Search for Vietnamese makeup brands in English, and you will get a list of ten or twelve names. Most of them are skincare companies, not makeup brands. Several are not Vietnamese at all, and one widely circulated roundup manages to include a shoe company. The real category is much smaller than those lists suggest and considerably more interesting than they make it look.
This guide covers which brands are genuinely Vietnamese, where the products are actually manufactured, what they cost, which famous names are not Vietnamese despite appearances, and how to buy any of it from outside the country.
Fast track
- Why Vietnamese makeup is made in Korea
- What counts as a Vietnamese makeup brand
- The brands worth knowing
- Made in Vietnam, actually
- What is not Vietnamese
- Skincare is not makeup
- How to buy it from abroad
- FAQ
Why Vietnamese Makeup Is Made in Korea
Vietnam has a large and fast-growing beauty market, but the domestic color cosmetics category – lipstick, cushion foundation, blush, mascara – is young and thin. Four or five brands genuinely matter. That is neither a criticism nor a reason to skip them; it is simply a useful fact, and nobody writing in English has said it plainly.
The reason is structural. Vietnam’s cosmetics industry grew up around skincare, herbal preparations, and personal care, where the manufacturing is comparatively straightforward. Color cosmetics are harder: pigment dispersion, pressed powders, cushion sponges, mascara fibers, and the shade-matching discipline that goes with them. When Vietnamese founders wanted to make lipstick at international quality, most of them did what Korean and Chinese indie brands do – they hired a Korean factory.
So the honest description of a Vietnamese makeup brand in 2026 is usually this: Vietnamese-founded, Vietnamese-designed, Vietnamese-marketed, and Korean-made. Whether that counts is a fair question, and it is worth answering before the brand list rather than after it.
What Counts as a Vietnamese Makeup Brand?
There is no legal answer. Vietnamese retail listings distinguish two fields that English-language coverage collapses into one:
- Xuất xứ – the brand’s origin, usually where the company and the brand identity sit.
- Nơi sản xuất – where the product was physically made.
A Lemonade cushion is routinely listed with xuất xứ Vietnam and nơi sản xuất Korea. Both are true. Neither is the whole picture.
For a practical read, three tiers are more useful than one label:
Vietnamese-owned and Vietnamese-made. The company is Vietnamese, and the product is manufactured in Vietnam. This is the smallest group, and it is mostly the smaller brands.
Vietnamese-owned, made abroad. A Vietnamese company designs, formulates the brief, picks the shades, and owns the brand – then contracts a Korean factory to produce it. This is where the biggest names sit.
Popular in Vietnam, not Vietnamese. Foreign brands with a heavy Vietnamese social presence, Vietnamese-language marketing, and dedicated Vietnamese storefronts. Easy to mistake for local. Frequently mistaken for a local.
The third category is why so many English lists are wrong, and it is worth a section of its own further down.
The Brands Worth Knowing
Lemonade
The strongest case for a genuinely Vietnamese makeup brand. Founded in 2018 in Hanoi by Quách Ánh, one of Vietnam’s best-known professional makeup artists, and operated by a Vietnamese company, Gena Pacific. Unusually for the industry, it is Hanoi-based rather than Ho Chi Minh City.
Lemonade sells on fit rather than novelty: shades built for Vietnamese skin tones, formulas built for heat and humidity, and an internal “Easy Match” color index so shades coordinate across products. Its Supermatte No Makeup Cushion won Local Cushion of the Year at the ELLE Vietnam Beauty Awards 2025, and its brow pencil has been a category leader on Shopee.
- Hero products: Supermatte No Makeup Cushion, Perfect Couple Lip, Matte Addict lipstick, brow pencil
- Price: roughly 200,000–400,000 VND (~$8–15); the Supermatte cushion is 249,000 VND (~$9.50)
- Made in: South Korea – the brand’s own product pages list the Vietnamese company as the importer
- Buy in Vietnam: lemonade.vn, Watsons, Guardian, Hasaki, Beauty Box, Shopee, TikTok Shop
M.O.I Cosmetics
The brand that made Vietnamese makeup a category. Launched in 2018 by the singer Hồ Ngọc Hà with entertainment executive Lâm Thành Kim, it was positioned from the start as a professional-standard Vietnamese makeup line and the first to reach real national distribution.
One thing English coverage consistently misses: M.O.I has not been Vietnamese-owned since 2019. Company records reported by the Vietnamese business press show the entity’s 6.8 billion VND charter capital went from 100% domestic to 100% foreign that October, held by a Hong Kong-registered company called M.O.I International Limited. Hồ Ngọc Hà remains the public face and a representative for half the capital; she is not the owner. If you want a Vietnamese-owned brand specifically, this is not it.
- Hero products: Baby Skin Cushion, Baby Cheek Blush, Love M.O.I lipstick, Perfect Shape Mascara
- Price: blush 339,000 VND (~$13), mascara 369,000 VND (~$14), Baby Skin Cushion 381,000 VND (~$15), Premium cushion 629,000 VND (~$24) – the priciest of the mainstream names
- Made in: South Korea, stated on the brand’s own site
- Buy in Vietnam: moicosmetics.vn, Guardian, Hasaki, Watsons, Beauty Box, and airport retail
Ofélia
The purest creator brand. Founded in late 2016 by Ngô Quỳnh Trang, better known as Changmakeup, one of Vietnam’s first big beauty vloggers and a Forbes Vietnam 30 Under 30 alum. It trades as “Ofélia Los Angeles”, while the operation is Vietnamese.
Lip-first and fast-moving, with collections framed around the founder’s own life stages. Its debut lipstick collection reportedly sold 14,000 units on day one. The Lolli Liquid Blush is currently the product people outside Vietnam actually ask about.
- Hero products: Lolli Glow Tint, Lolli Liquid Blush, Uncovered Lip Mousse, Nightfall lipsticks
- Price: Lolli Glow Tint ~219,000–239,000 VND (~$8.50–9)
- Made in: South Korea – the founder has described production at a Korean cGMP facility; retailers list xuất xứ Vietnam, sản xuất Korea
- Buy in Vietnam: ofelia.vn, Lazada, Shopee, TikTok, SammiShop, and most beauty retailers
Vacosi
The one most Vietnamese makeup artists actually own. Broadest color range of any brand here – eye, lip, and complexion, plus brushes and sponges – and it started on the professional-tools side before moving to consumer products.
A caveat worth stating: the operating company is Vietnamese, registered in Ho Chi Minh City, but the brand markets itself as originating in South Korea, and no country of manufacture is published anywhere we could find. Treat its origin as unconfirmed.
- Hero products: brushes, sponges, cushions, and eye palettes
- Price: mass tier, below the brands above
- Made in: not disclosed – unverified
- Buy in Vietnam: vacosi.com, Chiaki, Cocolux, Beauty Box
What Vietnamese makeup costs
Representative products, cheapest to most expensive. Colour shows where the product is manufactured — not where the brand is from.
| Brand & product | Price (VND) | ≈ USD | Made in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cỏ MềmSon Dưỡng Môi Hồng tinted balm | 120,000₫ | $4.60 | Vietnam |
| Cỏ MềmSon Lụa Diễm lipstick | 198,000₫ | $7.60 | Vietnam |
| LemonadeSupermatte No Makeup Cushion | 249,000₫ | $9.60 | South Korea |
| M.O.IBaby Cheek Blush | 339,000₫ | $13.00 | South Korea |
| M.O.IPerfect Shape Mascara | 369,000₫ | $14.20 | South Korea |
| M.O.IBaby Skin Cushion | 381,000₫ | $14.70 | South Korea |
| Miss SaigonVelvet Matte lipstick, per unit | 400,000₫ | $15.40 | South Korea |
| NauNauSon Trà Mi lipstick | 425,000₫ | $16.30 | Vietnam |
| M.O.IPremium Baby Skin Cushion | 629,000₫ | $24.20 | South Korea |
Made in Vietnam, Actually
Two brands break the Korean-manufacturing pattern, and both are small.
Cỏ Mềm HomeLab is the clearest case. Founded in 2015 in Hanoi by pharmacist Trịnh Đặng Thuận Thảo, it owns a CGMP-certified factory of nearly 10,000 m² and manufactures its own products, including its lipsticks – its product pages name the plant, Nhà máy Mỹ phẩm Thiên Nhiên Song An. The platform is “lành và thật” – wholesome and honest – with no synthetic fragrance, lead-tested formulas, and heavily paper-based packaging. Makeup is a small line inside a skincare-led range, so treat it as a skincare brand that makes real lipstick rather than a makeup brand.
- Son Lụa Diễm lipstick: 198,000 VND (~$7.60)
- Son Dưỡng Môi Hồng tinted balm: 120,000 VND (~$4.60)
- 80 own-brand stores across 30 of Vietnam’s 34 provinces
NauNau, founded in 2013 in Ho Chi Minh City by Huỳnh Hải Yến, is Vietnam’s natural-beauty pioneer – earlier than Cocoon, earlier than Cỏ Mềm. It runs a herb garden in Đà Lạt and a factory in Lâm Đồng and sells lead-free lipsticks at roughly 425,000 VND (~$16), the most expensive on this page. It is also the only brand here with any documented overseas distribution, reportedly in the US, Japan, and Australia – though that claim rests on older interviews and the brand’s own site.
There is one more oddity worth knowing. Miss Saigon, the heritage Vietnamese perfume house behind the áo dài-shaped bottle, sells a five-piece velvet matte lipstick set at around 2,000,000 VND (~$77). Its own retail page names the manufacturer outright: Cosmax Korea. It is the only brand we found that publishes which Korean factory makes its lipstick.
What Is Not Vietnamese
If you have been browsing Vietnamese TikTok or Shopee, these will look local. None of them are.
Thai: ODBO. Enormously popular in Vietnam, with dedicated Vietnamese social accounts, but a Thai brand.
Chinese: Focallure, Judydoll, Colorkey, Perfect Diary, Florasis (Huaxizi), Pink Flash. Vietnamese shoppers file these under hàng nội địa Trung – Chinese domestic goods – as a recognized category of their own.
Korean: Black Rouge, Merzy, Bbia, 3CE, Romand, Peripera, Clio. Several of these lean hard into the Vietnamese and Southeast Asian market, which is exactly why they read as local.
American: EM Cosmetics, founded by Michelle Phan. Vietnamese-American US brand. Anything sold under that name in a Hanoi market is almost certainly counterfeit.
Skincare Is Not Makeup
The single most common error in English lists is putting skincare brands in a makeup roundup. For clarity:
Cocoon is Vietnam’s most internationally successful beauty brand, exporting to more than a dozen markets and now on shelves in Japan. It makes no color cosmetics at all.
Thorakao, the Lan Hảo family company trading since the late 1950s, is a genuine landmark of Vietnamese cosmetics and a real exporter. It is haircare and skincare. No makeup. Our profile of Thorakao covers it properly.
Also skincare, not makeup: Sắc Ngọc Khang, Emmié by Happy Skin, Vedette, Skinna, Decumar, Sao Thái Dương. If skincare is what you are actually after, start with our guide to Vietnamese skincare brands.
How to Buy It From Abroad
This is where honesty is more useful than optimism. Vietnamese makeup brands do not really export. Lemonade, M.O.I and Cỏ Mềm have stated international ambitions; we found no evidence of structured overseas retail for any of them. Ofélia has appeared on Lazada Thailand. NauNau claims US, Japan, and Australia distribution.
Realistically, there are three routes:
- Shopee Vietnam or TikTok Shop Vietnam plus a package forwarder. Slow, works, and adds cost.
- Buy in person. Guardian, Watsons, Hasaki, and Beauty Box carry all the main brands across Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Airport retail carries M.O.I.
- Wait. V-beauty distribution is genuinely improving, as we covered in the V-beauty distribution gap.
One warning. Counterfeit cosmetics are a real and persistent problem in Vietnam’s informal retail, and Vietnamese regulators have run repeated enforcement actions. Buy from the brand’s own site, an official platform store, or a chain pharmacy. Not from a market stall.
FAQ
What are the best Vietnamese makeup brands?
Lemonade, M.O.I Cosmetics, Ofélia, and Vacosi are the four with meaningful range and national distribution. Cỏ Mềm HomeLab and NauNau make smaller lipstick lines and manufacture them in Vietnam.
Which Vietnamese beauty brands make both skincare and makeup?
Cỏ Mềm HomeLab and NauNau are the clearest examples – skincare-led ranges that also include real color cosmetics. Most of the big skincare names, including Cocoon and Thorakao, make no makeup at all.
Is Vietnamese makeup actually made in Vietnam?
Usually not. Lemonade, M.O.I and Ofélia are all manufactured in South Korea. Cỏ Mềm and NauNau manufacture domestically.
Is ODBO a Vietnamese brand?
No. ODBO is Thai. It is heavily marketed in Vietnam, which is why it is frequently listed as local.
Is Cocoon a makeup brand?
No. Cocoon is skincare and body care. It is Vietnam’s biggest beauty export success, but it makes no color cosmetics.
How much does Vietnamese makeup cost?
Most products sit between 120,000 and 430,000 VND, roughly $5 to $17, with premium cushion foundations reaching about 630,000 VND (~$24). That is broadly below imported Western drugstore pricing in Vietnam and comparable to mid-tier Korean brands.
Can I buy Vietnamese makeup in the US or Europe?
Not through normal retail. A package forwarder from Shopee Vietnam is the practical option.
