Courage

Dana Wood

About Dana Wood

A beauty journalist for 20+ years, Dana Wood has served as Beauty Director for BRIDES, Cookie and W magazines, has written for numerous national publications, and is an author and a blogger. She also spent several years in the Luxury Products Division of L’Oreal, as AVP Strategic Development. She recently relocated to Florida, and is embracing high-speed, expressway driving.

Quality Counts: Why the $2 Billion Bidding War for Aesop Makes Perfect Sense

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When a number of reputable business news outlets recently reported that none other than LVMH, L’Oréal and Shiseido were allegedly embroiled in a $2 billion bidding war for the Australian beauty brand Aesop, I’ll cop to being a bit surprised. Somehow, when I wasn’t looking, this quietly lovely line, founded in 1987 and steeped in natural ingredients, had morphed into a covetable, highly profitable powerhouse. In fact, when São Paulo-based Natura & Co bought a 65 percent stake in Aesop directly from its founder Dennis Paphitis in 2012, a …

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Clean Is Under Siege

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Even before the November 2022 class action lawsuit against Sephora, filed by a customer who evidently felt bamboozled by its “Clean at Sephora” seal, I could sense the once-hot category of “clean” beauty was sputtering. Utterly ill-defined, even more so than its chief precursor -- the “natural” category – clean’s big moment in the beauty spotlight lasted all of maybe five years. Cleanwashing Coming on the heels of “greenwashing” we have now have fears of “cleanwashing,” i.e., marketing that overpromises on the good-for-you front, …

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Lauder’s Fashion Sense: How Tom Ford Lured the Beauty Behemoth into Untested Waters

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While I’m sure it was just the way it all shook out, there are only men - seven of them, in fact -- quoted in the mid-November official press release announcing the acquisition of Tom Ford by Estée Lauder Companies. Building the Empire In order, they are Fabrizio Freda, EL Cos. president and CEO; Ford himself; Domenico De Sole, co-founder and chairman, Tom Ford International; William Lauder, executive chairman, EL Cos.; Guillaume Jesel, president, luxury business development, EL Cos.; Ermenegildo “Gildo” Zegna, CEO, Ermenegildo Zegna …

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Dupes Undermine Prestige Brands

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With more than 60,000 monthly searches, and nearly a half million downloads since its 2018 debut, the comparison-shopping app Brandefy is a success by any measure. And the fact that this handy tool for finding beauty dupes acquired nearly 70,000 new “community members” in 2021 speaks to both the consumer’s growing skincare-literacy and fondness for self-care acquired during Covid, alongside a more recent surge in inflation-generated concerns about personal finances. TikTokking into the Alternatives And then there’s that other massive …

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What Should Revlon Do to Save Itself?

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Revlon Odd Fellows If ever there were a weirder fit with Revlon’s already quirky portfolio of brands, I can’t imagine what could top the fact that it owns the global fragrance rights for AllSaints. The edgy, Goth-y contemporary fashion line, established in 1994 in East London and evenly balanced in its offerings for both men and women, is very cool and decidedly not mainstream. So, you can imagine my surprise when I spotted AllSaints in the “About Revlon” section of the June 16 press release announcing that the legendary beauty behemoth …

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Glossier’s Next Chapter

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Readers, let us not forget this: Emily Weiss, after founding a wildly successful blog that spawned an even more wildly successful beauty brand, is still only 37 years old. Thirty. Seven. She’s achieved more creative, business, and IP success in her tiny time on Planet Earth than most of us can even fathom. Fading Supernova Human nature being what it is, however, the knives have been out for Weiss for a while. When she announced in May that she was stepping down as CEO following a good 12 months of spectacularly scathing stories in the …

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Looking at Unboxing Beauty Videos

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While the lion’s share of recent beauty chatter has centered on 30-second viral TikToks, the polar opposite phenomenon – long, elaborate “unboxing” videos – is still shockingly popular on YouTube, perhaps giving hope to the hand wringers who fret over our ever-declining attention spans. One Box at a Time These nutty peeks into a beauty influencer’s rarified world, one in which they literally unbox mountains of fresh loot they’ve received either directly from brands or from PR firms, aren’t new. In fact, one of the most popular, which has …

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Influencers at Any Age

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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 …

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