Back in the olden days, women weren’t expected to look stop-traffic terrific at age 60. But try telling that to Janet “Grateful Gardenia” Gunn, an Instagram influencer with 100k followers who slays that idea every day. Gallivanting all over LA in a frisky mashup of high/low designer brands, she makes sure to swipe on her signature pinky-nude lip gloss before heading out the door. And on her Grateful Gardenia blog, she goes deeper on the products and brands she loves, including Beauty Pie Japanfusion Genius Lift Elixir, Westman Atelier Baby …
Big Beauty Needs a Detox
It’s 2022. Why am I having to worry about whether the Pantene Mist Behaving Dry Conditioning Mist I have tucked in a bathroom drawer, or the Neutrogena Ultra Sheer aerosol sunscreen my husband spritzes on before tennis, are giving us cancer? With the drumbeat of “clean,” toxin-free products growing ever louder with each passing day, isn’t Big Beauty even the least bit afraid that consumers have just about had it with merch that endangers our well-being? Sure, I want great hair. But I’d rather not risk my life to get it. Maybe I’m …
DEI in Perfumery: About Time
It isn’t just the deep-thinking, hyper-articulate panel participants that have made the Fragrance Foundation’s recent webinar stick out in my mind for a solid six weeks after the fact. Rather, it’s the idea that the beauty industry’s least dynamic, most tradition-rooted category – perfumery -- just might be a real catalyst for social and ideological change. A European White Male Bastion The free October event, dubbed “Industry Perspectives on Diversity, Equity & Inclusion,” attracted more than 1,000 virtual attendees and was positioned as …
Real Housewives Get Rich
Recipe for confusion: changing the name of your beauty brand just as consumers were becoming aware of the fact that you even had a beauty brand to begin with. But then again, when you have aspirations of becoming a billion-dollar entity, as Real Housewife of Salt Lake City Whitney Rose has boldly proclaimed, shifting from the head-scratching, no-one-knows-what-it-means Iris + Beau to Wild Rose Beauty actually makes some semblance of sense. After all, there are only roughly a gazillion new skincare brands launched every day; better to trade …
A Disconnect with Americans’ Fascination with Wellbeing
It isn’t only Belinda, the beleaguered spa manager in HBO’s smash summer hit The White Lotus, who’s finding it exceedingly challenging to cater to the whims of stressed-out guests right now. According to findings of the 2021 ISPA U.S. Spa Industry Study, a recent survey of more than 2000 American spa owners, the total number of U.S. employees fell by more than 20 percent last year. While it would be easy to attribute that fall-off to an overall decline in revenues and spa visits during Covid – each of those two vectors plummeted by a hefty …
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Big Beauty Walks the Enviro-Talk. What About You?
As much as I love my “beat” – and I seriously, unequivocally love my beat – it’s pretty challenging to write about the beauty category and the environment without getting at least a little cynical. It’s also not always easy to predict when the cause du jour will morph into a truly meaningful, not-going-anywhere, full-on movement. Past as Prelude Tina Hedges was about to launch LOLI Beauty back in 2014. We were discussing brand positioning, and how to stand out in the dense forest that is the American skincare market. She kept circling back …
Is Makeup Dead?
Recently I received an email about Becca Cosmetics’ upcoming makeup launches, and I immediately emailed the brand publicist back: “I’m confused,” I wrote. “I thought Estée Lauder was shutting Becca down?” Covid Casualty After assuring me that that was in fact the case – that EL Companies had indeed pulled the plug on the 20-year-old brand, which it acquired in 2016 and was best-known for its Champagne Pop liquid highlighter - the publicist said that it’s business as usual until September, when Becca officially goes bye-bye. Why shutter a …
The Second (Celebrity) Coming
For her gyration-filled performance on New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest, a medley of tunes that included a decidedly off-brand riff on Aerosmith's "Dream On," Jennifer Lopez of course looked flawless, with a face full of artfully applied makeup and enough eyeshadow to fill a slew of multi-pan palettes. JLo au Naturel But it was during Lopez's #WashAway2020 virtual after-party that the true magic happened. In the opening bits of the half-hour bash, which was attended by a handful of gushing VIP fans and is available for replay on …