A beauty brand and a canned fish company have put sardines on a pair of reusable eye masks.

It sounds like the punchline to a joke about brand collaborations, but Dieux Skin and Fishwife see a shared sensibility behind the pairing. The limited-edition version of Dieux’s Good Taste Forever Eye Mask uses the same medical-grade silicone as the original but features artwork by Fishwife’s in-house illustrator, Danny Miller. The product retails for US$25.

Neither brand is new to collaborations. Dieux has worked with fashion brand Eckhaus Latta and fast-food chain Sweetgreen, while Fishwife has partnered with food brand Fly by Jing. Still, Dieux and Fishwife may be their least obvious pairing yet.

Inside Retail asked retail and brand strategy experts what makes a collaboration work – and what makes one fall flat.

In a LinkedIn post, Turandot Yuan, a creative strategist at online database and search engine Giphy, asked, “Can tinned fish skincare become part of your nighttime routine?”

Provided the product doesn’t actually smell like sardines, her answer was yes. Yuan pointed to other beauty and food or beverage partnerships, including Elf x Liquid Death and Burt’s Bees x Hidden Valley Ranch. Such “stunt-y” collaborations can make headlines, she said, but they can also build brands when the partners share values and an audience.

“Fishwife and Dieux make sense because they share a dream customer: a woman with taste,” said Yuan. “And this is one tasteful collab that nods to their skincare ethos of aging gracefully, inside and out.”

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