on my channel. Today, we’re going to TJ Maxx…. I’ve heard a few rumors from some friends of mine that TJ Maxx is where all my ex-friends go to die. I can’t confirm that, but today, we’re going to do some investigating.” At the time of publishing this blog, the video has over 24.2 million views.

As Insider points out,, Jeffree Star’s latest collection, The Blood Money Collection, has yet to sell out—unusual, considering that at this time last year, Star released his Conspiracy Palette with Shane Dawson, the single most sought-after makeup product of 2019. (It sold out within 24 hours.) Conversely, The Blood Money Collection released on November 13, nearly two weeks ago. Is that a sign of a struggling brand?

Naturally, there are factors outside of Jeffree Star’s role in the ongoing Tati Westbrook vs. James Charles vs. Shane Dawson vs. Jeffree Star beef known as Dramaggeddon 2.0 that could cause a decline. The economy is in the toilet, and those lucky enough to have some extra pocket cash are probably unlikely to shell out for new makeup. Because the covid-19 global health pandemic is keeping much of the world inside their homes, cosmetic sales in general have gone down—according to VOX, by August 2020, all beauty sales had decreased by 25 percent in a six-month window, compared to the same time frame last year. Clearly, the industry at large is suffering, though that doesn’t explain Star’s slipping YouTube viewership. It’s easy to assume that those numbers should actually be increasing as binge-watching is one of the few pleasures quarantine life still allows, but I digress. In that particular case, it may very well be that the empire Jeffree Star built is beginning to fracture.