Welcome back to Haul of Fame, your must-read beauty roundup for new products, new ideas and the one perfect lipstick at New York Fashion Week.
Included in today’s issue: Anfisa Skin, Augustinus Bader, Bath & Body Works, Blair Skincare, Blossom, Bond No. 9, Burberry, ESW Beauty, Dove, Farmacy, JVN, Kate Spade, Kimchi Chic, La Roche-Posay, Leonor Greyl, Milk Bar, Nature of Things, Polite Society, Profusion, Redken, Tom Ford, Tula and fictional fascists.
But first…
Despite writing a viral essay called “Ban Bridesmaids” in my 20s, I love weddings. They’re a great excuse to hang out with old friends, an easy way to hard launch a new dress and a clear reason to smoke Marlboros behind those giant potted plants at the Ritz Carlton while trying to hide from your mom. They’re also a $900 billion industry, and beauty brands are taking note. There are the medspa packages geared towards “Bridal Botox” (a thing) and brands like Brides & Hairpins, which spun its veil business into headbands, hair brooches and bedazzled clips.
Now there’s another way beauty brands are looking for wedding dominance: By seeding their product at weddings for influencers, attended by equally TikTok-y guest lists. This isn’t like Dolce & Gabbana staging a black lace takeover of Kourtney Kardashian’s wedding, or Emma Stone, the face of Louis Vuitton, getting married in a Louis Vuitton dress. This is more D2I — Direct-to-Influencer — behavior.
Take Marjan Tabibzada, a Los Angeles-based beauty vlogger who goes by the handle YoungCouture. The 28-year-old has nearly six million followers across Instagram and TikTok, putting her squarely in the “shiny-pretty” category dominated by The Olivias. (Holt, Ponton, Jade, and Culpo.) Tabibzada went viral as a college student in 2014 for her beauty tutorials and fashion twirls, including a Jacquemus dress that began the online debate about the French luxury brand’s synthetic fabrics and $1,000 price-points. She’s had contracts with Sol de Janeiro, been gifted bags from Miu Miu and appeared on a billboard in Times Square for the K-beauty brand Tirtir.
On Sept. 12, the Afghani-American married cosmetic dentist Dr. Nomi Vadria at the Four Seasons in Westlake, California — and the gift bags were ponied up by Parfums de Marly. The French-based brand pledged $60,000 worth of full-size fragrance bottles to the future Mrs. Vadria, which she used instead of name cards. “It was a perfume bar in place of a traditional seating chart,” Tabibzada explained. “Every guest [was] gifted a full-sized Parfums de Marly fragrance, and their name and seat number was delicately tied to the bottle.”
Tabibzada bought her first PDM bottle — the Delina scent — herself. After posting on social media, and receiving record engagement from her “OMG I love this” missives, the brand reached out about official partnerships. She presented president Yvan Jacqueline with a Hollywood Beauty Award this spring, then asked (nicely) if they might want to partner on her wedding scent. Et voilà, about 130 bottles (retail price: $450 each) were shipped to the happy couple.
The move comes as “regular” women have begun reaching out to beauty and lifestyle brands asking for free products to promote their big day. (There’s even a TikTok “Bachelorette PR Free Products” tag with links to email spreadsheets with contact information.) The flimsy promise of a wedding, after all, is to turn its bride into the day’s main character. If she’s the celebrity of her own life, shouldn’t she get the same freebies as real celebrities?
The answer, of course, is no — unless the person using the gifted goods has the kind of reach and influence that makes it worth the brand’s while. Videos from Tabibzada average 20,000 to 30,000 views on Instagram; over 85,000 have watched her TikTok video about “wedding perfume” that includes PDM’s Valaya Exclusif and Castley scents. (“The bottle screams bridal elegance,” she said, which might mark the only time that “elegance” has raised its voice.) Besides exposure on Tabibzada’s own social media accounts, the brand also gets passed to her Extremely Online guests like Calabasas-based influencer Laura Avila and her husband YouTuber Dhar Mann, who count over 30 million subscribers between them.
Parfums de Marly is also doing that red-carpet thing where they “mist” celebrities like Ayo Edibiri and Parker Posey as part of their pre-Emmy glam prep. That’s one way to keep the brand in the jet-set conversation — but it’s an expensive one. An in-kind product donation is a cheaper way to ensure brand exposure, and to establish PDM as a perfume that stands, rather literally, for love. Or at least for the industry built to celebrate it.
What else is new…
Skincare
The Honest Company has partnered with Disney on a baby care line of body wash, shampoo, lotion and conditioner, all stamped with pastel drawings of Pooh, Piglet and Mickey Mouse. It’s adorable but also useful — tearless baby shampoo remains a perfect eye makeup remover!
When La Roche-Posay realized their name could also sound like “Law Roach Pose-ay!” they went with it. The result is an online campaign starring the “image architect” that debuted on Sept. 12. Watch it and you’ll never wonder, “Wait, how do you say that?” again.
Tula’s Whipped Glow Body Moisturiser debuted on Sept. 14. Along with the usual firming and smoothing promises, this $32 jar is also infused with shimmer for an “illuminating” effect and/or a flashback to your first summer rave. Sigh.
Welcome to CVS, ESW Beauty! The K beauty-inspired skincare line known for its juice masks and matcha eye patches hits 3,532 doors on Sept. 15.
Lemme Immunity launched on Sept. 16 with a “patented postbiotic strain” along with vitamins and zinc. The $30 jar is not a substitute for science-proven vaccines, but if you feel like popping one in the morning with your turmeric oat latte, it seems like a lovely experience.
Honey Cloud is a new moisturiser from Farmacy that hit Sephora on Sept. 16. Farmacy likes it because the formula is loaded with white honey, calendula and chamomile. I like it because the jar is shaped like a chunky hexagon, which makes it way easier to grab when your hands are a little slippery from your skincare routine.
Dove introduced its Maple Glaze Donut body wash, deodorant, scrub and bar soap on Sept. 16. I would prefer to eat a Maple Glaze Donut directly after a shower, but I understand the appeal of an $8 lotion that smells like one instead.
Nature of Things rebooted on Sept. 17 with a range of personal care items — body wash, lotion, shampoo, conditioner — infused with plant-based active ingredients. They come in aluminum bottles à la Uni and will look fantastic at your favorite yoga studio.
It’s tiiiime! After a two-week Bloomingdale’s exclusive, Augustinus Bader’s Vitamin C Serum made its global debut on Sept. 18. The glassy, water-light formula absorbs fast on the skin, and promises a potent dose of ergothioneine, an amino acid that acts like a bodyguard to skin cells.
Naydaya’s Neck and Chest Wrinkle Shields look ridiculous — they’re thick and shiny stick-ons that resemble giant Band-Aids for your clavicle. The thing is, they’re made with medical-grade silicone to create a “micro-healing environment” for the tiny lines that can appear in the décolletage. And according to the brand’s before-and-after photos, they seem to really firm and smooth out the skin. The products dropped on Sept. 18: Let’s see if shoppers get the same results.
I always thought if Milk Bar did a beauty collab, it would be with Milk Makeup. Instead, the beloved New York bakery that’s famous for its cereal milk ice cream and birthday cake truffles has paired with Bath & Body Works on a line of body washes, lotions and — notably — a bag charm to hold your cake-scented hand sanitizer. It hit Sept. 19.
Makeup
We love a box set. On Sept. 16, the red lipstick cult of Maed paired with haircare gurus Ceremonia and the fashion label La Voute on a pack of lipstick, styling gel and hoop earrings. It’s called the Iconic Latina set, retails for $95 and was created to celebrate Latin Heritage Month.
Sororities are not always polite societies, but at least they’ll be stocked with Polite Society. On Sept. 16, the startup from Too Faced founder Jerrod Blandino hopped on the Ulta Beauty x Her Campus Tour, stopping at six universities across Florida and Georgia.
Is Vanilla Sex the new Orgasm Blush? Tom Ford Beauty is making a play for it. The collection dropped Sept. 16 with highlighter, lipstick and gloss. Burberry also released a new $49 compact on Sept. 17 but it’s got a tamer name — literally, just Burberry Powder Blush — to go with its English Rose flush effect.
Spice Cake is a gooey, raisin-coloured gloss that hit shelves on Sept. 18 but landed on influencer laps a little bit earlier. It was created by Anfisa Skin and is an easy way to deepen the “nude” lip trend without a lot of fuss.
Profusion Cosmetics released its Harry Potter Dark Arts Halloween Collection on Sept. 17 with eye shadow, blush balm, and a lip gloss called Death Eater. IDK if we want to take inspiration from a world where the term “mudblood” is used to describe mixed-heritage children, even fictional ones, though the bigger problem there is J.K. Rowling’s use of fearmongering to vilify trans girls, many of whom would stun in this makeup collection.
On Sept. 18, Kimchi Chic took another drag queen staple — the contour pencil — and created a version for the general public. It’s called the Effin Sculpt Highlight & Contour Stick, and it’s a double-sided $12 crayon to help pop your cheekbones without the use of AI.
There were only a few dozen seats at the Maria McManus show in New York this season, and if we’re being honest, I only got one of them because I helped the designer write her show notes. But aside from me, the intimate gathering served as a catch-and-release for deep-fashion influencers like celebrity stylists, editors and the kind of Substack girls whose full-time job is, actually, Substack. All of them were gifted an Estée Lauder Pure Color lip balm in the deepest shade, Melted Scarlet — and all of them actually used it throughout the week. Harper’s Bazaar’s Lynette Nylander and writer Aemilia Madden both confirmed to me that they’re still using it, and that’s pretty impressive for a heritage brand that’s trying (very, very hard) to get in with the “right” crowd of modern working women.
Haircare
Redken’s doing some multitasking. On Sept. 14, it launched Acidic Color Gloss 1-Min Gloss-in-Mask, a product that boosts shine while imbuing strands with moisture. It’s $40 and promises an 80 percent reduction in frizz.
Ponytail lovers, rejoice. JVN’s Perféct StyleFix Stick dropped on Sept. 17 with “lasting hold” that promises to tame flyaways or baby hairs all day. It’s $18, but I suspect you’re paying at least an extra dollar for the “é” accent in the name.
I was first introduced to the French haircare brand Leonor Greyl by Virginie Courtin-Clarins (yes, that Clarins), who told me to sleep overnight in LG hair oil to kill split ends. On Sept. 17, the Paris-based line launched an $82 hairbrush with a tortoise-print handle and boar bristles. Rich girl hair, here we come.
So many scalp serums, so little proof from non-sponsored scientists that they work. Still, that hasn’t stopped Blossom Essentials from unveiling its Essential Hydration Scalp Serum, a $36 formula with tremella mushroom, aloe and panthenol. Blair Skincare also has a new Scalp Serum with “cutting edge exosome technology” that promises to “promote” thicker hair for $128. Both hit on Sept. 17.
Fragrance
The Korean brand Gemi looks and smells like a modern perfume, with frosted glass and floral notes that spritz on command. But each $12 bottle contains FDA-approved hand sanitizer that’s also infused with a “skin serum” to combat dryness. If you want to smell like fuji apple blossoms every time you disinfect, this isn’t a bad way to go.
On Sept. 15, Bond No. 9 rolled out New York Chic, its Manhattan ode to Audrey, Carrie, Blair, Serena and every other woman who thought a little black dress worked? better than Zoloft. It’s got notes of davana, cognac and smoky tobacco leaf so you can pretend you’re sipping an Earl Grey martini while puffing an American Spirit at Lucky Strike circa 2004. (Sigh.)
Vintner’s Daughter stamped its new fragrance, Understory Vol. 3, with a quote from famed herbalist Rosemary Gladstar: “The plants have enough wisdom to transform our limited vision.” According to the brand, the scent also transforms when it hits the skin, and its Northern California notes of ferns, moss and flowers express themselves differently depending on one’s body chemistry. The $255 fragrance debuted on Sept. 16 with a one-and-done inventory of 300 bottles.
Fragrance start-up Snif, known for its confectionary olfactions, released its Mornings With Levain candle on Sept. 16 in partnership with New York’s largest single-serving cookie.
Would you trade your vape pen for an “Energy Pen”? Neos is like, do it. The functional fragrance company debuted its scented stylo on Sept. 17 with notes of eucalyptus, rosemary, and fir. It’s $22 and designed to “uplift the senses.” No word yet on whether it’s better than a fridge cigarette, aka Diet Coke.
Kate Spade’s latest scent, Pop, hit shelves this week. It’s in a bright pink bottle with notes of blood orange, raspberry and cedarwood, and retails for $104. This in itself would be unremarkable, but Pop’s nose is Amandine Clerc-Marie, a Grasse-born veteran who developed the original and epically popular Chloé Eau de Parfum. Which means we need to fear this new Kate Spade smell, at least just a little.
And finally…
What’s with all these beauty brands launching newspapers this week? Victoria Beckham Beauty did one under the purview of former Elle beauty director Katie Becker; Nutrafol created a “Menopause Edit” magazine and website with contributions from female doctors. Bubble had their own orange-tinted ones, too. Meanwhile at Lafayette 148 and Brandon Maxwell, models carried newspapers with their handbags. Print — always a good idea!
Sign up to The Business of Beauty newsletter, your complimentary, must-read source for the day’s most important beauty and wellness news and analysis.