Links 008: Beauty bonds, blonzer, and my summer faves
Skin Type is locked tf in.
Happy first day of fall! I hope the Matte Renaissance is treating you well. You could be reading anything right now, and it means a lot that you’re spending time with this newsletter. I’ll make it worth your time with lots of news, reads, and recs.
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Industry news
Consumers are mad at Mielle Organics, and
says “not so fast.” Consumers are also mad at Kourtney Kardashian’s Lemme GLP-1 Daily, and doctors say “same tbh.”
WWD has a new guide to the business potential of “beauty’s biggest ideas,” and it’s bullish on TikTok Shop Live, dermocosmetics, clean fragrance, and – unsurprisingly – weight loss drugs. The mag is excited about the continued rise Ty Haney’s TYB, which was also recently featured in AdAge. Since it (wisely) shifted its initial crypto/NFT focus to community-building and consumer rewards, it has become “a living and breathing space of brand fans.”
Beauty has an awards season, too, and we’re in the thick of it. CEW will crown its winners on November 21, while Beauty Independent will announce its Beacon Awards picks on September 25 (I’ll cover them in the next newsletter, of course). The Glossy Pop Awards are new this year, and Starface, Glow Recipe, and Tower 28’s Amy Liu are among the honorees. The winners’ list provides an excellent snapshot of “the best and most culturally relevant beauty and fashion products, campaigns, people and brands,” especially in digital and social.
Marie Claire is doling out 20-plus prizes across scent families, brand types, delivery formats, and packaging for its first annual Fragrance Awards. It’s a diverse winners’ list that features upstarts like Ex Nihilo and Parfums de Marly alongside classics by Burberry and Tom Ford. I recommend checking out all four lists, but if you’re looking for a new scent, the Fragrance Awards winners’ page is a nice place to start.
Fragrance
Rachel Syme profiled Francis Kurkdjian for The New Yorker. It’s a beautifully written stroll through Kurkdjian’s career and the recent history of luxury perfume.1 Glossy’s deep dive into online fragrance communities is a nice companion piece, and it doesn’t mention Jeremy Fragrance once, yay.
Glossier is selling one bottle of You, its seven-year-old hit fragrance, every 18 seconds, according to Puck’s Rachel Strugatz. The brand is launching two new fragrances simultaneously this fall and is seeding them to press and influencers 007-style: “in a locked mailer that can only be opened with a code that is being distributed Wednesday.”
wrote in After School’s Weekend Edition that her PR box smells great…
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Innovation
A dubious and grant-winning lipstick with a hidden panic button and roofie test strips, via Nylon. An “invisible face mask” from Patchology whose SkinSeal technology has CEW extremely excited. The “high-tech era” of dry shampoo, per Cosmetics Business.
Injectable breast implants? One day, maybe. An asset-backed bond tied to BNPL (buy now, pay later) loans for cosmetic surgery and other aesthetic treatments? Probably, and I hate it.2
Beauty retail
This beat has been particularly busy since my last send. Net-a-Porter, once a major launchpad for luxury beauty, will end its direct sales at the end of the year. Per WWD, “products will be listed on the site through editorial content that will link to brands’ sites to purchase.” An affiliate model? How Substack of them.
In better news for discovery and curation, Cassandra Grey is buying Violet Grey back from Farfetch (with some private equity assistance, ofc) and launching a brand development arm called Violet Lab. May we never again see anything like the VG x DeuxMoi collab under the new regime.
Elsewhere in retail, Credo and Walgreens have announced in-house lines. Credo Skincare, which is centered on hydration and sustainability, has debuted with two cleansers and four moisturizers (?). Walgreens Premium Skincare is going the shameless dupe route, with nine rather familiar-looking products.
Of course, pharmacy-brand or “generic” versions of drugstore products are nothing new. Walgreens’ line caught my eye because the company doesn’t stock any of the products it’s duping. Check the full roster below and let me know what you make of it.
Trend corner
Blonzer is in, as presaged by the popularity of Rhode’s Toasted Teddy this summer. So is “anti-Botox makeup,”3 which is just “Beetlejuice lips” for your eyes. (I find TikTok-brained sentences like these incredibly fun to read and write.)
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Also big on TikTok right now? Pining for discontinued products, according to WWD. Creators like Maddie Peed and Skin Type favorite Erin Parsons have “opened a Pandora’s box to the platform’s burgeoning interest in long-loved and -forgotten classics,” and brands like MAC and Urban Decay are wisely reissuing products in response.
Here is where I confess that one of my absolute holy grails is the dearly departed Smashbox Photo Finish Hydrating Under Eye Primer, and that I’m living on borrowed time with tubes purchased from eBay and obscure beauty supply stores. (There are dozens of us.4) I’ve tried many purported dupes but, if you have a similar product to recommend, please let me know in the comments.
The best of summer
I feel toootally fine and not at all self-conscious about posting my best-of-summer list nearly a month after nearly every other media outlet and creator. In my defense, fall officially started today, and two of these items were late additions.
Giving recommendations is one of my love languages and these are my genuine faves, with no affiliate links or spon.
Summer Fridays Jet Lag Overnight Eye Serum ($46): A serum this is not: its heft is closer to Aquaphor ointment than anything you’d dispense with a pipette. It’s velvety and dense without being waxy or sticky. My perpetually dry undereye skin drinks this stuff up, so much so that I’m already on my second tube after grabbing my first in late June. (I use Biologique Recherche Crème Contour des Yeux Biosensible for daytime, which blessedly lasts four to five months per tube.)
Parallele The Traveler (sizes vary, $78-128): My beloved aunt5 put me on to these toiletry bags. Parallelle’s design – vertical storage with a ton of mesh and wall pockets, adjustable dividers, foldable sides – is so intuitive that, upon using it, you wonder how it hadn’t been invented already. No one asked but Beach House Group, the parent company of Béis, would do well to consider acquiring this brand and its patents.
Catrice Under Eye Brightener ($6) and Natasha Denona Hy-Glam Color Corrector ($30): This is my new go-to combo for undereye, which works well enough that I skip concealer there altogether.
Lisa Eldridge Seamless Enhancing Skin Tint ($49): It’s just so easy. Minimal yet meaningful coverage, plays well with other products, full of skincare ingredients. I’m mindful of the recent price creep of complexion products as I make this rec – Patrick Ta’s $58 foundation and Victoria Beckham’s $68 concealer pen come to mind – but, since you only need a couple drops per application, one 30mL/1oz bottle will last. While another pebble-shaped foundation has gone viral this year, I’d argue this deserves more acclaim.
Victoria Beckham EyeWear ($34): If I lightly dragged VB in the last bullet point, it’s only because I expect a lot from her line. I have the makeup-unfriendly combo of deeply hooded eyes and crepey yet oily lids, and EyeWear stayed in place and fresh-looking through a rainy wedding afternoon/night. I have Shroom, “a shimmy storm grey,” and will likely have ordered Caramel, “a shimmery bronze,” by the time you read this.
Precision Microblading Cotton Swabs ($4.99 for 200): These skinny legends have countless uses: sharpening up eyeliner or lip color, micro-spot concealing, even cleaning your AirPods. I kept a few in my bag while testing disappointing mascaras and setting powders this summer6 and am glad I did.
Jouer Blush Bouquet in Deus Amis ($34): For blush, I tend to stick to nude pink shades like Rare Beauty’s Bliss and Westman Atelier’s Petal, and Jouer’s palette allowed me to sample two of-the-moment shades in one go. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the coral color on the very front of my cheeks. These highly pigmented powders require a light hand; I’d recommend circling your brush in the palm of your hand before applying.
Almost-bronzer bronzer à la Kackie: The Makeup Color Theory video series from Kackie Reviews Beauty has upped my game considerably, and the clip below specifically unlocked something in my brain. Using a “bridge-the-gap” bronzer – i.e. Tarte Park Avenue Princess, Makeup by Mario SoftSculpt Skin Enhancer, or even Hermès Plein Air Healthy Glow Powder – has made products like the Jouer Blush Bouquet look more at home on my face. (Importantly, this video is how I learned that two of my favorite creators, Kackie and
, are siblings.)Oh, Mary! on Broadway: Not a beauty product, just the funniest stage show I’ve ever seen. It was hard to imagine that Cole Escola’s play could be as good as the rapturous reviews made it sound, and it was still better than I could have imagined. The Broadway run of “Oh, Mary!” was just extended through January and I honestly may go again. Even though I saw it two weeks ago and live in Los Angeles.
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See you again later this week xx
Obviously.
props to my mom for collab