Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez Reunite for Rare Beauty’s Delena Blush Duo

The appeal of Rare Beauty’s Delena Soft Pinch Blush Bundle goes beyond its two liquid blush shades: it brings Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez’s long friendship into a new creative chapter. The pair first imagined sharing a red-carpet moment as children. When they finally linked arms at the 2011 Teen Choice Awards, the pose felt funnier than the polished picture they had rehearsed in their heads. Now, nearly 15 years later, they’ve found a fresh way to put that shared history to work.

Available October 28, the Delena Soft Pinch Blush Bundle pairs Virtue, Lovato’s preferred shade, with Hope, Gomez’s favorite. The beige-peach and nude-mauve tones are designed to complement each other, making the set a natural fit for wearing the shades together. The launch followed a reunion backstage in April, after Gomez attended an Orlando stop on Lovato’s It’s Not That Deep Tour. Their renewed time together led to the collaboration, which also nods to their shared past: for the Rare Beauty creative, they recreated poses from their 2009 film, Princess Protection Program.

For Lovato, the reunion is less a carefully staged return to the past than a chance to reconnect in the present. In conversation with ELLE, she also looked back on their childhood videos, talked about how her approach to makeup has changed, and reflected on sharing her experiences with mental health and sobriety. Her recent dance-pop work and an open-ended view of what comes next round out a conversation that moves between beauty, friendship and a career still taking shape.

Lovato’s own makeup approach

When she does her makeup herself, Lovato favors a lighter touch. With a professional artist, she’s more open to a bolder direction, whether that means a smoky eye or a more glamorous finish. The distinction leaves room for both an uncomplicated everyday routine and a more expressive look when the occasion calls for it.

Her early beauty experiments were more a lesson in what to skip. Looking back at her Disney years, Lovato recalls overplucked brows and concealer used on her lips. She jokes that the techniques she picked up then would have left her without eyebrows. The lasting takeaway, she says, was learning what didn’t work for her rather than finding a signature trick.

A friendship with room for different chapters

Lovato and Gomez met at age seven while working on Barney. Their friendship, she explains, has ebbed and flowed over the years: there were periods when they were closely involved in each other’s lives and others when they weren’t in frequent contact. The affection remained. Lovato says she’s glad they can now make things together as well as simply meet up and spend time together.

Revisiting old videos brought that childhood dynamic back into focus. Lovato recently watched their vlogs together, which she sees as snapshots of their youthful enthusiasm and their wish to connect with an audience while remaining themselves. She showed some of the footage to her husband, but the embarrassment of watching herself caught up with her quickly. She let him see only a few seconds at first. Still, she describes the videos as funny, sweet and memorable.

Speaking openly about mental health

Lovato says she chose to talk publicly about her experiences because, when she was young, she couldn’t find many peers in the public eye speaking about mental health while they were still in the middle of their careers. She wanted other young people to hear that struggling didn’t mean they were alone, and that it was possible to keep going. Over time, she has discussed experiences including addiction and eating disorders, as well as bipolar disorder.

She also praises Gomez for speaking about her own experiences and advocating for mental health. Lovato describes herself as being in a good place now and says she’s sober. Her account frames openness as a way to offer the kind of representation she wished she’d had earlier in life, while leaving space for each person’s experience to be different.

Music without a fixed next chapter

Lovato says her recent dance-pop direction came alongside a renewed effort to reach listeners online. She began making TikToks while promoting the album and found the format more enjoyable than she had expected. For her, social media became another way to keep in touch with fans as her sound shifted.

She doesn’t yet know what shape her next musical chapter will take, since she has no new music to use as a guide. She does want to keep releasing songs and working toward success, but the clearest measure she offers is personal: making music her fans love and can sing back at her shows. That leaves the future open, with the Rare Beauty collaboration offering a vivid meeting point between the past she shares with Gomez and the creative work they’re doing now.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.