Jennifer Aniston Opens Up About Life, Business And Her LolaVie Haircare Line, Thanks Her ‘Gorgeous Fanbase’

If I were to mention the words “celebrity” and “hair” in the same sentence, I feel it is pretty much a no-brainer that you would think of Jennifer Aniston first. Who else has ever had such a trendsetting hairstyle inspired from their own on-screen look? Of course, I am referring to “The Rachel” ‘90s haircut, made famous from Aniston’s Rachel Green character on the forever-popular sitcom Friends. Today, the actress and leading entrepreneur continues to prioritize maintaining quality hair, as she celebrates the one year anniversary of her expanding LolaVie haircare line.

What began with debuting LolaVie’s glossing detangler and perfecting leave-in products to the public first on September 8, 2021, Aniston, alongside her co-founders Joel Ronkin and Amy Sachs, also recently introduced a LolaVie lightweight hair oil. I spoke with this collaborative trio about the feedback they have received from their supporters since launching just one year ago.

“Well, we’ve had such an incredible reaction from our consumers, so that’s probably the most satisfying,” Aniston tells me. “We won eight beauty awards and we had multiple five-star reviews and it just feels that the work we put into this product and the time we took, all of these products, has paid off. We have a lot of return consumers that keep coming back for more. I have girlfriends that want our bottles to be bigger because they go through them so fast because they’re using them on their hair and their kids’ hair. We’ve had an incredible response and it was worth every second of it!”

Sachs, being the co-founder and also the President of LolaVie, follows up by saying, “We agree. Like Jen said, the reviews, the feedback from the customers have been so positive. We really took our time with this. We didn’t just launch 12 or 15 products. We took a lot of time with each product and made sure we weren’t rushing. So, I think we were really happy with the response from consumers and from the beauty industry in general. To have eight beauty awards with only three products is pretty amazing.”

To properly celebrate their one year anniversary, LolaVie has just released a restorative shampoo and conditioner, following a vocal demand from their customers. I wondered what the announcement of these new products will mean for the present and future of LolaVie.

“Well, I think we’re going to be answering a lot of our consumers’ wishes,” Aniston continues. “The shampoo and conditioner has been quite requested over the past year, if not the most requested. When is that coming? When is that coming? So, it took the time that it took, but we got it there and it is one of my favorite shampoos and conditioners. I might be a little bias, but what can I say?”

Knowing the incomparable impact her various hairstyles have had on our society over the years and the influence she continues to have on her loyal supporters, I asked Aniston what is it about her own hair and her ongoing haircare efforts that continue to make this such a passionate focus in her life.

“I think our hair is a big part of our expression – of how we feel. You have a good hair day and you have a bad hair day, so it was really important for me to see proper haircare and to have products that had multiple benefits. That was something that I used to always do was I would pull out a paste, I would pull out a serum, I would pull out a body oil. I would combine all of these different products that I had in order to get the results that I wanted. So, figuring out a way to have all of those results in one bottle was really exciting and quite challenging and also having the proper ingredients and yet still perform. So, it was hard and it was a challenge, but we got it. We sort of checked all the boxes.”

Being the founder of LolaVie and one of the leading decision makers throughout its creation process, I wondered why it was important for Aniston to have such an active hand since the very beginning, when we do live in an entertainment business world where celebrities are sometimes approached with a fully formed product and simply asked to slap their name on it to spark public interest.

“Well, exactly what you just said. I didn’t want to just slap my name onto something. This has been a really fun and exciting experience for me and something I love to do. My vision, our vision, to create this platform where we could deliver clean, plant-based products that were also high-performing. When I worked previously for another haircare company, to pull the curtain back and see what goes into haircare and how can we have clean, proper, good ingredients that are multi-functional. That’s what we’ve been able to do in our awesome lab with our incredible team.”

Ronkin, being the co-founder and also the CEO of LolaVie, adds, “There literally is no one with more iconic or talked about hair than Jen. Everyone always asks Well, what’s Jen really like? Is she really as nice? And the answer is Yeah, she really is as nice! What’s probably just as important is her qualities are really reflected in the products you see and our brand qualities and our mission – and so, her values are reflected: natural, authentic, relatable, not fussy – all those things are Jen. Transparent and also demanding. We will send things back twenty times to get it right because Jen wants to make sure that if we put it out there, it’s the best. It has to be the best, not just from a science standpoint, but it has to be good for them.”

Sachs follows up to Ronkin’s point with, “Everybody thinks of Jen as they could be her best friend. I think Jen actually exudes that. She really is a kind, thoughtful, nice, great person to work with, but like Joel said, she’s also demanding. She knows exactly what she wants and she won’t settle and I think she makes us better every day. She works harder than any celebrity I’ve ever worked with on anything. She’s the reason we’re as successful as we are at LolaVie.”

Aniston goes on to inform me that she is currently filming the third season of her hit Apple TV+ series The Morning Show, where she stars alongside Reese Witherspoon as multi-layered television news veteran Alex Levy. So, with her acting career continuing onward, her leadership role with LolaVie and the other various industries she chooses to take part in today, I asked the beloved actress and businesswoman how her mindset and her approach toward projects have changed since her early years in Hollywood.

“I would just have to say more involvement,” Aniston reveals. “Not just showing up as an actress for hire or putting your name on a product. Everything that I’ve done in my career has been very organic and come in a very organic way, whether it’s products that I have used for years and years that I fully believe in – and then starting to get more involved creatively from the ground up. It’s so much more satisfying and exciting for me.”

Next, I was curious how Aniston sees the business side of Hollywood evolving and how we as everyday people interact with one another through technology today, compared to when she first began her professional career in the 1990s.

“That’s a tough one,” Aniston continues. “I mean, there’s so many changes with so many platforms, streaming services. It’s become a little saturated, if I can say that. Listen, I miss the ‘90s, can I say that (laughs)? I miss the early 2000s. I miss pre-social media, personally. I think we had more mystery, more kind of glamour and love of the creative industry of making movies and television. It’s evolved, it’s changing but everything does – you just have to be okay with it. Maybe I’m not great with change. I also just feel like it’s reflected in our world today, in our society. We’ve become so divided and there’s so much room for people to comment or have opinions and then sort of spread hate and negativity and conspiracy theories. There’s platforms and the internet, which can be incredible – at its inception was such a beautiful idea, to socially connect people and then good times go bad. So you know, the long-winded way of saying yeah, it’s changing.”

As Aniston and her LolaVie team look ahead with their five products so far available for purchase directly on the LolaVie website, Sachs says anything is possible in perhaps one day seeing LolaVie sold in retail stores, but shares that she, Aniston and Ronkin made a conscious decision early on to be a direct-to-consumer business.

As I began to conclude our conversation, I wondered what message they might have for their growing number of LolaVie supporters, people who are enthusiastically using their products and continue on this haircare journey with them.

Aniston says without hesitation, “Oh my gosh! Well first of all, we love them for their love of the product and their endless support. I have such a gorgeous fanbase of people that support and really love what I do creatively and love this product. So, we’re just thankful for them mainly and also to ensure, let them know that there will more coming to a theater near you!”