SKYLRK is the most quietly executed celebrity brand launch in recent memory: years of slow-drip teasing, a Coachella headline slot, and a reported $15 million in merchandise across two weekends. No press tour. No influencer seeding.
Just product, placement, and a joint-sized phone case slot that told the culture everything it needed to know. If you've been watching lifestyle brands and cannabis accessories drift into each other, Justin Bieber's SKYLRK is the clearest signal yet that the mainstream has caught up.
How did SKYLRK start?
The paper trail runs further back than most fans realize. A US trademark application for SKYLRK eyewear was filed on August 26, 2022, by SKYLRK Holdco, LLC, with attorney Bobby A. Ghajar of record. That filing claimed priority from an earlier application in Jamaica dated April 12, 2022. Later filings in May 2023 covered apparel, footwear and accessories.
The public breadcrumbs came in December 2023, when Bieber was spotted in sneakers with bold soles and neon colorways. From there, he used his personal Instagram as a living lookbook: sweatsuits, beanies, futuristic sunglasses, chunky slides. No price tags, no launch dates.
Behind the scenes, Neima Khaila, co-founder of LA streetwear label Pink Dolphin, brought the business side. Scottish designer Finn Rush-Taylor, who has worked with Adidas, Puma and Crocs and specializes in 3D-modeled footwear, built the silhouettes that became the brand's visual signature.
"We been calibrating for like 3 years. They not ready bro," Khaila wrote. He wasn't wrong. The SKYLRK rollout was a lesson in earned anticipation, the kind of patience most celebrity brands skip because they're chasing a quarterly calendar instead of a cultural moment.
What is SKYLRK, exactly?
SKYLRK went live on July 10, 2025, with a debut drop of apparel, footwear and accessories. The palette is candy-toned: sky blue, Barbie pink, bright red, coral and neon accents, cut in oversized, comfort-first silhouettes. IBTimes described the look as Yeezy-era minimalism crossed with Fear of God, softer and more playful than typical streetwear. Prices ran from about $40 for a beanie to $200 for sunglasses.
The name nods to the skylark and to "skylarking," the old word for goofing around freely. That tracks. Bieber keeps creative control, working with Khaila as creative director and Rush-Taylor on design, and Hailey Bieber has starred in campaigns and co-designed pieces, including Valentine's 2026 leather jackets carrying her initials.
Before any of it, he had closed the previous chapter. Bieber publicly split from Drew House, the label he co-founded, posting on Instagram: "I, Justin Bieber, am no longer involved in this brand." Cold. Clean. Done.
That split mattered because it was public and explicit. SKYLRK didn't launch alongside something else; it replaced it. A clean break like that is rare in celebrity brand land, and it gave SKYLRK a clarity of identity that most new labels spend years trying to manufacture.
What is the SKYLRK Sizzler Case and why did it break the internet?
On May 13, 2025, Bieber posted a prototype of a phone case with a built-in slot for a joint, a direct riff on Hailey Bieber's Rhode Lip Case and its built-in lip gloss holder. Same form factor. Different contents. His caption: "Workin on the moldingggggggggggggg please approve this idea." He added that Hailey had the tech patented, so he'd owe her a fee. She replied: "I'll think about it!"
The internet moved fast. Not because the product was controversial, but because it was the most effortlessly on-brand celebrity product moment in years. Two partners, two lifestyle brands, one shared form factor, completely different uses. Rhode for the lip gloss crowd. SKYLRK for everyone else.
The finished product is the Sizzler Case for iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max. Gadget Flow lists it at about $45 in four textured colorways (Cave, Sky, Gum and Aqua Kiwi), with a molded slot roughly 9 cm long and 1 cm wide, sized for exactly what you think. Cave and Gum versions were part of the Coachella merch run, and the "Coachella Sizzler Case" in Sky and Aqua Kiwi now trades on GOAT.
You can see how we cover it on the SKYLRK joint phone case product page. This is what normalized cannabis accessories look like in 2026. No wellness narrative. No destigmatization campaign. No green cross imagery. Just a slot, designed cleanly and sold at a fashion brand's price point.
The concept works because it doesn't announce itself. It's an accessory that happens to hold a joint, not a cannabis product that happens to look like an accessory. That distinction is everything. Brands still building around the plant itself, rather than around the lifestyle that includes it, are reading the market wrong.
The Sizzler Case didn't normalize cannabis. It assumed normalization had already happened, and designed accordingly.
What does the SKYLRK product lineup look like?
By the time Bieber hit the Coachella main stage, SKYLRK had expanded well beyond the debut drop. The catalog covers every category a lifestyle brand needs to occupy, and the accessories are where the cannabis-adjacent culture shows up.
Apparel
- An "Apple" green fleece hoodie and "Smudge" fleece tee, both worn on stage during weekend one
- Denim shorts debuted during weekend two
- Coachella hoodies and tees in zebra, stripe, tie-dye and dotted patterns, printed with "Justin Bieber Live," "Indio, California" and the April 11 and 18 show dates
- "It's not clocking to you" baby tees and long sleeves, plus white and black bucket hats
- Leather jackets co-designed with Hailey Bieber for Valentine's 2026
Footwear
- Earth Bender, a one-piece, 3D-printed slip-on built with German 3D-printing firm Zellerfeld, released in Lilac at the SKYLRK pop-up in Tokyo on December 4–7, 2025
- Slides with interchangeable soles
Eyewear
- Speed Demon Sunglasses in Jet, Tree and Sushi colorways for the Coachella run, with a black pair on stage in weekend one
Accessories and cannabis-adjacent products
- Sizzler Case, the joint-slot phone case for iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max
- Socks, beanies and gaiters
- Phone battery packs and chargers, a SKYLRK-branded Shark ChillPill and a cat mask made with Arkyve
For anyone tracking where smoking accessories are heading, past the head shop aesthetic and into lifestyle retail, the SKYLRK accessories shelf is worth studying. It sits in the same lane as a design-led Crawford lighter case or a clean pack from our rolling paper brand picks: gear that looks good out on the table.
How did SKYLRK perform at Coachella 2026?
According to Hypebeast, Bieber's $10 million fee made him the highest-paid performer in Coachella history. SKYLRK treated the booking like a product launch, not a merch tent. The brand built a dedicated SKYLRK Shop next to the SKYLRK Oasis, a branded space offering shade and cooling mist in the desert. Product drop, experiential activation and press moment in one footprint.
Hypebeast reported $5.04 million in sales during weekend one and another $10 million in weekend two, for a total of $15 million. The previous Coachella merch record was $1.7 million. SKYLRK didn't beat it; it lapped it several times over.
Launchmetrics put the Media Impact Value from weekend one at $2.3 million, and the brand's social following jumped 3.09% right after the set. Hypebeast also noted that Bieber is only the second major artist to independently develop and produce festival merch under his own label. For a brand less than a year old, those numbers were absurd.
Festival activations increasingly work as full brand launches, not just merch moments. The same playbook shows up across the LA cannabis events on our fall 2026 shortlist. Lifestyle brands and cannabis operators are converging fast, and the ones who show up to those activations first are the ones building real equity.
Why does SKYLRK work when most celebrity brands don't?
Authenticity is the obvious answer, and here it's actually true, not just a talking point. Bieber wore SKYLRK prototypes in public for more than a year and a half before launch. There was no gap between the product and the person selling it. He didn't license his name to a supply chain; he kept creative control, and it shows in every SKU.
The deeper answer is operational. SKYLRK launched with a real team: Khaila bringing LA streetwear credibility from Pink Dolphin, Rush-Taylor designing with the rigor of someone who understands 3D modeling and material engineering, not just aesthetics. The brand had infrastructure before it had a launch date.
That sequence is rare. Most celebrity brands do it backwards: name first, product second, team somewhere after the first drop has already disappointed.
The rollout also understood timing. The Coachella activation wasn't opportunistic; it was the payoff of a build that stretched back to 2022 paperwork, landing at the exact moment Bieber had the biggest stage in the festival world. You can't schedule that. But you can be ready for it.
What the SKYLRK playbook means for cannabis brands
The cannabis industry has been trying to crack lifestyle positioning for years. Most brands default to the same shorthand: earth tones, wellness copy, and Instagram grids that look like every other cannabis brand. SKYLRK skipped that conversation entirely. It built a lifestyle brand that happens to include cannabis accessories, not a cannabis brand trying to look like a lifestyle brand.
That's the real lesson. The Sizzler Case works as a phone case first. People who smoke and people who don't can both want it, and the joint slot reads as a wink instead of a pitch.
That's audience reach no dispensary launch event or influencer gifting campaign has come close to. When SKYLRK put a joint slot on a fashion accessory, it did it in front of an audience primed by years of teasing and a $10 million Coachella booking.
Cannabis operators should watch this and ask the harder question: not "how do we be more like SKYLRK," but "what would it look like if our brand existed for the culture first and the product second?" The brands that figure that out are the ones building something that lasts past the next market correction.
Frequently asked questions
What is SKYLRK?
SKYLRK is Justin Bieber's lifestyle brand, built with Neima Khaila and designer Finn Rush-Taylor, with Bieber keeping creative control. It covers apparel, footwear, eyewear and accessories. The brand launched on July 10, 2025, and went global after Bieber's Coachella 2026 headline sets, where Hypebeast reported $15 million in merchandise sales across two weekends.
What is the SKYLRK phone case and where can you buy it?
The case is the Sizzler Case, a textured phone case for the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max with a molded slot roughly 9 cm long and 1 cm wide. It comes in Cave, Sky, Gum and Aqua Kiwi. Cave and Gum were part of the Coachella merch run, and Coachella editions trade on GOAT. The concept grew out of Bieber's May 2025 riff on Hailey Bieber's Rhode Lip Case.
Is SKYLRK a cannabis brand?
No. SKYLRK is a lifestyle brand with cannabis-adjacent accessories. The Sizzler Case is the most visible example: a phone case with a joint-sized slot that works as a fashion accessory first. The brand doesn't sell cannabis. It treats cannabis as a normal part of the lifestyle it represents, without making it the centerpiece of the identity.
How did SKYLRK break the Coachella merch record?
Hypebeast reported $5.04 million in merchandise sales during Coachella 2026 weekend one and $15 million total across both weekends, against a previous record of $1.7 million.
The brand ran a dedicated SKYLRK Shop next to the SKYLRK Oasis, pairing retail with an experiential space. Launchmetrics valued weekend one's Media Impact Value at $2.3 million, and the brand's social following rose 3.09% right after the headline set.