Brand

Claire’s Taps Creator Lana Rae in Post-Bankruptcy Push for Gen Alpha

Published on July 7, 2026

Claire’s has enlisted Lana Rae, the YouTube and Roblox creator behind “Lana’s Life,” for a roughly 45-piece beauty, jewelry, accessories, and collectibles collection that debuted June 25 at VidCon, the accessories retailer’s most extensive creator partnership since emerging from its second bankruptcy less than a year ago. The line rolled out to 866 of Claire’s 900 stores in the U.S. and Canada on June 30, with 15 styles also sold through a dedicated page on the Claire’s website.

The partnership updates a model Claire’s has run before. The retailer began selling JoJo Siwa’s signature bows in 2016, and Siwa has said more than 80 million had sold by 2020, with Forbes estimating at least $400 million in retail sales. Chief Brand Officer Michelle Goad, who joined Claire’s in January, called the Lana Rae launch a continuation of that approach. “This is just the beginning,” she told Glossy, adding that Claire’s is “constantly looking for the right voice and the right category to do this with.”

Goad arrived several months after the private investment firm Ames Watson acquired Claire’s North American operations and intellectual property out of bankruptcy for $140 million. Claire’s had filed for Chapter 11 in August 2025, carrying roughly $690 million in debt, weighed down by declining mall traffic, competition from online and fast-fashion retailers, cautious consumer spending, and tariff-related cost increases. Its first bankruptcy, in 2018, had eliminated about $1.9 billion in debt without resolving those pressures.

That history is shaping who Claire’s now targets. “For us, to win with Gen Alpha, we can’t focus on this 6- to 8-year-old girl that we’ve historically focused on, because she’s just aging up faster,” Goad said, describing the retailer’s shift toward tweens and younger teens as “an inspiring playground for modern girlhood.” She has framed the aesthetic shift in generational terms, telling Mashable that today’s shoppers lean toward a softer, more pastel look than the maximalism Gen Z favored, joking that “if mom is in her beige era, your daughter is probably into something really girly.”

Claire’s identified Lana Rae, who has more than 19 million followers, after seeing strong in-store demand for merchandise tied to “Dress to Impress,” the Roblox game she regularly features that has logged over 10 billion visits. The collection spans lip gloss keychains, jelly lip and cheek balms, body mists, faux nails, DIY squishy kits and collectible Taba Squishies, priced from $7.99 to $19.99. Claire’s has developed and holds exclusive retail rights to the beauty products, while the other categories also sell through additional retailers. Rae approved each item personally; Claire’s declined to disclose the royalty structure.

Rae’s staying power rests partly on a bet she made against her own biggest hit. A year before the Claire’s deal, she pulled back from leaning too heavily on “Dress to Impress” content, worried the format would pigeonhole her channel, and diversified into other gaming trends, including a run of Squid Game-influenced Roblox titles during the show’s cultural peak. “I did get concerned that my focus on doing Dress to Impress content a year ago was going to pigeonhole me,” she recently told Net Influencer, “so I made a conscious effort to integrate other content in between regardless of the fear of it not performing as well.”

To connect the online and in-store audiences, Claire’s hosted a VidCon booth, where Rae held five of her seven scheduled meet-and-greets and gave the first 8,000 in-store buyers a free Roblox avatar item. It had previously tested smaller versions of the model with slime brands Dope Slimes and Peachybbies.

Goad said the retailer’s piercing business, long its core draw, remains central even as the assortment expands. “Once you’ve been pierced, what is it that Gen Alpha is looking for?” she said. “Our goal is to always have that and really wow her.”