Welcome back to Haul of Fame, your must-read beauty roundup for new products, new ideas and Phyllis Nefler.
Included in today’s issue: Bath & Body Works, Beauty Creations Cosmetics, Boss, Cetaphil, Charlotte Tilbury, Crown Affair, Dove Cameron, Dyson, Each & Every, Ellis Brooklyn, Flamingo Estate, Glow Recipe, Guess, Haus Labs, Le Monde Gourmand, Mark Anthony, Moroccanoil, Nyx Professional Makeup, Rare Beauty, Rhode, Sweed Beauty, Tower28, Touchland, Urban Decay and that stuff that makes popcorn taste better.
But first…
A lot of beauty people talk about the 1990s as if they were there. Even if you’ve never seen their birth certificate, you can tell they’re clueless (but not, and never, ‘Clueless’). The references are too obvious: Courtney Love without Juliana Hatfield; Beyoncé without Brandy. Making a 1990s mood board and calling it inspiration is a little like making an “Austin Powers” movie and calling it Woodstock. There’s joy, sure, but the root meaning has been run over by an Uber — which, by the way, didn’t exist back then.
That hasn’t stopped makeup marketers from going hard on 1990s inspo. This month, Pinterest reported that “grunge makeup” was one of its top-searched terms; in mid-August, the term “90s makeup” began climbing up Google Trends and is still going. And at this point a “1990s makeup tutorial” is basically table stakes for TikTok beauty influencers. The irony, of course, is that the generation of women who actually pioneered 1990s beauty trends now have to fight for their original formulas when developing new products.
Take Poppy King, who founded the cult brand Lipstick Queen as an 18-year-old Australian go-getter, eventually becoming a Leonard Lauder protégée and relaunching Prescriptives. “The issue now is that every cosmetic [brand] is using the same formula as 10 other brands,” she said. “You go to a lab and they say, ‘Well, our data says this one mid-pigment formula is what women want.’ And I’m like, ‘Okay, well, I’m a woman, selling to women, and we need pigment with more dimensions. We need the universe in between deep matte and sheer gloss. And you’re not giving it to me.’” King said this fight didn’t exist in the 1990s, when she created her original Lipstick Queen formulas. “Creativity in actual products is pretty dead. It’s harder than ever to make an Urban Decay or a Hard Candy,” she said, because makeup is essentially interchangeable now. (She makes an exception for extremely small, hyper-developed lines from industry experts like Fara Homidi. “But those,” King said, “are so rare.”)
Last month, King returned to her original Australian factory, which still has the recipes for her best-selling 1990s gloss pots and lipstick. The move was applauded by Emily Dougherty, the former Elle and Nylon beauty director who now helms beauty coverage at Cultured and consults for massive beauty brands. “The beauty world has spent a lot of time and energy over the past 20 years on contouring and shaping and ‘fixing’ the face before getting to the good stuff,” she lamented to me. “In the 90s, it was only about the good stuff. Just a slash of matte turquoise under the lash line. A chocolate brown lip gloss.” Dougherty is describing what King calls “whimsical protest,” embodied in 1990s runway collections by Anna Sui and Marc Jacobs and fuelled by makeup artists like Dick Page and Lisa Eldridge. This aesthetic was created with concentrated pigments smeared on vulnerable bare skin, with glitter flicked like cigarette ash instead of carefully pressed into prestige palettes. This is not the 1990s of Bratz dolls and Pamela Anderson; it is the jagged and underfunded “girl gaze” that would birth “The Virgin Suicides” and, eventually, Petra Collins, Billie Eilish, Steff Yotka’s i-D and Willa Bennett’s Cosmopolitan.
Fairy princesses were often cited by 1990s makeup artists as inspiration; Urban Decay even had a shade called “Titania” named for Shakespeare’s fay queen. One of her best quotes is “we are their parents and originals,” and the 1990s beauty parents and originals are finally getting a measure of respect. On the editorial side, it looks like InStyle’s 1990s beauty editor Amy Synnott taking the top job at Goop and Vogue beauty queen Sarah Brown migrating to Edward Enninful’s hotly anticipated EE72. Allure founding editor Linda Wells is the top banana at Air Mail Look and 1990s fashion intern-turned-buyer Taylor Tomasi Hill now runs Pinterest while her fellow Gen-X prodigy Eva Chen runs Instagram.
As for King, she relaunched her original Lipstick Queen makeup formulas last week, selling 800 units in 24 hours with zero advertising of any kind. “I woke up and I was like, ‘Oh yeah, they remember!’” King exclaimed, laughing. “People know the original formulas are truly better. They last longer. The pigment has more integrity. It’s not a cardboard copy of an era. It’s real ‘90s beauty.”
What else is new…
Skincare
Flamingo Estate is really leaning into its salad days. On Aug. 25, it introduced Green Goddess — like the dressing — a candle and scented bar soap with lemon, pea, rosemary and basil.
Cetaphil’s Nourishing Oil-to-Foam cleanser hit stores, and dorm rooms, on Aug. 25. It’s about $10 and has a nice lather!
Christmas? In this economy? Let’s try it. On Aug. 25, Touchland rolled out its holiday scented sanitizers, including peppermint mocha, cinnamon gingerbread, pumpkin spice and salted caramel.
Sweed Beauty is still under-the-radar enough that my autocorrect keeps changing it to “Swede.” (It won’t pull that BS with Rhode vs Road.) On Aug. 26, the Stockholm-based brand debuted Peptide & Ice Lift & Firm Hydra Gel Eye Patches. That’s a name so loaded with SEO terms that perhaps an autocorrect correction can’t be far behind.
Like their namesakes, the Disney Villain collection by Bath & Body Works is both delightful and wayyy over the top. It appeared on Aug. 26 with glow-in-the-dark poison apples and Evil Queen hand soap.
Save the snails! Glow Recipe’s new Prickly Pear Peptide Mucin is a $32 hydrating serum that uses cactus ooze instead of mollusk slime to hydrate and protect the complexion. It’s in a bright pink bottle that Marcel the Shell might enjoy. It hit shelves Aug. 26.
Makeup
It’s cool that Rare Beauty made lip gloss with Tajín, the beloved bodega spice that’s amazing on popcorn with a little squirt of lime juice. (I also put it in my beer.) Each $30 pack donates a portion of proceeds to Escuela Nacional de Ceràmica, the Mexican Institute for Indigenous art.
Did Gaga wear Haus Labs Precision Sculpt Shaping Balm during the Mayhem Ball? We don’t know yet (sad) but if you’re looking to recreate her Florentine cheekbones, Haus Labs unveiled the product on Aug. 27 with a melt-y, blurring effect to “add dimension and shape features.” Abracadabra, etc.
At long last, Tower28 has an eyeshadow! The Gogo Cooling Shimmer stick dropped on Aug. 26 with eight shades named for California nightlife hubs, including Chateau, Whiskey and Bungalow. They’re $20 each, but if you buy the glimmery mauve one called Viper, you have to say “RIP River Phoenix” and really mean it or else you’re cursed.
My beauty sub-Reddit is losing its mind because Rhode’s lip peptide in Jellybean is finally back on the site. (They’re a little miffed with the $7 shipping though, which turns a $20 splurge into a $27 ‘do-I-need-this’ moment.) The throwback shade arrived on Aug. 27 along with Strawberry Glaze and Salted Tan. And despite the shipping annoyance, by the time you read this, it will likely already be gone.
Welcome to Sephora, Fara Homidi! The brand hit shelves on Aug. 27 with its newest offering, Soft Glass Lip Plumping Oil, plus a meet-and-greet with the makeup artist herself at the brand’s Soho, New York location.
Charlotte Tilbury’s Airbrush franchise has two new arrivals: Airbrush Flawless Foundation and Airbrush Flawless matte setting spray. Both debuted on Aug. 28, and yes, they have been tested on the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. (Tilbury is an official partner of the squad.)
Those who love the Sharpies of beauty — not felt tip markers but lip stains — can line up on Aug. 28, when Nyx Professional Makeup debuts a lip stain pen as part of its Lip Lingerie franchise. It comes in 12 shades, including harder-to-find tints like brown-nude and coffee-mauve.
If you’d like to bribe a tween away from Roblox, may I suggest K-beauty brand Tokidoki’s collab with Beauty Creations Cosmetics? It dropped on Aug. 29 with lip gloss charms, powder blush, shimmer shadow and a hot pink unicorn toy.
Hair Care
I’m normally skeptical of under $10 purple shampoo but Mark Anthony True Professional’s before-and-after shots of its Repair Blonde line are notable. The range also has a conditioner and glazing mask; it launched on Aug. 21.
Welcome to Ulta Beauty, Moroccanoil! On Aug. 25, the brand that smells like a Cornell sorority house launched in 800 stores, with another 600 slated for 2026.
Crown Affair’s Overnight Repair Serum hit shelves on Aug. 26 with claims to “reduce breakage by 75 percent in one month.” It uses flaxseed, chia and rosemary extracts in the formula.
Dyson’s thinking pink. On Aug. 26, the vacuum dynasty debuted Amber Silk, a limited-edition rose gold colourway for its Airwrap, Airstraight and Supersonic hair tools. (That’s one way to make sure your hair dryer doesn’t get mixed up with some other model’s at Equinox.)
When I first met Dove Cameron, she was so mesmerizing that I blurted out, “Oh, so your face just does that, huh?” And she was like, “Yeah, it does.” (She was nice enough about it that I didn’t throw myself over a cliff or whatever.) Now the 29 year-old is fronting Urban Decay’s Fall campaign for the Naked Shaped palette, which has 14 shades in various textures (matte, shimmer, etc.) and retails for $56. There’s also an Instagram video that confirms yes, her face still does that.
Fragrance
Le Monde Gourmand said oui to body care on Aug. 25 with two body washes, sugar scrubs and lotions in signature scents like Crème Vanille. They’re $22 to $24.
Is “ginger leather” a new vegan material? No — it’s the new scent profile for Boss Bottled Beyond, a $155 fragrance that uses “innovative CO2 extraction technology” to prolong its scent longevity. It debuted Aug. 25.
Can you bottle “golden hour”? Noteworthy is trying with n,729 Solar Muse, which has orange zest and orange blossom, plus neroli leaf. It’s out Aug. 26, when sunset in New York hits at 7:36 PM.
This one’s for the girls who don’t do sugar in their coffee. On Aug. 24, Ellis Brooklyn dropped Vanilla Salt, a grown-up gourmand with vanilla, jasmine, whipped cream, sea salt and “desert water.” It’s $115 and very cool, but don’t worry — I’ve reached out to ask which desert, exactly, is supplying the hydration.
Each & Every’s body mists hit stores on Aug. 26 with the tagline “mist and tell,” which is cute! There are three scents — all gourmand and dessert-y — that carry the brand’s claim 100 percent all natural fragrance claim.
Beverly Hills, what a thrill! Guess’ Travel Stories is a trio of body mists packed in gold-accented bottles that hit shelves on Aug. 26. The scents may be called Fiji, Kyoto and Rio, but the font and motif is unmistakably yanked from Troop Beverly Hills circa 1989. As the kitsch of 1980s Wall Street roars into the trend zone, Guess and its owner, Authentic Brands, are smart for testing this tactic. Let’s see if it holds.
And finally…
There’s something mesmerizing about a good beauty ad. Stila nailed it with this sitewide sale video, which takes the brand’s staple liquid eyeliner and uses it as a teeny tiny calligraphy pen The results are a jaw drop.
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