Is it possible to make at-home hair color goof proof? L’Oréal Paris bet big on the answer with Colorsonic, a device that promises mess-free mixing and an even application. It was introduced at CES by L’Oréal chief executive officer Nicolas Hieronimus, deputy CEO Barbara Lavernos and Eva Longoria, who demonstrated its ease of use onstage. The device features a custom mixer that blends the precise amount of developer and formula, plus a bristled dispenser that applies the color in a zigzag pattern as users brush it through their hair. It took L’Oréal seven years to develop the device, which uses 54 percent less plastic compared to box color. Colorsonic represents a significant shift for L’Oréal — not because the world’s biggest beauty company intends to become a device company, but rather that L’Oréal is well on its way to achieving its stated ambition of taking a completely holistic approach to consumer’s beauty journeys by harnessing the power of science and technology. At supersonic speed we might add.

In a year of viral products, few could match the runaway success of Milk Makeup Cooling Water Jelly Tints. The brightly hued cheek and lip stains racked up millions of views on TikTok and more than 160,000 hearts on Sephora’s Loves list, and sold out, well, almost immediately upon launch. (The product had a wait list of 60,000 before launch.) Despite being in and out of stock during the first three months, Jelly Tints sold about 400,000 units during that period — an average of one every 20 seconds. And no wonder: While the product’s color, texture and cooling properties made it a creator favorite, the very wearable colors and textures, dual functionality for cheeks and lips, sweatproof staying power and portable size were equally as popular with consumers. “We forecasted that it was going to be the biggest launch in the brand’s history,” Milk’s chief executive officer Tim Coolican told WWD, “it just became the biggest launch much faster than we thought it would.”

Olay Cleansing Melts may be barely larger than a stick of gum, but boy, do they pack a punch. Ten years in development, with more than 50 patents, the water- activated dissolving squares were an instant hit upon launch, selling out in under two hours and garnering Olay. com’s longest-ever wait list at 30,000-plus. Formulated with just nine ingredients, Melts come in three varieties — hyaluronic acid, vitamin C and retinol, with each square composed of miles of thread which completely dissolves when exposed to water. The brand reported overwhelmingly positive consumer feedback, with the complaints line receiving compliments for the first time ever. Oprah was a fan, too, bestowing a beauty O-Ward on the product. Coming on the heels of the 2023 launch of Olay Super Serum, now the top-selling serum in the U.S., Melts are the number-one new facial cleanser in mass skin and helped solidify Olay’s top three status as a skin care powerhouse in the U.S.

The anticipation to see the first beauty project out of luxury group Kering has been building ever since the French powerhouse announced the formation of Kering Beauté in January 2023. Bottega Veneta’s debut fragrance collection, unveiled in early October, didn’t disappoint. Designed under the creative direction of Matthieu Blazy, the six scents take Venice as their inspiration with hand-blown bottles that hark to Murano and a base of Verde Saint Denis marble, one of the prime building materials of the city. The brand’s signature intrecciato leather inspired the fragrance’s compositions, which are all natural and feature at least two key ingredients woven together. First-year distribution is very limited by design — just 100 Bottega stores and a handful of doors in Asia, with a larger rollout planned for next year. The point is to differentiate the house via innovation, creativity and sustainability, said Kering Beauté CEO Raffaella Cornaggia, rather than flood the market with merchandise. “This is exemplary of how we want to approach beauty,” she said. “We have distilled the vision, values and universe of Bottega Veneta into this project. We were able to do it because we are completely integrated.”

Kourtney Kardashian Barker has long been an early adopter when it comes to wellness trends — so no surprise that Lemme, the supplements brand she cofounded with entrepreneur Simon Huck, was one of the first to put forth a natural alternative to Ozempic. Rather than employing synthetic GLP-1s like the prescription drugs on the market, Lemme GLP-1 Daily supplement aims to naturally increase the body’s GLP-1 levels over time. Key ingredients include Eriomin lemon fruit extract, supresa saffron extract and Morosil red orange fruit extract to naturally suppress the appetite. While the product is geared toward helping people maintain a healthy weight, Lemme itself is in expansion mode: After launching on its own website and Amazon last year, it’s since expanded to Target and Ulta Beauty, where it has become a cornerstone of each retailer’s wellness brand lineup.

Barneys New York may be but a memory, but the department store is still lauded as the launchpad of beauty’s most influential indies. So what better way for one of the originals — Hourglass Cosmetics — to celebrate its 20th anniversary than by resurrecting the storied retailer. Hourglass founder and president Carisa Janes did just that in September, bringing back the dream team of Barneys former creative director Simon Doonan and former fashion director Julie Gilhart for a five-week pop-up. “We had the desire to bring the essence of Barneys back,” said Janes, “celebrating the designers we know and love, as well as pass the baton to the next generation of designers and creatives.” The assortment spanned fashion, accessories and beauty, with designers such as Area, Christopher John Rogers, Luar and Willy Chavarria, among others. Hourglass created limited-edition products, including a co-branded palette, lipsticks and a fragrance, the brand’s first. There were also celeb appearances, panels and, natch, a star-studded opening party. “Barneys was such a place for discovery and creativity,” said Janes. “It was even just a fun place to hang out if you weren’t shopping. You could shop the floors and go have French fries and a martini upstairs.”

When it comes to sparking joy, no one is more serious than Ulta Beauty. One year after launching its mission- driven Joy Project, the retailer doubled down on the initiative, tapping Deepak Chopra to lead a Joy Council (even bestowing on him the honorary title of chief of joy), which includes Olympian Laurie Hernandez, motivational speaker and fitness instructor Ally Love and relationship expert Jillian Turecki. This is on top of video trainings created by author Mel Robbins for Ulta’s 53,000 associates around the country, as the retailer seeks to combat harmful self-talk and other joy-inhibiting practices among its community. “Since launching the Joy Project, we knew it was more than a brand campaign — it’s our purpose,” said chief marketing officer Michelle Crossan-Matos. “We’re tapping into superpowers to help our guests incorporate joy into their lifestyle, as we want joy to be a state of being, versus a fleeting emotion.” Now that’s news worth smiling about.

It doesn’t matter how famous you are. If we learned anything this year it was that celebrity alone — no matter how large — is not enough to make a beauty brand successful, which makes the launch of Blake Lively’s hair care line, Blake Brown, even more impressive. The brand, which was in development for seven years and launched at Target in August, was the largest hair care launch in the history of the retailer. Comprised of eight care and styling products, it reflects Lively’s own regimen that eschews conditioner, in lieu of alternating shampoos and conditioning masks. Within its first week, Blake Brown had generated $16 million in media impact value, according to Launchmetrics. Its in-store performance was equally as impressive. Blake Brown sustained the momentum it gained at launch (on its launch day alone it had the five bestselling hair care items at Target), significantly outperforming forecast. A star, it seems, is born.

TikTok launched Shop just over one year ago — and its impact on beauty has been immediate. The platform, which is said to have 170 million users in the U.S. alone, has catapulted to become the fifth largest beauty retailer in the U.S., according to NIQ, and number two in the U.K. It has become an important discovery channel for brands both established and emerging — an extreme impulse buy, if you will, considering that a customer might make a transaction in as little as five seconds. TikTok Shop is helping drive explosive growth in social commerce, which Iced Media reports will hit $1.3 trillion in 2024, up 30 percent versus last year. Already, 22 percent of all 18- to 34-year-olds have purchased on TikTok Shop (across all categories). In terms of beauty, trending products are performing well, and brands that are capable of acting quickly on key trends are reaping rewards. Benefit Cosmetics reported more than 20,000 units of a TikTok-exclusive kit sold briskly. While it’s too soon to gauge what loyalty looks like on the platform, one thing’s clear, said NIQ’s Jacqueline Flam Stokes earlier this year: “It’s very disruptive in terms of consumer dollars.”

Talk to any Sephora brand founder and they will tell you how much the retailer’s merchants love to get in the kitchen. Known for sharing feedback, insights and advice, the team has, indeed, found the recipe for success. Under the leadership of Sephora North America CEO Artemis Patrick, global chief merchandising officer Priya Venkatesh and current senior vice president of merchandising Carolyn Bojanowski, Sephora has nurtured a number of the hottest brands in beauty today, like Sol de Janeiro, Glow Recipe, Summer Fridays, K18 and Makeup by Mario (himself a veteran of the Sephora selling floor). The team consistently has their finger on the pulse of what’s next, ushering in numerous industry firsts like rollerball fragrances, clean beauty standards and more, while cultivating the next generation of brands and ideas via its Accelerate incubator program. This year, the team reinvented itself, rolling out phase one of a fleet-wide initiative to optimize existing stores and showcase its strengths across all four categories, as well as emphasize innovation with amplified areas for Sephora’s Next Big Thing and Hot on Social. Sephora’s team lives beauty and it shows. “There’s always this feeling, this excitement, like, ‘I want to take it home!’” Bojanowski told Beauty Inc last year. “There’s always the merchant gut, the connection and curating and editing of brands that has been a cornerstone of our success,” she continued. “It goes back to the team. You can’t bottle this energy we have for the product and the brands.”

Staying relevant in an ever-evolving, fast-moving beauty world is tough and the number of brands that are able to do it for a decade much less two-and- a-half are few and far between. All the more reason to laud Maureen Kelly, the founder and chief executive officer of Tarte Cosmetics, who has kept the brand on the cutting-edge of cool for 25 years. Despite the scale and continued growth of Tarte, which is today the third largest prestige makeup brand in the U.S., according to Circana, and the eighth largest beauty business overall, Kelly believes the secret to its success lies in the one-on-one relationships Tarte forges with consumers. “For 25 years, I’ve been very focused on relationships, and having them be organic, really customized and personalized,” she said at WWD’s Women in Power event earlier this year. Take Tarte’s famous influencer trips, where rather than pay creators to make content, the brand inspires them to do so via gestures like framed pictures of their kids placed bedside or customized T-shirts with a favorite pet. And it’s not just people with big followings. Tarte celebrated its 25th anniversary this year with a kindness tour, visiting loyal customers in 25 cities around the country. “We’ve been kind since ’99,” said Kelly. “We all rise together when we lift others up.”

When Clarins introduced Double Serum in 1985, its mission was simple: To catapult the brand, which had a strong sun and body care business, into the uppermost ranks of the facial skin care category in the U.S. and Asia. Twelve years later, it’s clear that Clarins has achieved that and much more. Now on its ninth iteration, Double Serum is a global icon, containing 21 plant extracts and two phases in one bottle. The water-soluble and oil-soluble components together combine to address all key signs of aging. No wonder the product has won 440 beauty awards — and counting. Its sales are equally impressive. One unit is sold every four seconds globally and the product has helped Clarins post impressive year-over-year sales surges. The company, which turned 70 this year, hit the 2 billion euro mark in 2023, registering sales gains in every geography it does business in — even China and especially the U.S., where turnover gained 20 percent, making it one of the fastest-growing brands in the market.

When it comes to building a community, Ron Robinson has it down to, well, a science. The cosmetic chemist, who has more than two decades of industry experience, was one of the first industry insiders to understand the power of expertise, education and experience on social media. With videos and posts explaining the science behind skin care, Robinson quickly became a trusted voice in a category rife with product proliferation, and helped unleash the DermTok phenomenon, the leading content driver for the top five skin care brands today. Robinson’s brand, BeautyStat, hasn’t yet reached that stratosphere, but sales are strong, particularly on the cult fave, Universal C Skin Refiner. “A lot of brands have good product. The bar has risen,” Robinson told Beauty Inc last year. “Today, it’s the other piece, the emotional connection. The fact that I have this knowledge that not a lot of other folks have in a public way is our secret sauce.” And Robinson, for one, clearly has the formula.

Victoria Beckham’s latest fragrance is called 21:50 Rêverie and why not. The success of her namesake beauty line is the stuff dreams are made of. At a time when beauty products seem to proliferate exponentially, Beckham, a true perfectionist if ever there was one, has taken the opposite approach with her brand, launching products only when she deems them ready. “I truly obsess over the smallest of details,” she noted earlier this year when she introduced cleansers to the range. Their debut encapsulates her uncompromising approach to product development: Beckham believes in collaborating with others when outside expertise is needed, as with Augustinus Bader for The Concealer Pen, and she creates what she herself wants, even if it contravenes conventional wisdom. (Naysayers questioned the wisdom of a two-step cleansing system, but true skin care aficionados swooned.) The strategy is working: Still in extremely limited distribution, Victoria Beckham Beauty became profitable in 2023, furthering its ambition with a steady stream of launches in 2024. As for the dream of bringing luxury to a wider audience? It’s working. Within a month of its launch, 21:50 Rêverie was the top-selling scent in Beckham’s fragrance portfolio.

In a tough year overall for mass market beauty, Olive & June nailed it — pun completely intended. Helen of Troy acquired the mass market nail care brand in November for $225 million in cash and no wonder. The brand became number two in artificial nails within 18 months of launching into the category, and is the top-selling nail brand at Target. Net revenues for 2024 are expected to reach $92 million, driven by existing and new products. Take the introduction of Gel Polish in the third quarter, which outperformed expectations by more than 150 percent. What makes Olive & June’s performance even more laudable is the pivot that founder Sarah Gibson Tuttle had to make during COVID-19, when nail salons — including hers — were forced to close. She doubled down on direct-to-consumer, growing the business 1,500 percent in 2020. Today, the brand is sold in 8,000 mass doors, including Walgreens, Walmart and Target, where special collections sell out almost instantly. “We do a ton of trend-driven seasonal programs,” said Tuttle. “Because of our salon heritage, we understand what the big moments are for nail obsessives.” One of those obsessives happens to be bestselling author Colleen Hoover, with whom Olive & June collaborated earlier this year. Like Hoover’s books, it was a bestseller. At the heart of the brand’s success is Tuttle’s relentless focus on differentiation. “It’s not interesting to release products that exist,” she said. “What’s interesting is to release products that are better, that last longer, that really solve the consumer’s pain points.”

Call him Super Mario. In just four years, mega- makeup artist Mario Dedivanovic has built one of the hottest brands in color cosmetics, with sales this year expected to reach between $150 million and $200 million across a distribution of 1,600 global Sephora doors. It hasn’t always been smooth sailing for Dedivanovic, who began his career at age 17 as a greeter at Sephora and launched his namesake brand there in 2020 — in the teeth of the COVID-19 pandemic. But together with global president Alicia Valencia, Dedivanovic kept a steady hand at the keel, deftly navigating through the turbulent times to emerge as a leading voice in beauty with nearly 14 million followers on Instagram and another 1.7 million on TikTok. The brand’s success is fueled by its innovative approach to product development. (Dedivanovic is often referred to as the king of contouring.) Key launches this year included Master Mattes Eyeshadow Palette, Softsculpt Multi-Use Bronzing & Shaping Serum, and The Brights, vivid hues of blush and lip gloss that seem aptly named given Makeup by Mario’s very rosy future.

When MAC’s original founders, Frank Toskan and Frank Angelo, created Viva Glam 30 years ago to raise funds to help fight the AIDS virus, little could they have realized the industry-defining precedent they were setting. Over the last three decades, Viva Glam has raised more than $500 million to support medical research and the communities impacted by HIV/AIDS. But under the aegis of parent company the Estée Lauder Cos., MAC is just getting started. The company is preparing for the decades ahead by expanding its mission and making a big commitment — to raise $1 billion. Most recently, MAC widened the scope of Viva Glam to take on causes beyond HIV and AIDS, including gender, sexual, racial and environmental equity. What hasn’t changed is MAC’s commitment to positive social change: 100 percent of Viva Glam products’ selling price goes to the fund. “Purpose, shade inclusion, artistry for all ages, all races, all genders — it’s not just table stakes. It’s what people really, really want,” said global creative director Drew Elliott. “And MAC put that in as a blueprint and our responsibility is to continue to bring that to life in new ways for new generations.” Mission accomplished.

Masahiko Uotani is a man of many firsts. The first outsider to be named chief executive officer of Shiseido Co. Ltd., he brought with him a bold mission to diversify, globalize and modernize the company. After taking the helm of the Japanese beauty giant in 2014, he worked quickly to change the culture, even making English the official language of the company. “Fundamentally, the transformation of this company is needed and everybody sees it,” he said at the time, a forthright assessment from a leader who was able to build consensus by laying out a vision that tapped into the expertise of employees around the world, not just Tokyo headquarters. Uotani’s impact has been undeniable: Sales have increased from about 760 billion yen in 2014 to almost 1 trillion yen in 2023. He has strategically diversified Shiseido both in terms of talent and key brands, rejuvenating the corporate culture and driving growth in key Eastern and Western markets. Like its peers, the impact of the downturn in China has impacted Shiseido’s performance in the post-pandemic period, but the company is well positioned for recovery there when it happens. In the meantime, Uotani ably guided Shiseido through the pandemic, globalizing key brands like Drunk Elephant and incubating new concepts in top markets. In our very first cover story on the executive in 2014, Beauty Inc heralded Uotani as the ultimate transformer. Now, as he prepares to hand the reins to new CEO Kentaro Fujiwara on Jan. 1, it is clear that Uotani has fulfilled his mandate.

For a brand with a hero product called Missing Person, Phlur seems to be everywhere at once. Except for when it’s sold out, which has happened three times since its launch in 2022, leading to a wait list of more than 100,000 people. But Phlur is no one-hit wonder: Father Figure has sold out twice since its launch in 2023, while the brand has been at the forefront of the modern gourmand trend with scents like Strawberry Letter and the Skin series in Vanilla, Carmel and Co- conut. In addition to its olfactive exper- tise, Phlur, created in 2021 by influencer Chriselle Lim and part of Ben Bennett’s incubator, The Center, hits the sweet spot on a number of levels. It meets Sephora’s Clean specifications and has led the way in democratizing luxury fragrance with accessibly priced products and formats, like mists and body care, that Gen Z snaps up. Sales are on track to reach $100 million this year across channels, and Phlur is also tapping into emerging channels like TikTok Shop, where it reports hundreds of thousands of products have been sold.

That Dior is a powerhouse in fragrance is well-known. But a megabrand isn’t built on one pillar alone, which is where makeup comes into play. The legacy French fashion house has proven its cross-generational prowess with products like Forever Skin Perfect Foundation (the bestselling foundation stick on the market), Lip Glow Oil and Rosy Glow Blush. Bestsellers at Sephora and Ulta Beauty, they’ve got staying power on social, as well, literally racking up views in the hundreds of millions on TikTok alone. While sales of luxury accessories and clothing have slowed, Dior has done a masterful job of translating the house codes across multiple makeup categories, solidifying it as the standard bearer of all things chic.

Was there a more viral beauty campaign in 2024 than CeraVe’s hilarious Super Bowl spot with actor Michael Cera, which drove a 12,000 percent spike in engagement for the brand, according to Trendalytics? Numbers like that are all in a day’s work for CeraVe, the L’Oréal-owned dermatological skin care brand that’s almost 20 years old but still has the buzz of an Indie (it’s the top skin care brand on TikTok) and a business (well over $1 billion in sales and growing) to back it up. Once known primarily as a cleanser, CeraVe has successfully expanded its sphere of influence across the entire skin care spectrum, helping spark a surge in the masstige sector of the category. The brand’s combination of expertise and clinically backed claims lies in the sweet spot of consumer expectations today, with L’Oréal reporting that CeraVe outpaced market growth in every region where it’s sold. In the U.S., it’s the second largest skin care brand in the mass market, according to Circana, the number-three share gainer and the number-four beauty business overall. Most recently, it entered the hair care arena. Efficacious, indeed.

Beauty may have been the last major category that Balmain creative director Olivier Rousteing tackled in his transformation of the storied French fashion house into one of the hottest brands in the business. But it was well worth the wait. Les Éternels de Balmain, a collection of eight fragrances produced under license by the Estée Lauder Cos., channeled both Balmain’s historic strength in fragrance and Rousteing’s lifelong love of the category. “A funny story is that when I got appointed at Balmain in 2011, my grandma told me: You remember, I was wearing Ivoire?” he told WWD earlier this year, referencing the iconic fragrance created by Pierre Balmain. Rousteing reimagined Ivoire and three other house classics for the collection, and created four entirely new fragrances. In fact, Rousteing was so invested in the concept he went to fragrance school to learn the process of perfumery, even putting shoulder pads in the traditional white coat students wear. “It was like a therapy to create the fragrances, because it’s all about traveling in your mind, dreaming, escape and finding your own peace and who you are,” said Rousteing. “He has a very distinct approach to scent making, one that is highly conceptual,” said Guillaume Jesel, president and chief executive officer of Tom Ford Beauty and luxury business development at Lauder. While distribution was tight at launch — leading specialty stores including Neiman Marcus in the U.S., Galeries Lafayette in France and Selfridges in the U.K., plus stand-alone boutiques in Paris and New York — Rousteing heralded the launch on the runway, sending out a spring collection with bustiers that referenced the bottle shape and dresses spangled with red lips and nails. Rousteing believes there is a common thread running throughout the house, which is a sense of confidence and strength. “It’s really important to build a sense of unity,” he said. “I feel it’s not going to be a new chapter only for Balmain, but it’s going to be a new book, with the beauty.”

Despite strides made, inequity persists in the C-suites and boards of directors of corporate America. While the beauty industry over-indexes in the number of women in operational and early management roles, women have yet to reach parity in the C-suite or on many boards. Of the largest fashion and beauty companies, just 20 percent are led by women, while the number of women on boards of directors actually dipped 7 percent year-over-year, according to WWD’s 2024 Women in Power survey. E.l.f. Beauty set out to change that statistic — in beauty and beyond — with its So Many Dicks campaign. Part of its Change the Board Game initiative, the eye-catching campaign blared that there are more men named Dick (Richard, Rick, Rich) on publicly traded boards of directors than entire groups of underrepresented people. It’s a safe bet to say that most beauty companies wouldn’t use a major media campaign to advocate for equity. But E.l.f. isn’t most companies — and that’s just the point. “We used to say that our mission was being a different kind of beauty company,” said E.l.f. chief executive officer Tarang Amin. “Now it is being a different kind of company….At a time when so many people are focused on trying to drive sales,” he continued, “our ability to say, ‘Let’s use our platform for positive societal change,’ has been a big pivot point.”

In a market that has seen an explosion in accessibly priced skin care and an increasingly educated consumer who understands the inner health-outer beauty connection and the role of the microbiome in skin health, Byoma has found a sweet spot. Launched at Target in 2022, the brand has since expanded its purview to full distribution at Ulta Beauty, with sales projected to reach $300 million to $500 million by the end of next year. Under the leadership of founder and chief executive officer Marc Elrick, Byoma is finely tuned to the needs and wants of its very engaged community (it has almost 1 million followers on TikTok). “We’re a consumer-led business,” Elrick said, who created Byoma when he picked up on the confusion around skin care in a market rife with product proliferation. “I felt like the consumer was more informed but maybe more confused,” he continued. “When we looked at the data insights as well as our own social media platforms, we noticed it was a really big problem.” Byoma solves it with an easy-to-understand line that prioritizes skin barrier health. While it launched with facial skin care, this year it has quickly tapped into new categories like body care and lip care. No surprise Byoma is said to be exploring market opportunities, reportedly tapping Raymond James. In a year that has seen few significant transactions, Byoma looks set to break through the barrier.

Olly has always been ahead of its time. The brand, founded a decade ago by serial entrepreneur Eric Ryan (of Method fame), pioneered the category of need-state supplements, focusing on issues like Sleep, Stress and Beauty. Five years later, Unilever acquired the brand. Today, it’s a global powerhouse, the top-selling gummy ingestible brand in the U.S., and a key contributor to Unilever’s double- digit volume growth in the Health & Wellbeing category for the first half of the year. Despite its scale, Olly continues to innovate with agility. Think efficacy but make it fun. This year, for example, it introduced a line of cognitive products employing nootropics at Target, ranging from Brainy Chews in three varieties (Energized Thinker, Focused Thinker and Chill Thinker) to Brainy L’Olly Pops for kids to support attention and calm. But it’s not all fun and games. The brand also introduced its first menopause supplement, called Mellow Menopause, formulated to address 11 symptoms of the life stage. While it wasn’t the only supplement brand to target the rapidly growing menopause category, Olly put its money where its mouth was — literally. It inaugurated a company-wide menopause policy offering health and fertility care benefits, mental health resources, flexible work hours and work-from-home accommodations — proving its leadership chops in more ways than one.

Rapper Jack Harlow, whose “Lovin on Me” reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, was the surprise performer at a party earlier this year for Yves Saint Laurent’s Candy Glaze lip balm and no wonder — life is sweet at Yves Saint Laurent Beauté, where on-trend products like Candy Glaze, Myslf, Libre and All Hours Hyper Bronze have helped fuel one of the strongest performances in prestige beauty. Take Myslf, the top share-gainer in prestige fragrance, a bestseller at Ulta Beauty and winner of the Fragrance Foundation’s Men’s Prestige 2024 fragrance of the year honor, for instance. Makeup has performed exceptionally well, too, growing at eight times the market rate in the U.S., according to Circana, posting double-digit growth across all regions and leading to significant gains for L’Oréal’s Luxe division. Loveshine Lip Oil Stick, which launched in April, is already the number-two lipstick at Sephora year to date, while Lash Clash mascara has risen 12 ranks since last year. The secret to its success? YSL’s connection with Gen Z, as evidenced by its social media prowess. Ranking ninth overall with almost $400 million in EMV, YSL had the largest year-over-year change of any brand in beauty, posting a 175 percent increase. Nothing says chic like success.

Three decades, two wildly successful brands and seismic shifts in the beauty industry landscape later, Bobbi Brown still has her finger squarely on makeup’s pulse.

Brown, who is also a hotelier, author, health coach and veteran makeup artist, has deftly jumped from venture to venture with the same keen understanding of what women want — and that compass has guided each decision.

“I’ve been able to empower women to feel good in their bodies through makeup, by offering makeup that demystified and simplified the beauty industry,” she said. “Plus, giving women permission to be themselves.”

Jones Road, which is approaching $150 million in sales, could easily be Brown’s next billion-dollar brand. But as the industry has evolved, so have Brown’s priorities. “I don’t want it to be the biggest,” she said of the makeup brand she launched in 2020. “I want it to be the best.”

“Bobbi Brown’s impact on the beauty industry has been both smart and subtle,” said Leonard A. Lauder, chairman emeritus of the Estée Lauder Cos. “Bobbi and I have had a wonderful partnership over many years. When she made the decision to embark on a new venture, I wished her the absolute best.…As I still do today.”