Welcome back to Haul of Fame, the weekly beauty roundup of new products, new ideas and a sustained shoutout to Sabrina Carpenter.
Included in today’s issue: Boots, CFCL, Dime, Gisou, Glossier, Grown Alchemist, Isle of Paradise, Jenny Patinkin, Laneige, Osāna, Prada Beauty, Saltair, Savor Beauty, Solawave, U Beauty, Westman Atelier and National Public Radio.
But first
It’s all happening.
After decades of music acts turning summer into their own personal tour season, beauty brands are following suit. Fittingly, it was a pop star Ariana Grande, who really sparked the trend, with her R.E.M. Beauty tour, which made stops in Paris and Los Angeles, this spring. It included Instagram photo set-ups, product testing stations and a chance to meet the future Glinda herself.
But Grande has her own movie tour for “Wicked” gearing up, which means other brands are stepping up to the mic in her stead. On June 12, Charlotte Tilbury took over Sephora in Herald Square, Manhattan and Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. On June 14 and 15, Westman Atelier is holding a meet-and-greet for their new blush at 10 Nordstrom locations, including stores in Oregon, Tennessee and Phoenix. And Chantecaille Beauty, is hyping its Just Skin tinted moisturiser with a pop-up in SoHo, New York, plus summer visits to London, Hong Kong and Seoul.
The New York event, which takes place on June 15, will be held in a converted Airstream, with a live floral installation and makeup artists matching Just Skin shades with complexions in real time. But Chantecaille could make pretty videos and shade-matching tutorials on TikTok. Why the schlep for some added face-time with clients? “We want to convert the beauty-obsessed person who may not know us,” said Chantecaille CMO, Julia Frankenberger, noting that potential buyers “need to feel and touch” formulas to fully appreciate their quality and pigment payoff. “We also want to pique the interest of that chic New York woman or chic visitor.”
Also gearing up for the road is haircare line Ceremonia. They’re on a “Guava Summer” tour at Sephora through June 29, which takes the brand to California, New York, Florida, and Puerto Rico.
Candid interactions are the big benefit of these summer beauty tours, especially for mid-size labels that know building relationships is key to creating a sustainable revenue stream. Meeting customers where they’re at — as those customers are strolling through wealthy parts of cool cities — is a brilliant way to conjure the “authentic” experience that so many beauty companies claim to foster with their fans. It’s the “Omigod, how funny, I just bumped into her!” of branding.
Ceremonia founder Babba Rivera added that meeting customers is often phase one of new product development. “We love hearing our customers’ hair concerns, and the questions they ask,” she said. “These conversations are quantitative inputs that we incorporate into everything we do the rest of the year, including product development, kits and marketing campaigns.”
Chantecaille is currently at 650 beauty counters, including those at Bergdorf Goodman and Bluemercury. They’ve got about 250,000 Instagram followers. (Frankly, it’ll likely have more once its social channels feature a wider range of skin tones.) Ceremonia has a slightly smaller footprint, albeit with a “cool” factor that helps. In both cases, their formulas are excellent.
It’s telling, then, that they want to go back to basics: meeting fans one-on-one. As Google’s enigmatic parameters and TikTok’s infinite dopamine swipes continue to consume online shoppers’ attention spans, we’ll see even more brands rely on face-to-face contact to spread their pretty-girl gospel. (Especially ones with dynamic, but not famous, founders.)
Skincare
If you’re not an Equinox member, you’ll have to get Grown Alchemist like the rest of us at Sephora. On June 10, the label introduced Hydra-Restore Eye Serum, which has ectoin, an amino acid found in extreme heat and dryness that some scientists call “highly cell-protectant.” It’s $50.
On June 11, Savor Beauty debuted its Radiant Rose Collagen Face Cream. The brand’s MO is their small-batch production methods, which often happen by hand with local ingredients. That means this $125 cream is very limited edition, and like a Gap x Doen drop, once it’s gone, that’s it.
Skincare in New York’s West Village for under $5? Believe it! Until July 3, Osāna Naturals will be on-shelves at Bonberi Mart, founded by “Body Harmony” author Nicole Berrie. Besides Osāna’s $5 shampoo, conditioner and body wash, it is launching an exclusive vetiver and lemon verbena hand soap for $3.97.
Isle of Paradise’s Beautifully Balanced Body Oil Cleanser and Body Butter launched on June 10. Both products promise softer, smoother skin for about $25 each.
Saltair debuted a KP Body Smoother scrub with 10 percent glycolic acid, volcanic sand and microcrystalline cellulose to “smooth bumps and textured skin” on June 6. The KP stands for “keratosis pilaris,” the condition where tiny bumps form on the skin. It often fades when people hit their 30s, which might hint at who’s buying 33-year-old Iskra Lawrence’s brand.
Solawave’s new 2-in-1 Skincare Mini hit shelves on June 13. It’s a teeny $89 gizmo with “red light therapy, near-infrared light and therapeutic warmth” that promises to tighten skin and boost glow. And it looks like a little UFO, which is very fun.
On June 14, Dime Beauty’s Décolletage Defining Serum debuted. It’s $48, with imagery that includes younger and older models in tube tops. Pretty!
Cosmetics
Just a month after Sabrina Carpenter used Supergoop sunscreen in her blockbuster Espresso video, Prada Beauty is featured in the new Please Please Please video. Carpenter uses the brand’s colour-changing moisture lip balm as she struts out of jail, which is a hoot. And while it’s fun to see stunt beauty go from TikTok content to actual pop culture sensation, it’s even more fun to see Carpenter and her team at CAA hack the music video game — the subject of Haul of Fame’s very first column! — for added revenue. In the wake of paltry streaming fees and taxing tour schedules, built-in beauty fees would be a coup for musicians like Carpenter, who influence what their fans are buying anyway. Also, is there an espresso perfume coming? My Magic 8 ball says, “Duh.”
If you need designer blush before then, Westman Atelier is taking over Sephora’s NYC Meatpacking location on June 14 and 15 with their Baby Cheeks line, and launching two new shades.
On June 11, Jenny Patinkin revealed The Big Reveal, an eyelash curler engineered to address hooded and deep-set eyes. It has a flatter curve and more upright angle than typical curlers. It’s $20 at Amazon Beauty, which feels reasonable!
U Beauty is fronted by OG fashion influencer Tina Chen, who still has a ton of credibility with affluent, style-forward women. Because of that, the brand has never needed a ton of celebrity or influencer wattage. Still, the skincare label announced its first-ever collab on June 5. It’s with TikTok darling Tinx, who’s made a blushy pink shade of their Plasma Lip Compound called “Rom-Com.” Tinx describes it as “the ultimate just-kissed lip shade,” which should get a lot of mileage with the Sephora teens.
Speaking of those girls, they can now buy their current lip gloss obsession, Laneige, at Boots in London starting June 12. If they happen to score a place on “Love Island,” they can also steal Laneige from the Villa, where it will be available to contestants. Genius product placement, honestly.
Also in lip gloss land, Gisou’s new Coconut Frost shimmer lip oil dropped on June 10.
Way back in December, I talked about “nipples as beauty’s final frontier,” along with the indie brand Flirte Beauty, which launched lip liners that supposedly matched one’s nipple shade. On June 10, Glossier dropped a very similar concept with their eight new shades of Lip Line.
Haircare
There’s this trend we can call the “spa-ification of everything.” It’s when you call something a “spa” in hopes of tapping into the wellness trend that lets you rebrand beauty as a higher virtue. Calling a regular beauty joint a “spa” began with nail salons and tanning centres; now botox jabs and teeth whitening sessions are also “spa” activities. On June 11, Rossano Ferretti’s Hairspa opened at the luxe Park Hyatt hotel, with amenities like the “Deluxe Hair Treatment” for dry, damaged hair, as well as the signature “Ferretti Metodo cut,” known as the “Invisible Haircut.”
Fragrance
Is incense a beauty product? It’s certainly getting more upscale. On June 11, a new scent called Evoke dropped from CFCL by Yusuke Takahashi, the former menswear director at Issey Miyake. It comes in the form of a burnable stick. True to fragrance’s new trend to make every product sound like slam poetry, Evoke “is a unique scent inspired by the colour of the sky after rain, with notes of lavender and fennel.” It’s $24.50.
Also on June 11, Lake & Skye debuted 11 11 Azure, a fragrance oil in a rollerball that “captures the sheer power and energy of the ocean, blue skies and azure waters.”
And Finally
For a NPR segment on the fragrance boom this week, Morning Edition made its own signature scent. (According to producer Nina Kravinsky, it smells like citrus and “being fresh out of the shower.”) NPR isn’t selling the fragrance anywhere, but during their next fundraising drive, shouldn’t they think about it?
