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This week, the headline from Fortune read “Gen Z’s bedazzling era is the latest Lipstick Index as youths put gems on everything from coffee cups to skincare.” The Retail section noted that social media users have spent the last month meticulously gluing rhinestones onto everyday objects, including coffee cups, skincare products, phone cases, and even puppies! Almost all related content has referenced Kylie Jenner’s 29th birthday, which took a different playbook from past birthdays filled with lavish trips and gifts. Her cake’s rhinestone ornamentation doubled as a girly and whimsical photo-op. After the viral photos were posted, brands and creators were quick to jump at the lucrative marketing opportunity, and Gen Z’s rhinestone fever was born.

On August 28th, The Spate Beauty POV issued a Trends Alert titled “Bedazzling is Bringing Maximalism Back to Beauty.” Speaking to this newfound obsession, stats included the trend growing +180.1% year-over-year with medium popularity, and TikTok owning 73.3% of the Popularity Share, up +300.6% year-over-year. It receives an average of 109.5K monthly Google searches, 44.8M weekly TikTok views, and 11.6K weekly Instagram likes. On Search, nails (4.4K average monthly searches) emerge as the most approachable beauty application, while Vaseline (1.9K average monthly searches) is the top related brand, suggesting interest in both bedazzled products and DIY customization. On TikTok, lip products (2.1M average weekly views), perfume (1.6M), and blush (1.0M) are the top beauty formats associated with the trend, showing how consumers are bringing sparkle into everyday beauty. The trend also connects to Back to School (371.3K), as users customize makeup and school supplies into personalized pieces (1.4M). Its ties to bling bling (2.4M), girly (623.4K), and fairy aesthetics (371.3K) point to a playful, feminine, maximalist approach to self-expression.

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As writers of Gingergeist Substack, we’re no strangers to the power of the written word (and inspiring visuals). What’s interesting is how niche and major beauty brands are connecting with community and purpose in releasing “Volumes,” wisdom via a book, and a blog posing as a magazine.

The Manifesto Arrives Before the Bottle

August 29th, loreworld posted to Instagram: “Through scent, reality bends—along the arc of our emotions, we are pulled through past and present, between somewhere and nowhere, both familiar and new, carried by the web of invisible connections.” LORE Everything Possible Volume 1, published August 2025, is the tagline, poetic manifesto, and creative campaign text for LORE, a luxury fragrance brand. Rather than a traditional printed book or novel, this “Volume” represents the debut phase and emotional manifesto of the perfume house, which approaches fragrance creation as a “wardrobe of feeling”.

Ginger Spark: Lore fragrances, distributed via Sephora and the official Lore World store, treat scent as an emotional “galaxy”. The “Volume 1” release featured five debut Eau de parfums by master perfumers including Jérôme Epinette: Lil Softie, Sublimity, Somewhere but Nowhere, Lovely and a Little Twisted, and Disfruta. The aesthetic (and wooden display tray) was designed with high-concept packaging resembling collectible art books. The success of this campaign can be seen in comments like loganmeachum “@loreworld, a Lil softie mag feels necessary… so I can keep adding little pieces of the world to my collection :))).” Gingergeist thoroughly agrees!

Goat Milk and Harvard Business Review

September 2nd on LinkedIn, Brent Ridge, MD of Beekman 1802 Skincare, thanked Frob - Friends of Books for a #FrobBookRecommendation overview of G.O.A.T. Wisdom: Building a Great Business with Brent Ridge and Josh Kilmer-Purcell, published by Harvard Business Review. The book and review answer the question “What does it really take to build a business that is not just successful, but truly great?”

Brent Ridge and Josh Kilmer-Purcell started Beekman 1802 during a bad recession, in one of New York State’s poorest counties. They had no big funding and no formal business plan. They used old-fashioned values, determination, and lessons from their families to build a famous brand. The book focuses on twelve main ideas or guiding principles instead of fast-moving marketing trends. Examples include:

• Know who you are: Your core values matter more than a quick product trend.

• Treat customers like neighbors: Build real trust and a strong sense of community.

• Believe in your product: Have great pride in what you sell.

Ginger Spark: As Frob - Friends of Books points out, “G.O.A.T. Wisdom asks readers to think about what makes a business worth building in the first place. Success here is not presented simply as growth or revenue, but as creating something meaningful—something that serves customers, builds community, reflects its values, and can stand the test of time.” What Gingergeist appreciates about this book release of goat milk and kindness is that it might resonate as much with an entrepreneur completely unfamiliar with the Beekman 1802 brand story as it does with “neighbors.”

Nine Years Later, MACzine Is Back

Also on September 2nd, MAC sent out a push email with a MACzine cover image with “WHO THE F*CK IS JAYDEN JAMES?” The link takes readers to a page to discover Jayden James (19-year-old son of Britney Spears and Kevin Federline), a model/self-taught musician/M.A.C boy, along with creative inspiration and how M.A.C Fix+ Setting Spray fits into his life. MAC Cosmetics has digitally revived its iconic editorial platform, MACzine, after a nine-year hiatus. Featuring “Trending Skin and Makeup Looks,” along with “All the beauty trends, viral beauty hacks, makeup looks and pro tutorials designed to inspire - curated by M.A.C Artists and experts.”

Ginger Spark: The original run was published in print from 2009 to 2017 as a seasonal style guide and creative outlet for internal MAC artists. The digital return was relaunched in early 2026 with a social-first approach focusing on fashion, beauty, culture, and artistry. The new social-first comeback not only allows the brand to react immediately to all things MAC, but also, rather than a gatekeeping, internal approach, creates community and connection by allowing customers to read and purchase the latest inspirations (including looks from MAC faces Doja Cat and Chappell Roan).

Brands are building written voices, not just campaigns. If yours needs one, Gingergeist can help: gingergeisty@gmail.com.

Editor’s Note: This week’s Sparks comes from Gabrielle, who handles marketing and social for Gingergeist and who has been building a case about hair tools for months. We handed her the issue.

My morning blowout takes about forty minutes. I start with the Dyson, set it with Drybar rollers, and end up with the exact result every other morning routine on my feed promises. By dinner it has usually collapsed. If I had used my mother’s roller set, bought in 1991 for $30, the same style would have held for two days. Those rollers are still in a closet at my parents’ house. They still work… but I am reluctant to throw them away until I find a modern-day tool that give me the same results, and that is the part worth explaining.

Volume came back to the algorithm this year. Dolly Parton, who died last month, liked to say that the higher the hair, the closer to God. She never mentioned the part that went without saying in her world: who has to get up early enough to put it there. Most of the coverage treats volume the same way, as an easy look, and skips what it costs to hold. That omission is the story, because the hour costs more than the tool ever did.

Spate’s 2026 Hair Care & Styling report puts hair care searches up 20.6% this year while Instagram posts in the category are down 21.7%. More people are looking things up, and fewer are showing the result, which is what a category looks like when the hard part moves from buying to doing. The searching is loudest around volume.

Your Mother’s Volume Is Back

Kaia Gerber plays Susan Reynolds in The Shards, the Ryan Murphy and Bret Easton Ellis prep-school thriller set in 1981 Los Angeles, which premiered on FX on August 5. The styling puts Gerber in heavy side-parted curls, and the resemblance to her mother is doing numbers online. The better detail happened during filming, when she called Cindy Crawford to ask whether the hair was even realistic. Gerber told Entertainment Tonight there was no way Crawford did her hair like that for high school. Crawford said she woke up at four in the morning to set it, because that was simply how hair had to look, and then produced her own photos at seventeen to prove it. The question is the interesting part. Crawford waking up that early is one thing. Her own daughter could not imagine anyone doing it, and had to ask, at the exact moment the look came back.

Spate measured US search and social data from July 2025 to June 2026, and four of the ten fastest-growing hair styling products are volume plays. Volumizing powder is up 73.8%. Volume spray is up 60.5%. Air-dry cream, tied directly to heatless curls, is up 154.4%, and root-lifting spray climbs 189.9% for everyone chasing the same effect out of a can.

Rollers themselves have come back in every available format to fill the gap they left. On the one hand, women hunt for vintage hot roller sets on eBay and rewire them at home. On the other, a younger group is discovering Lottabody and running errands in plastic rollers. Whichever way you go, note that the curling wand stays in the drawer.

No one who grew up in the early aughts learned this from her mother. We are learning it from strangers on the internet, one video at a time. A roller set demands sectioning, smoothing, and steady tension all the way down. You start with hair 80 to 90% dry and let the set cool for about an hour before you touch it. That cooling hour is the trick, and it is the part no tool has learned to skip. The shape sets as the hair cools under tension. Hot air alone does not set anything, which is why my forty minutes falls out by dinner and her thirty-dollar rollers held for two days. Rush any part of it, and you get dents. Impatience is the fastest way to ruin a set.

My mother never needed a tutorial. She learned it the way you learn to make coffee, from a room full of women who already knew. Somewhere between her bathroom and mine, that room disappeared.

The Room Became A Business

So an industry formed to replace the room. Search "roller sets" on TikTok and the results read like a syllabus: Roller Set 101, chapter one, multi-part series, creators joking that the full step-by-step turned into a feature film. Brigette Pheloung, now McHale, of Acquired Style has said that when she started making roller videos, she was still working it out on camera herself. She now sells her own sets through Phe Phe, the brand she launched with her twin sister Danielle.

Color Wow has Chris Appleton demonstrating a four-section Velcro method and sells matching rollers. Haiirology sells Blowout Basics, a paid online course in blow-drying your own hair. Cécred, Beyoncé’s brand, launched its first styling collection this year, including a Wrap & Set Foam built for roller sets and heatless curls. Color Wow and Cécred are still selling products with instructions attached. Haiirology is the one to watch, because it inverted the model: the course is the product. When the tutorial carries its own price tag, the category has stopped pretending the hour is free.

Who What Wear's 2026 guide sells a TikTok-viral Conair set at $43 on the promise of Cindy Crawford volume. Note the number. My own mother's 1991 set cost $30, about $70 in today's money, which makes the rollers the one thing in this story that got cheaper. Gerber is on television asking whether anyone really used to do this, while the beauty press quietly sells Crawford's hair back to the rest of us in a box, for less than my mother paid for hers.

Ginger Spark: The technique used to be free, with some light pulling as collateral. My mother learned it from her mom and her aunt. I learned it from TikTok and more products than I want to admit to. She never had to be told volume was trending. The category is not selling volume. It is selling the instruction, the setup, and the hour you have to give it. Hair care stopped competing on results and started competing for your time, and it is winning. Which leaves the obvious opening wide open. Every brand in this story is monetizing the cooling hour, and not one of them is trying to eliminate it. The first tool that delivers a two-day set in forty minutes takes the whole category. Until then, the rollers stay in that closet, still working, still free, still asking for an hour I will not give them.

Our lineage is confessional: It Happened to Me, Say Anything, Confessions of... But our beat is business, the insiders, the receipts, and the plays that actually move units and services. Beauty was always the starting point, but beauty isn’t the whole story. We’re about the entire journey: eyeliner, earrings, accessories, and the bag that carries it all! So we widened the lens. Insider now covers the people building anything beautiful, not just what goes on your face. Some interviews run anonymously so sources can speak freely. Every role is verified.

The Insider

Nina Andrade co-founded Sac de Soul with her sister Camila, the Guatemalan handmade bag label built on beadwork the two grew up around at their family’s home on Lake Atitlán. Nina trained at Central Saint Martins and leads design; Camila runs the business side, and together they work directly with a community of artisan women who turn each concept into a finished bag.

The Interview

Tell us about yourself. We first spotted your bags at Kirna Zabête in Miami. What’s the story behind starting Sac de Soul with your sister Camila, and why did it start with beading specifically?

Camila and I have always been very close, and creativity was a big part of our childhood. We were constantly painting, making things by hand, and inventing our own toys. We grew up with this instinct to look at something and imagine what else it could become.

We also spent a lot of time at our family home on Lake Atitlán, where we became fascinated by Guatemalan beadwork, its color, detail, and ability to create endless patterns and textures. As we grew older, our paths became very complementary: I studied at Central Saint Martins and developed on the creative side, while Camila naturally focused more on the business side.

While I was still at university, we decided to build something of our own. We first sold bags from a Mexican brand and reinvested the money into creating our own designs. Beading felt like the natural starting point because it was so connected to our childhood and to Guatemala.

From the beginning, we saw an opportunity to combine this ancestral technique with contemporary design and introduce it to an international audience in a new way. We started with handbags and are now exploring homeware as well, always thinking about how far beadwork can go.

Finish the sentence: “People assume Guatemalan craftsmanship means ______, when actually ______.”

People assume Guatemalan craftsmanship means repeating what has existed for generations, when, in fact, those generations of knowledge are the foundation for something entirely new.

You work directly with a community of artisan women in Lake Atitlán. What’s something about that collaboration that outsiders always get wrong?

I think outsiders sometimes assume that working with artisans means taking designs that already exist within the community and simply bringing them to a wider market. That is not how we work. Camila and I develop the designs, color combinations, and the way we mix patterns and 3D and 2D textures, while the artisans are the technical experts who help us turn those ideas into reality. I often describe them as the engineers behind each piece.

We see ourselves as one collaborative team. We respect the value of their work, pay the prices they set, and never negotiate down their craftsmanship. They are not simply people producing for us; they are an essential part of Sac de Soul. We all want to see the brand succeed, but for us, that success should also mean creating opportunities and improving the lives of every person who helps make it possible.

What’s something unexpected people learn about craft in Guatemala once they actually see the process behind it?

What surprises people most is the level of skill and precision behind it. The artisans work incredibly quickly, but every movement is exact, and there is almost a science to how each piece is constructed.

Camila and I have tried the technique ourselves, and it is far more complicated than it looks. Once you see the process up close, the time, concentration, and thousands of tiny decisions behind one bag, you understand that it is not simply handmade. It is a highly specialized craft that takes years to master.

Your collections are named Camila, Nina, Serpent, Felidea. How do you actually land on a name, and does it come before or after the design?

We do not have a fixed process; it can come before or after the design. Some names are deeply personal: Camila and Nina are named after the two of us, and Alessia is named after my daughter. It is our way of honoring the women who are part of the creative story of Sac de Soul.

With names like Serpent or Felidea, we keep them very raw and direct. Our pieces are already intricate and expressive, so we like the name to feel simple. The more there is happening in the design, the less we feel the name needs to explain.

What’s in your own Sac de Soul bag right now? Walk us through it.

Right now, I’m carrying our pink and burgundy Serpent Mini. I’m very simple with what I carry: just my phone, cardholder, keys, and usually one or two little bows that my daughter has taken out of her hair.

I never carry too much, especially in a Sac de Soul bag. They are delicate pieces, so I like to keep only the essentials inside.

Keep, kill, scale: hand-beading, made-to-order production, limited drops.

Keep hand-beading, scale limited drops, and kill or at least reduce made-to-order production. Hand-beading is at the heart of Sac de Soul, so that will always stay. We would like to move away from relying so heavily on made-to-order and have more pieces readily available. At the same time, we want to scale limited drops: special designs available only for a few months, rather than becoming permanent signature styles. I love the idea of creating that sense of rarity around certain pieces.

What’s a design decision you and Camila have genuinely disagreed on, and who won?

“Usually, Camila tells me, ‘Trust me,’ we make the sample and she ends up being right.”

We have never had a dramatic design disagreement because our roles are quite clear. I lead most of the design work, but I always bring everything to Camila because our tastes are very different. I am naturally more classic, while she loves bold patterns and a lot of color. That contrast is actually part of what makes the collections feel balanced.

We occasionally disagree over a color combination. Usually, Camila tells me, “Trust me,” we make the sample, and she ends up being right. So, in those cases, Camila wins.

Working with a sister as a co-founder gets romanticized. What’s the real version of that dynamic behind the scenes?

The real version is that there are definitely ups and downs. We are sisters, but also best friends and business partners, so sometimes things can become intense. We may need a few minutes or a few hours to step away, breathe, and come back to the conversation.

But underneath everything, there is complete trust. I know she has my back, and she knows I have hers. There is something incredibly special about building a dream with someone I have known her entire life, someone I saw on the day she was born. Being able to watch her grow, evolve, and reach all these milestones while building Sac de Soul together is something I would never take for granted.

Buzzword you’d retire from the “heritage brand” conversation immediately?

“Preserving tradition.” Craft should not be treated as something that has to remain frozen in time. For us, respecting heritage also means giving it space to evolve, experiment, and become relevant in new ways.

Receipts or it didn’t happen: how long does one bag actually take to bead, start to finish?

Depending on the design, one bag takes around five to eight working days to complete from start to finish. It also passes through the hands of three different women: one beads the body, another creates the handle using a different technique, and a third carefully joins the two pieces together.

So while it may look like one object, each bag is actually the result of several specialized hands working together.

If you could design the ideal storytelling moment for your bags on a retail floor, what would that look like? These aren’t just evening bags, so would you put them with fashion, with accessories, with beauty, somewhere else entirely, and why?

I would place them within fashion, but present them with the attention usually given to art or fine jewelry. They are not simply evening bags; they are wearable art pieces.

Because every bag is made by hand, no two are completely identical. Each one passes through several specialized hands and carries its own small variations and story, so it should not feel lost among rows of factory-made accessories.

Some of our retail partners display them alongside jewelry because they see them as wearable jewels, and I love that approach. At Kirna Zabête, each bag was given its own space on the shelving, almost like an individual art object. That would be my ideal retail moment: enough space for people to stop, look closely, and understand that they are seeing something made slowly and by hand.

Getting into Kirna Zabête, Cult Mia, and Anthropologie is the dream for most emerging accessories labels. What actually changed once you were there, beyond the obvious?

Being stocked by major retailers whose curation we have admired for years has been incredible. Each one has felt like an important milestone because it means they see something relevant and special in what we are building.

Beyond the obvious excitement, the biggest change has been confidence. It reassures us that we are moving in the right direction and that the work, sacrifices, and risks are paying off. Seeing the bags perform well and knowing there is real demand gives us the confidence to keep pushing forward. It tells us that people are connecting with the product, understanding the story and recognizing the value behind it.

“At Kirna Zabête, each bag was given its own space on the shelving, almost like an individual art object.”

What’s a price point conversation you’ve had with a retailer that made you want to walk out of the room?

It is usually not the price point itself that makes us want to walk away. It is when a retailer expects the price to come down, or the margins to increase, without considering what it actually takes to make each piece.

Our bags are made slowly, by hand, through several specialized stages, so there is a limit to how much the cost can be reduced without compromising the craftsmanship or undervaluing the people behind it.

Most retailers understand that once they see the product and learn about the process. The difficult conversations happen when a handmade bag is expected to operate under the same pricing structure as something factory-produced at scale. That is when we have to be very clear about the value of what we make.

Blind item: a wholesale account or collaboration that looked glamorous from the outside but was a headache behind the scenes.

There was one potential collaboration that looked incredibly glamorous from the outside. Everything seemed ready to happen, and then, at the last minute, it did not unfold as we had imagined. What followed was unclear communication and ongoing conversations about where the product actually is.

We always try to look at these experiences positively. Even though the collaboration did not materialize as planned, there was genuine interest in Sac de Soul, and we do not take that lightly. It taught us to be more careful, but also reminded us that the brand is reaching people and entering conversations we once only dreamed of.

What’s a print or color combination you were nervous to release, and how did it actually sell?

We were nervous about releasing our Clash of Prints Leopard bag with the blue handle because it felt quite bold and unexpected. It ended up becoming one of our signature bestsellers almost immediately, and two years later, it still is.

It is one of the styles retailers choose most often, stylists continually pull it for their clients, and customers regularly scroll back through our feed specifically to ask about it. What I love most is seeing how differently people wear it: it can be dressed up or down, and somehow it always makes sense. It reminded us that sometimes the design you are most uncertain about is the one people connect with most.

Spiciest take on the handbag industry, five words or fewer.

Craft belongs beside established names.

Do you get high on your own supply? What’s the one Sac de Soul bag you refuse to sell because you kept it?

Absolutely, but the bags we refuse to sell are usually the ones that mark important moments in Sac de Soul’s story. We create one-off pieces with details such as the address of a first stockist or the name of a store connected to a major milestone, and then frame them in our office. They form an achievement wall that grows with the brand, and no one else will ever own those exact bags.

Of course, Camila and I have our personal favorites, but that changes constantly. Every new sample or color combination becomes the one we are suddenly obsessed with. Each piece carries the story of its development: the experiments, adjustments, and hours behind it, so we feel personally attached to almost everything we release.

Last confession: what’s one true thing about building a craft-based fashion brand that would get pushback in a room full of DTC founders, and the evidence that backs you up?

Not every successful brand needs to scale quickly. There is often pressure to produce more, lower costs, and deliver faster, but a craft-based brand cannot be measured by the same standards as a factory-made one.

We still work in small quantities and largely on a made-to-order basis, yet retailers continue to approach us, place orders, and wait for the pieces to be completed. Our slower process has not held us back; it is one of the reasons people are drawn to Sac de Soul.

The evidence is in the partners who have chosen to work with us, from Kirna Zabête and Anthropologie to Cult Mia, luxury hotels, and museum stores. They are not choosing us despite the time and craftsmanship involved. They are choosing us because of it.

Sac de Soul ships worldwide at sacdesoul.com and is stocked at Kirna Zabête, Anthropologie, and Cult Mia. Fair warning: you will want one!

Counter Intelligence runs on tips. Got someone we should be talking to, or want the floor yourself? Email gingergeist@gmail.com; anonymity is on the table.

Back-to-school season on the East Coast kicks off this week, and three very different companies have decided that the same nine-year-old is worth a real product line.

Neon Rebels And The Rebuilt Tween Aisle

I (Michelle) can still picture the Limited Too set that I deeply loved in the late nineties: a matching set of black velvet pants, a blank tank, and a leopard-print third piece over it. (There are photos!) Delia’s had the complementing catalog, denim, and moccasin boots I remember wearing often in the seventh grade a few years later. I remember sitting in my closet and leafing through the catalog, meticulously noting my wishlist while staring up at the Shane West poster on my wall. What a treat! Both stores styled and cut clothes for a sixth-grader’s figure instead of just shrinking an adult-size run. ( Though famously, the often desired clothing of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Two of a Kind and So Little Time, was just that: designer pieces cut to their petite frames. INCLUDING CHANEL! ) When the mall brands of that time closed as commerce moved online, no one replaced them, and the Pinterest of the era: J-14, YM, CosmoGirl, and Seventeen (Thank You, Atoosa, by Casey Lewis pays homage) thinned out. Devastating!!!!

Now a Millennial Mama, I found Maisonette via Meri Meri and Petite Plume, so I am the prime shopper the platform has been targeting since it started in 2017. In mid-August, the brand launched Neon Rebels, just in time for back-to-school and geared toward seven- to fourteen-year-olds, spanning apparel, accessories, beauty, and lifestyle, with a Y2K edit and a Lavender Stardust roll-on shimmer that will land hard for anyone who owned one in the early aughts. ( Though personally, we’re happy to leave them in 2002…bring back Victoria’s Secret Perfume Powder though!)

AJ Nicholas, president, told Glossy that the vertical is aimed at Millennial parents who have been shopping the brand for the last nine years and whose toddlers have grown up (more than 20% of customers now have a child over seven). Maisonette is focusing on social ads aimed only at parents, a strategy worth watching. Nicholas frames the transaction as two customers at once: the tween who chooses and the parent who pays. Interestingly enough, Target made its own nostalgic tween move by debuting an exclusive Delia’s collection. ( Though it’s not exactly looking like the Delia’s of our memories or of others).

GingerSpark: Millennial parents spent the last decade waxing nostalgic about their own childhoods and being choosy about their kids’ clothes, and now their tweens shop similarly. So the tween 2.0 version arrived slightly familiar, but ill-fitting nostalgia rather than an interesting remix of earlier decades. A winner in this space will rebuild what Limited Too offered in the late 90s and early 00s: confident and fun clothing, accessories, and lifestyle products for tweenhood, not just an adult assortment shrunk down and resold to us as faux Y2K. Will it be Neon Rebels? Maybe. Claire’s, throw your hat in!

The Company That Never Loses The Customer

A toy manufacturer building multiple beauty brands sounds a bit peculiar until you consider how much overlap there is. We have written about skintertainment before (a major driver in the K-beauty space) and about a strong signal that the line between product and play overlaps. We explored the toyification of beauty in The Kidult Korner, tracking kidcore design and nostalgia scaling up across beauty, jewelry, and accessories. Ginger Sparks No. 19 also covered play and beauty: NeeDoh, a squishy stress toy that tweens turned into a status object, and Miu Miu’s Fleur de Lait, which buried the fragrance under kinetic sand styled like ice cream and made you dig it out with a branded scoop.

Zuru sells to every age. The brand drops in with Rascal + Friends for babies, moves to 5 Surprise Mini Brands for little ones, Daise body care for tweens who put the toys down, and Monday Haircare for the young adults and Millennials. Jaimee Lupton’s team built Daise after observing the toys-to-beauty shift, but the fun and play never actually leaves.

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Daise’s tagline reads “beauty that’s never not fun,” and delight is in every product. Packaging is soft-serve swirl-inspired; bath bombs bubble open to reveal DAISE Mini Brands™. In the assortment are lip butter keychain accessories, bouncy jelly soaps shaped as inflatable stars, and scent collections centered on coconut, vanilla, and melon, with product names Vacay, Froyo, and Whippy. Daise even encourages layering and mixing, which is the Bath and Body Works ritual many a Millennial will recognize immediately, even if the Gen Alpha buying it won’t. Bath and Body could take some notes! The packaging is a toy, and the copy reveals its beauty to you.

GingerSpark: Everyone in beauty is calculating how to capture this tween consumer, and Zuru has solved the challenge in its own unique way. The company observed its captured audience put the toys down and then built the next aisle for her to move into… right down to the collectibles in her bath bomb. This is seriously brilliant.

Tween Deodorant Finally Found Its Buyer

We were browsing Ulta for minis when we landed on the middle school shopping list, which includes a deodorant called Unicorn Fruit. Deodorant for middle schoolers isn’t exactly a new premise. We remember scanning the CVS aisle for Teen Spirit (a very interesting deep dive here), Dove, and Ban, and Seventeen Magazine (at least in our memories, had the ads to prove it). What is new is that this one arrives with premium packaging cues and a list of trending skincare ingredients on the label. And it’s $18!!!!!!

And once we saw one, we saw a lot more. Play Pits at $13.99. Evereden’s Kids & Teen stick at $19. Saltair at $13, Daise All Body Spray & Deodorant at $6.99, and Sephora’s own Sephora Collection stick at $10. Target has Hume and Juus at $14.99 apiece, plus old-school Dove doing something—ahem—strange with scent in the Ice Cream Parlor coconut vanilla stick at $7.99. Does anyone want their armpits to smell like ice cream? Looks like deodorant got an upgrade, even for littles? Which is interesting, because we are still SO fickle about it ourselves. We have tested everything from Routine’s Superstar in the cream jar at $25 to whatever we pick up while traveling, Mádara Herbal among them, so we can’t imagine having so many options to choose from.

We aren’t totally surprised, though. Deodorant shows up early in the tween wellness conversation because of the realities of sports, camp, and gym activities. Dermatologists are even addressing the earlier onset of puberty, with odor emerging as the first sign of the apocrine glands switching on. So, somewhere inside the Sephora Kids conversation, the industry found a wellness product it can actually defend, then designed it in neon, scented some of it like Bath and Body Works, and gave it serious shelfie appeal. Some of this reads Y2K to us, though maybe because Michelle was first buying it then. The premium cues borrowed from prestige skincare and the aluminum-free claims coming across most of the brands we saw tell a better-for-you safety story Millennial parents will eat up. We’re surprised the Glossier version didn’t come up more!

We were watching The Girls (please don’t judge us) when Yris Palmer mentioned launching a kids’ deodorant line because, we’re paraphrasing here, kids are stinky. Hulu released all six episodes on August 21, and her line Siiiba launched six days later.

GingerSpark: None of this is totally new…most of us can kinda remember the first Dove or Ban deodorant ad we ever saw in a magazine or on television. The newness is that the category actually became tween-centric instead of “shrinking and pinking” her mother’s deodorant. Founders are now focusing on solution-oriented formulas that she can grow into, that are gentle, and that even message boys who were left behind. Bodily functions like sweat and odor aren’t things that need to be apologized for. This is the same driver and the same sentiment we described in Destigmatized Care, Finally Out Loud. A product that was then seen as a mere functional, personal item now arrives as a kid-focused wellness solution.

Every gray-market conversation in beauty eventually comes down to the same question: if the product is real, why is it illegal to sell it here?

The answer depends entirely on which side of the Atlantic you’re standing on, and it’s a genuinely useful thing to understand if you’ve ever priced out a market entry, sourced across borders, or wondered why your own product is quietly competing against a cheaper version of itself somewhere.

This is The Fine Print, our regulatory column where Aliza, a prospective law student with an eye for the beauty industry’s fine print, breaks down the legal mechanics most coverage skips over. This issue: why Europe lets a chain like Normal thrive on parallel importing while the US shuts the same model down at the border.

One ground rule: Aliza isn’t a lawyer, and this isn’t legal advice. She reports what a rule says and what got filed, never what you should do, and flags when a question needs a real attorney.

Normal: The Illusive One Stop Shop

Finding beauty products is a final-boss-level treasure hunt. Tarte’s Full Coverage Concealer is available at Sephora. e.l.f. Cosmetics’ Green Camo Color Corrector and Urban Decay’s All Nighter Setting Spray live at Ulta. Haruharu Wonder’s Black Rice Hyaluronic Essence is on Amazon. Pulling these names required going through old receipts and orders; I clearly need a master list. Worse, some of what I want isn’t sold in the US anymore. Obligatory scream face here.

Imagine my shock walking into Normal during the Helsinki leg of our Euro trip. Skincare shelved next to spices, candy placed next to knick-knacks so cheap they feel like a dare. One store with literally everything impulse. For anyone who hasn’t hit one yet, Normal is a Danish discount chain that acts like a grocery store had a baby with a drugstore, then let a dollar store raise it. Michelle said it on loop the whole time we were there: there’s nothing like this at home.

So here’s the question that followed us home: why does Europe get hundreds of Normals, and America gets NOTHING? (Dramatic, I know) If you didn’t audibly gasp reading that, go back and read it again.

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When we started to spot the growing momentum around recent lip liner releases, we scratched our heads about the WHY!? Literally, Jamie and Michelle started discussing their use of lip liner and discovered that one never uses it, while the other has a culty MAC Whirl for the occasional extra effort. That was just it: why reintroduce the product that seems like it’s adding on another step?! We get the darker liner and lighter lip (the halo or micro-lined lip trend), or the more substantial hybrid liner/lipcolor stick that does it all, but true lip liners? Like the Maybelline New York June launch of Super Stay Peel Off Lip “Liner,” bringing a semi-permanent, tattoo-like tinted blush effect to the drugstore market, each of these new releases has a purpose: WHY NOW!?

MAC and Summer Fridays Go Glossy

Which lip liner are you? MAC posed in a recent August 27th email blast. Lipglazer Glossy Liner or Lip Pencil (Soft Matte)? Introducing a NEW glossy liner that lines, fills, and visibly volumizes. Line and shine with a gel liner. This softly shiny innovation is supposedly designed to create fuller-looking lips (shine creates the illusion of fullness, unlike matte). Lipglazer Glossy Liner visibly volumizes with a nourishing mix of lip-caring ingredients, including meadowfoam seed oil and jojoba oil. The lightweight, gel-cream texture allows for an easy, tug-free application.

Ginger Spark: Billed as “the liner made for gloss days,” this glossy liner makes so much sense as the go-to when you are finishing a glossy or shiny-finish lip product. Obviously, MAC has been famous for years for classic Spice, Stone, Chestnut, Whirl, Soar, and Cork original Lip Pencils - one of the new Lipglazers is called Cool Spice (playing into the new cool-toned trend as well) - but why use a matte liner when the desired effect is glossy? Add on the lip-nourishing ingredients, and it seems a win-win. Similarly, Summer Fridays recently debuted its dedicated SoftLine Lip Liner to work alongside its Flushed Lip Stain and Lip Butter Balms, featuring a nourishing, tug-free glide infused with hyaluronic filling spheres and natural oils.

Victoria Beckham and Louis Vuitton Make It An Object

Always one with a penchant for drama, on August 25th, Victoria Beckham announced “V-SUITE ACCESS: NEW Lip Definer (Sign In to Shop).” The Lip Definer is an exercise in precision. With a sleek, first-ever design, an innovative silver aluminum long cap protects the entire Lip Definer pencil and, when reinserted at the end, extends the overall length for complete control (much like the elegant cigarette holder effect). The smooth but not-too-soft waterproof formula stays exactly where it’s applied: no feathering; while added peptides offer lip-care benefits. Rich “hyperspecific” shades - seven lip-tone-inspired shades that define and contour lips with ease—plus a classic true Red and a deep berry Merlot.

Ginger Spark: Interestingly, this “Made in the Czech Republic” Lip Definer offers a classic wood-cased pencil in a first-of-its-kind silver-aluminum, elongated case; this design not only extends the lip pencil for ease and control but also allows the Lip Definer to be used down to its very end. A true “stroke of genius.” Pat McGrath with La Beauté Louis Vuitton introduced her highly anticipated first LV Crayon collection for Louis Vuitton, complementing the brand’s signature red gradient and ombré lip artistry looks. Like VB Beauty, the emphasis is on the luxury of precision, the LV Crayon House’s design codes. (We’re legit swooning over these, but $58 for a lip pencil…wahhh!!!) From shaving in the shape of their flower-shaped monogram to its gold monogram flower cap, the smooth formula is housed in a black matte wood stick.

Haus Labs, Rhode, & Sarah Creal Get Personal

A simple Instagram post on August 25th featured a model with a HAUS LABS lip pencil between her lips with the copy ”Unlock your lip tone with 18 shades of nude. The Edge Lip Shaping Pencil.” @thecelebrityglamspot elaborated: @hauslabs is adding a new essential to the lip lineup. The Edge Lip Shaping Pencil launches with nude shades inspired by your natural lip tone, designed for effortless definition, precision, and blendability. The long-wearing, transfer-proof formula is made to keep your lip look locked in all day. Launched August 24 on the Sephora app and August 25 at HausLabs.com, Sephora, and Kohl’s. Which shade are you reaching for first? 👀

Ginger Spark: Several major beauty lines expanded their “lip contour” and liner ranges for summer 2026, focusing heavily on an expanded range of neutrals (again, 18 to be precise for HAUS LABS, including the “cool” tone callouts). Similarly, Rhode expanded its Peptide Lip Shape lineup for summer 2026 with three new soft-sculpting shades: Push (soft neutral beige), Squeeze (cool taupe), and Jump (chocolate brown), designed for a feather-like, contoured pout. In mid-August, Sarah Creal called out that lip lines start to fade and become uneven in your ‘40s, so the brand created pHLip Liner Personal Lip Contour. It’s formulated with pH-activated pigments to enhance your natural lip line and give you a completely custom color. xx Sarah. With the choice of To The Point (“A Personalized Pink”) or On Edge (“A Personalized Mauve”), we’ll go with the Insta comment of @beautiful_glowy_skin: “Sounds promising.”

We found Normal by accident in Helsinki, inside a shopping mall, and walked out thirty minutes later with bags for ourselves, our families, and at least two things no one could fully explain.

Normal is a Danish chain, founded in 2013, now operating 986 stores across 11 countries, including Scandinavia, France, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, Austria, and, as of late 2025, Ireland. Founder Torben Mouritsen calls it a hybrid between a grocery store and a personal care store, which is technically accurate and also completely undersells what it feels like to actually be inside one. To us, the closest comparison is if you married Ulta, a well-stocked K-beauty shelf, 5 Below, and the discovery format of Flying Tiger Copenhagen (which sadly exited the US in 2020). To replicate this assortment at home, you would need to visit five different stores across five different neighborhoods, or spend a very patient afternoon on Amazon, hoping the algorithm cooperates. Normal’s own Instagram puts it more cleanly: here you’ll find what you need, what you didn’t know you needed, and what you don’t need at all.

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The Parallel Importing Trick

The pricing works through parallel importing, which is simpler than it sounds. Brands like Nivea, Garnier, and L’Oréal price their products differently across EU markets based on local purchasing power, meaning the same tube of cream might wholesale for significantly less in Portugal than in Denmark. Normal buys directly from suppliers in lower-priced markets, ships everything to a central warehouse, and sells across all its locations at prices founder Torben Mouritsen has described as 30 to 50 percent below standard retail. The products are genuine, the practice is legal under EU free movement rules, and the result is a 150ml Nivea Creme tin on an open display table at €2.60, the same tin that runs $10.95 at a US specialty importer like Smallflower. The legal framework behind it is worth understanding on its own, and Aliza will be breaking it down in an upcoming Fine Print. The same model also explains why the shelves carry products that never reach American retail through standard distribution pipelines, because Normal is not operating within those pipelines at all.

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The team at Gingergeist are big fans of beauty minis. Sometimes because we’re low commitment (we’ll do some therapy shortly), sometimes for other reasons… There has been a lot of recent buzz about the minis strategy, and we’re here to weigh in.

CVS Supersizes Its Mini Strategy

Retail Brew recently ran a popular piece on CVS elevating the mini experience across 2700 doors last October. Prior to a trip, Jamie has enjoyed perusing the CVS travel-sized offerings, often finding more portable solutions for everyday life (who wants a giant-size Gold Bond® Medicated Original in a shelfie?). The drugstore chain has decided to create a dedicated beauty mini section spanning 55 brands, from mass to prestige, with more than 125 SKUs across skin care, hair care, fragrance, sun care, and more.

Commenting on the move, Michelle LeBlanc, VP of merchandising, beauty and personal care, and Hispanic Strategy at CVS Health, shared thoughts on the WHY, which Beauty Matter highlighted in their recent post 💄 The End of Full-Size Thinking: The Business of Minis. Takeaways included “Shoppers are stretching their dollars in the current environment, but they haven’t given up on discovery or newness. Minis let them do both.” LeBlanc went on to say, “If anything, minis are proof that the desire for discovery is as strong as ever. Shoppers aren’t abandoning their routines or their curiosity; they’re just being smarter about how they explore.”

Featured in the Beauty Matter post is NEST New York Fragrance Discovery Set of minis (read last week’s Spark Nobody Wants One Scent Anymore and the tin of minis reference), and Salt & Stone’s Mini Body Wash Discovery Gift Set, highlighting a broader mini trend and use of the word “Discovery.” In Beauty Matter’s comments, gracefulglowingxo wrote, “I love buying minis!” I don’t want to waste a new product if it isn’t a good fit, and if it is, I’d like to be able to carry it easily!

Ginger Spark: Minis are seeing success across channels: at prestige retail, fragrance travel-size products are up 21% YoY, while makeup minis are up 8% as of June, according to Circana data. The average consumer’s shopping journey at CVS lasts only seven minutes, LeBlanc said. Dedicated front-of-store and end-cap positioning maximizes mini momentum. According to Retail Brew, sales of the CVS beauty mini category have climbed 140% YoY, and this summer it’s expanding its beauty mini assortment to 1,200 more stores. Organic social posting has spread the news, and LeBlanc has mentioned seeing minis as “a low-risk discovery behavior, or a try-before-you-buy mindset.” From locations near college campuses (Meet Them Where They Are) to specific locales, CVS is also curating the mini assortment. A CVS near Penn Station in New York City has a “robust” assortment of travel-sized products for tourists and commuters, while a location in a Florida beach town would have a broader suncare set, for example. (Note: Michelle finds that the hair-styling mini selection at CVS is unmatched, and always stocks up.) CVS’s minis range also includes several prestige brands like Vacation and Color Wow that are also sold at specialty retailers like Sephora, and LeBlanc noted that the minis assortment has served as a way to introduce shoppers to these higher-priced items they wouldn’t have previously considered buying at CVS. Lightbulb 💡moment combining data and state-of-consumer observations.

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Sephora Sizes Up the Mini Game

July 14th, the email from Sephora read, “Buy 2 minis, get 50% off bothContinuing on our mini deep dive, Sephora is also capitalizing on the movement. In fact, it’s become such a strong facet of their business strategy that shoppers can look to this dedicated Sephora Minis webpage. In keeping with the competition, Ulta now offers a “Travel Size & Mini Products” selection on its website.

Packmedia.net recently did a piece noting that the mini cosmetics market is growing, with small formats winning over Gen Z and travel retail. Until a few years ago, mini cosmetic formats were mainly seen as a complement to the main product range, such as samples included with orders or travel-size versions for convenience. Mini formats in 2026 are establishing themselves as an independent market segment, growing rapidly, driven especially by younger consumers.

Ginger Spark: Don’t get Jamie and Michelle started on jar packaging for skincare formulations, but one reason Jamie buys the Beekman 1802 Milk RX Advanced Better Aging Cream mini (counterintuitive to Beekman’s refill intention) is that its packaging isn’t airless. She thinks the mini stays fresher longer than a bigger size that’s had fingers dipped in it for months. On the innovation front, packaging companies are developing new solutions to meet this mini demand. Lip glosses and lip balms are being introduced in reduced sizes, with precision applicators for easier use. Cosmogen, a specialist in packaging solutions, has created mini lipstick containers for premium brands within the L’Oréal Group, including Valentino Beauty, Lancôme, YSL Beauty, Armani Beauty, and Prada Beauty. This strategy allows brands to offer collections in multiple shades at more accessible prices, particularly for Sephora Tweens and Gen Z, who value owning several shades at a lower cost than full-size products.

Mini formats are therefore increasingly seen as a viable alternative to giveaway single-use samples, which are expected to decline in stores, and to full-size products, which can limit the trial and experimentation experience. This can be seen in beauty expert Nadine Baggott’s explanation of Revolution’s recent introduction of beauty mini charms and wearables.

Small Batch, Big Buzz

Several travel-friendly mini beauty kits and trial sets have debuted or gained prominence near August 2026, featuring targeted skincare and fragrance lines suited for late-summer routines. Glow Recipe HueTinis Mini Tinted Skincare Set features Watermelon Glow Drops and a buildable tinted blush serum. A curated 4-piece travel-sized set highlighting miniature versions of the Magic Cream and Hollywood Flawless Filter. Bottega Veneta Beauty Alta Discovery Set , offers a miniature perfume collection featuring 10ml travel sizes of scents like the vanilla-infused Ricordami and powdery Bare Morning. Charlotte Tilbury debuted the Mini Legendary Beauty Discovery Kit, a 4-piece, travel-sized set featuring miniature versions of the Magic Cream and Hollywood Flawless Filter.

Ginger Spark: Beyond the summer-perfect “Discovery” wording (vacation in a beauty offering), marketing jargon and visuals like Glow Recipe’s HueTinis capitalize on mini fun! Gingergeist would encourage brands to continue to innovate in the mini category, with engagement and novelty front of mind. Additionally, curation and edits that speak to convenience and solution-based “try me” routines will continue to entice in 2027 and forward.

Tell us what mini is living in the bottom of your bag right now, then restack this for the friend still buying full-size everything.
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Want to work with us? gingergeist@gmail.com
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This summer, you may have noticed it’s getting “hot in herre” with soaring temperatures throughout the U.S., and wildfires across Canada and Europe. Climate experts predict 2027 will likely be hotter than 2026. Increasingly, frozen yogurt and cold treats have become a modern status symbol. Froyo shops have become raves. Prestige beauty brands (Chanel, Korres) are infusing their products with yogurt cultures. The queues at Mimi’s or Go Greek have become synonymous with being chic. (Can’t say we agree) Now, combined with high-protein, collagen, and adaptogens, frozen treats feel indulgent but not reckless. In the social media era, they are also highly photographable, customizable, and monochromatic (and therefore, in theory, quiet-luxury-adjacent).

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We have sat in many a marketing meeting and read the coverage: fragrance layering seemingly continues to arrive the same way: as a scent wardrobe story with a combining kit attached. What almost none of it touches is where the dollars moved while everyone was busy describing the habit via TikTok report.

For nearly two decades we have partnered with fragrance and beauty clients on mood and evocation, on what a scent should make someone feel and which memory it should pull on. Consumers write that brief for themselves now. Michelle also finished Advanced Perfumery at Pratt, taught through the French school Cinquième Sens, where the first lesson is that describing what you smell means learning a language that barely exists. Emotion fills whatever the words cannot, and a brand can write into that gap however it likes.

Circana lists scent layering among the forces reshaping fragrance, and the category has climbed to 28% of prestige beauty sales, remaining a bright spot for many. Here are the receipts.

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The Tin That Beat The Campaign

We are both advanced beauty users and, yet, complete commitment phobes about fragrance; we hoard samples and minis and throw a handful in the vanity case whenever we travel, as though a week away might turn us into someone else who wears a different signature scent. You have to admit it’s a great time to try something else on!

In July, Esteban G Villanueva, beauty editor at Vogue Portugal and grooming editor at Esquire Portugal, wrote a piece for Wonderland about dumping his perfume samples into an old mint tin and sorting them by situation rather than by note or brand. One for the commute, another for the office, and one that we particularly loved: filed under poor decisions. He spent nothing to build it, which is the part that matters, because layering gets dismissed as a tactic to sell a second bottle. Here it shows up with no bottle sold at all.

Villanueva is not the only one feeling this way. Unilever surveyed 2,000 adults and found that eight in ten Gen Z respondents pick products based on how the scent makes them feel, with nearly a third layering already under the name "smellmaxxing". ( A term that perplexed us for the longest time). An Axe survey ranked how someone smells just behind their outfit as one of the things that make them feel confident walking into a room. This tracks. Unilever owns Axe, so read both accordingly. Jo Malone London has been formulating for this since long before it had a name, using fewer raw materials per composition so two scents stay legible against each other, and now sells a three-piece Scent Layering Kit of 9ml combiners meant to sit on top of a bottle you already own.

The objection often comes from the people who build the compositions. Perfumer Ayala Moriel argues that a fragrance should arrive as “a complete work of olfactory art that does not require any boost,” and she has a point, because most formulas were never built to take a partner. A composition gets balanced across evaporation rates, and a second spray drops two sets of top notes onto the same patch of skin. Michelle’s professor at Pratt spent his career as an evaluator, judging submissions against a brief, and said the same thing from the other side of the desk. A composition resolves on its own across the hours it was built for, or it fails.

We are inclined to agree with him. In what other category would we accept a product that cannot deliver on its own promises? A face cream you have to layer with a second cream to see results is a face cream that did not work. And yet we do not believe in stifling creativity or telling people how to wear something either. Which is what makes a 94% jump in mists and a third of Gen Z layering already so uncomfortable to argue with.

Because the counter-argument assumes the day is not dynamic, and that the buyer can afford to be wrong. The commute, the meeting, and the drink afterward call for different evocations, and at roughly $300 for a niche 100ml, picking one in advance is a VERY expensive guess.

Ginger Spark: The routine of layering hands’ authorship onto the wearer, so a range not built to be mixed may push fragheads to pair you with someone else’s bottle.

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Everyone Is Building On The Same Base

Jamie goes for more sophisticated gourmands, the saffron in Victoria Beckham’s San Ysidro Drive or the tonka in Diptyque’s Orphéon. Michelle reaches for Kenzo’s Cèdre Secret, classified as a powder, and Costa Brazil’s Aroma in Oil, which sits on amber and musk and, on the bottle, tells you to “roll it, layer it, evolve with it.” Four bottles between us, and every one of them warm at the bottom. ( Are you sensing a pattern here?)

Vanilla and amber evaporate slowly and linger for hours while lighter notes burn off first, which is why a composition puts them at the base. The same seems to hold across two bottles, with the warm one settling underneath and becoming the thing every other choice has to accommodate.

Brands are moving toward that position. Gourmand has driven recent momentum at Le Labo and Kilian Paris, and this month Estée Lauder put the lesson on its flagship with Glimmer, the first gourmand the brand has made in eight decades of perfumery.

The value end is doing the same thing more literally. Cyklar sells perfume oils at $24 in four- and eight-piece layering sets, with 13 scents built around single notes across body wash, oil, and cream, so a single note arrives as a component rather than a composition and the customer supplies the rest.

Ginger Spark: Whoever owns the bottom of the stack is in the room for every purchase above it, so build the base or name the one you want to sit on.

The Wardrobe Was Never Made Of Perfume

We were on this one a decade ago. In “Hair Perfume Is a Lazy Girl’s Best Friend”, the New York Post talked to us, then working for a consulting agency, about the arrival of hair perfume, and the pitch back then was functional, with UVA and UVB protection, color-fade protection, and nourishing oils. The category has since grown into the fastest-moving piece of prestige fragrance by dropping that argument entirely. Circana put hair and body mists at $474 million in prestige in 2024, up 94% in a year, at an average price of $25, which is a prestige category priced like a drugstore one.

Sol de Janeiro built the model by selling Cheirosa 62 as a mist, an eau de parfum, a body cream, a hair oil, a hand cream, and a deodorant, then recommending you wear several of them at once. Harper’s Bazaar now suggests spritzing its Cheirosa 40 through drying hair, while plainly noting that the product delivers no hair benefit and exists only to smell like a beach vacation.

The brand is no longer treating any of this as an entry ramp. Sol de Janeiro launched solid perfumes designed to layer with its mists in February, a men’s cologne mist line in July, and is now releasing intensified versions of its own scents, a strategy borrowed straight from the extrait end of luxury. Chief brand officer Elodie Saxemard says body fragrance is “no longer a secondary or entry-level category,” with customers now weighing notes, concentration, and longevity the way they would with a fine fragrance. Byredo and Penhaligon’s have both moved into the format, and YipitData shows Ouai and Phlur taking share while Sol de Janeiro’s grip on the category slipped from 95% to roughly 77%.

Ginger Spark: Nobody is choosing between two scents; they are assembling a ritual, so a house that sells only the eau de parfum is competing for one slot in a stack of four.

Tell us what’s at the bottom of your stack in the comments, then restack this for the friend still loyal to one bottle.

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Fair warning: this one runs long, four countries and two weeks’ worth of it, so we recommend reading it in the Substack app for the full experience. The sixteen things we actually brought home are waiting at the end if you want to skip ahead.

In This Post

1. Copenhagen: The Mythology of Shopping

2. Riga: A City Worth Rediscovering

3. Tallinn: Unicorn Horn Then, Sea Buckthorn Now

4. Helsinki: The City of Near-Misses (and One Very Good Sauna)

5. What Actually Came Home

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Shopping plans were made long before we boarded the plane. To celebrate our mom’s milestone birthday, Aliza and I spent two weeks traveling through Copenhagen, Riga, Tallinn, and Helsinki, with months of Pinterest boards, Instagram saves, Substack recommendations, Google Maps pins, and notes from friends behind us. Yes, we actually do commit to all this research. We had lists for vintage shops, design stores, cafés, museums, pharmacies, and the kinds of places you only find because someone insisted you go.

The weather had other plans, and so, it turned out, did everything else. Four countries, and the pattern held every time: whatever we’d researched the hardest rarely became what we actually remembered. A building surprised us in one city, a synagogue in another, and once, admittedly, it really was just a bag. That’s the story of this trip, the gap between what we researched and what actually surprised us, more than the places themselves.

This was also the June that had southern Europe under heat warnings. We knew we were headed somewhere cooler by definition, but what we got ran colder and wetter than a typical Nordic and Baltic June. We packed sweaters into our day bags, carried umbrellas almost everywhere, and reached for rain jackets more than sunscreen. It felt like the most autumnal summer we could have asked for, even if we didn’t know we were asking.

Copenhagen: The Mythology of Shopping

If you work in fashion, Copenhagen occupies an almost mythical place in the imagination. Scandinavian style has shaped everything from contemporary minimalism to street style, and everyone seems to have a favorite vintage shop, café, or design destination to recommend. There are no direct flights from New York to Riga, which meant picking an entry point, and Copenhagen had been on my list for years regardless. Of all the cities on our itinerary, this was the one I had researched the most, which made it the first place the gap showed up. We arrived expecting to shop and discover Scandi treasures.

We stayed at Hotel Bella Grande, an 1899 building near City Hall Square with a candy-striped courtyard that feels more Bologna than Copenhagen. The hotel’s own restaurant, Donna, turned out to be one of the better meals of the trip, an Italian spot in red and pink tones with its own cocktail lounge tucked into the same courtyard. It was an easy, no-thinking-required dinner after a day of walking, and worth booking ahead since it’s popular with locals too.

We spent our first evening on the arc every Copenhagen guide points you toward, and for good reason. Nyhavn’s row of colorful townhouses along the canal is worth the crowds, especially with a drink in hand as the light stretched on into the evening. From there we walked north to see the Little Mermaid perched on her rocks, then back through Amalienborg Palace, home to the Danish royal family, before looping back toward the hotel. The next morning we did a Jewish Copenhagen heritage walking tour, starting at the Central Library on Krystalgade and ending at the Copenhagen Synagogue. It gave us more context on the city than any of the shopping did, and easily became one of the highlights of the whole stop.

From there, the designer and vintage crawl started. Another nué, O-S-V Secondhand, and Time’s Up Vintage all sit within the same block on Krystalgade and Peder Hvitfeldts Stræde, so we worked through them one after another. I’d had Another nué saved on Instagram for months, so it was satisfying to finally see it in person. I loved Cecilie Bahnsen’s CB Vilde T-shirt in Light Pink but decided to save it for another time. We also spent a while admiring Cala Jade’s Misu L shoulder bag and kept coming back to Yuzefi’s XL Mochi in embossed Sierra leather, though neither came home with us. Later that day we made it out to Jerome Vintage on the other side of town after seeing it recommended by Vogue Scandinavia. It was beautifully edited, almost gallery-like, but so tightly curated there wasn’t much to sift through.

Collector’s Cage and Illums Bolighus rounded out the day, one for bags and one for browsing. Collector’s Cage understood that shopping should be entertaining; the space was lined floor to ceiling with designer handbags, and even the arcade crane game featured small leather goods. Illums Bolighus, a Danish home design store rather than a fashion store, was lovely just to walk through. I committed the ultimate comp shopping sin and never took out my phone. Old habits die hard, though. I still can’t walk through a store like that without my brain quietly filing everything away.

Our last stop of the day was ILLUM, the department store. I spotted a slouchy shoulder bag from across the floor and, for a split second, thought it was Michael Kors, which threw me since it looked nothing like the versions I’m used to seeing in the U.S. Up close, it turned out to be SILFEN Studio’s Hanna bag, a Copenhagen label whose soft, sculptural silhouette immediately caught my eye. My mom found her own small win on a different floor, a pair of Falke Hydrangea 20 DEN socks in Misty Lila, picked up for me without me even noticing until she handed them over later.

The bags we actually brought home weren’t on anyone’s shopping list. I almost walked past Polène because I figured we had one in New York, but my mom wanted to stop in. The Copenhagen boutique on Højbro Plads turned out to be its own destination, an arum-flower-inspired space with an “artisanship in action” corner where visitors fold little origami leather boat charms (sigh, we regret not picking one up), a nod to the Nyhavn canal a few blocks away. She and I ended up with matching olive Onda phone cases, while Aliza chose the Numéro Neuf Mini in Black Cherry. Funny enough, after all the vintage and designer hunting, those became the mementos that reminded us most of Copenhagen.

ILLUM’s beauty hall pulled me in too, with Scandinavian brands like Karmameju and RAAW Alchemy that I spent a while considering but never quite committed to buying. I thought I knew expensive after living in New York City for years. I figured I was already in Europe, so this would be the perfect opportunity to stock up on pharmacy staples. That theory didn’t survive Matas, the Danish pharmacy chain we kept running into all over the city. The La Roche-Posay Anthelios Dermo-Pediatrics SPF 50+ Milk (250 ml) I wanted to pick up for my son was nearly €40. The same sunscreen sells for about €17 at Pharmacie du Forum des Halles in Paris, so I left it on the shelf. It wasn’t just our perception either. According to the 2026 Post Office Travel Money City Costs Barometer, Copenhagen ranked as Europe’s second-most expensive city break destination after Oslo.

Maybe that’s the funny thing about researching a city too much. The internet promises hidden gems, perfect vintage finds, and the purchase you’ll talk about for years. Copenhagen didn’t quite deliver that for us this time, and that’s okay. The heritage tour and a phone case bag nobody put on a list did more work than the whole shopping list.

Riga: A City Worth Rediscovering

We landed in Riga still carrying Copenhagen’s mindset, expecting to have to work for anything worth finding. I’d forgotten, in all that bracing, that this city didn’t need me to go looking in the first place. I’ve always known about Riga. It’s where I came into existence, so I never thought of it as a hidden gem. Returning as an adult, I found myself wondering why it isn’t mentioned in the same breath as Copenhagen, Stockholm, or Helsinki. It once was. Between the wars, Riga was known as the “Paris of the Baltics,” a nickname earned by its Art Nouveau boom and a café and nightlife scene that drew diplomats and celebrities from across Europe. Though calling a city the something of somewhere else is its own kind of question. Is it ever seen for itself, or just measured against a place it was never trying to be? Even during the Soviet era, Riga remained the most cosmopolitan city in the region, close enough to a version of the West that visitors from Moscow and Leningrad came here to feel as if they’d crossed a border. It’s less of a comeback story than an IYKYK one. The world discovers cities through curated recommendations. I discovered this one by being born into it, and the gap between those two ways of knowing a place kept showing up everywhere we went here too.

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In April 2025, Vogue Business asked: “Are Tweakments Just Fast Fashion for Your Face?” If you’re asking yourself, what the heck is a tweakment, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Tweakments are usually minimally invasive (though ask anyone who’s gotten a strong laser or peel about the recovery), non-surgical procedures performed in the office. Think neurotoxins, derm fillers, lasers, peels, etc., solution-oriented refreshes rather than dramatic, more invasive options like a facelift. The term itself is a marriage of tweak and treatment, beauty click-bait that’s since gone mainstream. The Vogue Business piece is putting words to a phenomenon that’s been bubbling up: now that plastic surgery practices and medical spas are also borrowing from fashion-thinking, tweakments are bought and marketed the way we build out clothing collections: as routine maintenance, seasonal drops, micro-upgrades, not just a one-time transformation.

According to Allergan Aesthetics’ “The Future of Aesthetics” report, one of the leading providers of Botox, the number of non-surgical aesthetic procedures conducted worldwide grew by nearly two million between 2017 and 2020, and is expected to total 23 million dermal filler procedures and 14.6 million body procedures by the end of 2025. The same report found physicians are seeing more younger patients, a broader range of ethnic backgrounds, and more men than ever, a sign tweakments have moved well past a niche audience.

Non-surgical aesthetic procedures are expected to continue surging in popularity, as life expectancy is rising thanks to discoveries in longevity. The latest wave is skipping the appointment altogether: an eye drop, a topical, a gummy, all packaged as at-home, over-the-counter versions of treatments that used to require a provider. Gingergeist weighs in - with the receipts to add - on recent developments.

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It’s All in the Eyes: Upneeq’s At-Home Eyelid Lift

The eyes may be known as the windows to the soul, but they are also often the first area of the face to show signs of aging. Why? The skin around the eyes is the thinnest skin on the body, making it especially vulnerable to changes over time. With the upper eyelids, extra skin can develop and begin to hang closer to the lash line.

On Jamie’s last visit to her ophthalmologist in February, she inquired about Upneeq, the first FDA-approved eye drops for adults with low-lying Eyelids. The ophthalmologist claimed to have never heard of it, but promised to look into it (never happened). Recently, on Gloss Angeles, Cindy Crawford talked about plastic surgery pressure and staying power. Cindy Crawford discussed turning 60, her pact with a friend not to get a facelift, and embracing a natural approach to aging with her husband Rande Gerber’s support. While Cindy noted she has tried minor non-surgical treatments like neurotoxins, lasers, and PRP, she noticed her eyelids were looking a little heavier in pictures. Her dermatologist recommended Upneeq, and when the Upneeq team reached out to her, she learned an ophthalmologist had developed it for his own mother, who didn’t want to undergo surgery for drooping eyelids. On the updated website, Cindy can be seen quoted as saying, “Connection has always been about presence and confidence for me, and so much of that is communicated through the eyes.” She likes that someone can choose to use Upneeq every day or just for special events.

Ginger Spark: Jamie decided to try the two-vial trial of Upneeq straight from the website, where one can upload a picture and obtain an Rx if qualified, for $30. For those with acquired ptosis, or low-lying eyelids, it offers a non-surgical option, in an easy-to-use once-daily eye drop. While Jamie’s first single-use vial resulted in one eye opening slightly more visibly than the other, the second time resulted in a refreshed, wide awake effect. Average lift in clinical trials was 1 mm, acting in as little as five minutes (although the suggested wait is 15 minutes to apply eye cream or makeup), and can last up to 8 hours. Check out more before-and-afters, along with the Upneeq community. While the website mentioned a one-time trial, Jamie was able to order again for $15 (minus the Rx :)

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Lip Volumizing, On Demand: Dr. Diamond’s LipLift

In The Price Point Playbook, Gingergeist highlighted Dr. Jason Diamond’s $225 EyeLift bioserum. The celebrity facial plastic surgeon is at it again, introducing LipLift this month (teasing “JOIN THE WAITING ROOM”), as a $120 topical treatment, expanding the Contour Collection from Dr. Diamond’s Metacine. Designed to mimic non-surgical clinical results, the product targets lip aging, loss of volume, and fine lines. The announcement in Women’s Wear Daily (WWD) noted the purpose of volumizing lips, improving contours, and addressing signs of perioral aging.

Ginger Spark: With the use of Cindy for Upneeq and WWD to announce LipLift, tweakments are much like Vogue Business speculated, being treated more like a fashion launch. In addition to Dr. Diamond offering advice in a recent blog post on 4 Paths to Luscious Lips, it becomes clear that aesthetics, beauty, and fashion have never been so closely aligned (and blurred). We’re pondering whether this replaces in-office filler or simply complements and extends the appointment calendar. You know we already signed up.

A Lash & Brow Ingestible: IMARAÏS Beauty’s Gummies

In a recent Nutra Ingredients “Beauty From Within 2026” July Webinar, panelist Aaron Hefter discussed how orbital focus has been on eyelash extensions and hair growth beyond the scalp, and hinted at releasing an innovation to target lashes and brows. Other panelists asked, “a topical,” to which Hefter responded, “an ingestible.” Cue almost audible gasps! ( Jamie was once a devoted lash extension wearer; Michelle swears she’ll never leave) IMARAÏS Beauty released their Thrive Lash and Brow Care Gummies on March 10, 2026. Co-founded by Sommer Ray and Aaron Hefter, the plant-based ingestible product was introduced as an alternative to topical lash and brow serums.

IMARAÏS Beauty offers the plant-based, sugar-free ingestible gummy formulated to support and nourish eyelashes and eyebrows from within. Featuring the flavor of natural dragonfruit, with key ingredients including aloe vera, radish root, and rosemary, IMARAÏS Beauty is pinpointing follicle health. Radish root is purported to promote localized blood circulation around the eye area.

Ginger Spark: While IMARAÏS Beauty has had a broader rollout and business milestones (from Amazon to Target and Ulta, and now Nordstrom), along with international expansion, this specificity in solution-oriented beauty is worth watching. As long as lash lifts, nano brows, brow lamination techniques, and extensions are a thing, brands can think about innovations in their categories that can enhance challenging facial features.

Know someone who thinks a tweakment still means a trip to the office? Restack this.

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It’s that time again as we track our callouts and predictions, decoding signal tracking across food, retail, beauty, and wellness. While we’ll often humourously ponder if Vogue or another social entity was listening in on our Gingergeist meetings, we’ve been doing this long enough to confirm, gut-check, and share it with our community.

The following five callouts highlight moments where Gingergeist identified emerging cultural and consumer shifts while they were still forming. Each pairs an early Gingergeist hypothesis with subsequent industry coverage, so it’s less about guessing, more about connecting the dots early.

01 — Raspberry Crosses Categories

A flavor and color unusually portable across industries.

In “Less Filler, More Science, Extra Raspberry,” we flagged raspberry showing up in multiple channels: raspberry syrup at Starbucks, Blue Raspberry toothpaste from Hismile, Rhode’s Raspberry Jelly lip tint, and even raspberry seed oil in haircare products.

Why It Matters: One color and flavor moving through beauty, home, fragrance, and food simultaneously? Sounds like solid proof-point to us.

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Truth be told, Nantucket wasn’t really on our radar. It occupied the same mental filing cabinet as Hyannis Port, Cape Cod, and other expensive New England destinations that felt vaguely interchangeable unless you happened to own a boat or be Kennedy-adjacent.

To us it was all whitewashed shingles, inherited money, and the same tasteful nautical stripe…very Americana, very preppy, insert your chosen Muffy reference here. Was this a place Ralph Lauren made up? Surely his team must scout there.

Admittedly, Michelle also genuinely thought Martha’s Vineyard had something to do with Martha Stewart. Why wouldn’t it? Both names conjure the same white linen, old-money shorthand. But over the last few weeks, this tiny New England island has become the conceptual charming main character in what seems to be one plot point after another. So we decided to do some investigating.

The Hunt for the Nantucket Lightship Basket

At the beginning of summer, leafing through Town & Country Magazine, Michelle found Todd Plummer’s piece, There Once Was a Shop on Nantucket, which examines why thrifting on Nantucket has turned so cutthroat. It was the first of many Nantucket signals this summer. What caught our attention wasn’t the thrifting itself, but what everyone was actually hunting to find. Buried in the stories of collectors “jockeying outside the Hospital Thrift Shop like it’s a contact sport,” extremely Brimfield Market coded, was our introduction to the Nantucket Lightship basket. It’s a handcrafted cane-and-rattan basket, often finished with a carved scrimshaw lid, and it has become one of the island’s most recognized symbols.

Then came the line that really caught us: “A worn Lightship basket elicits more praise than a Birkin.” Hard stop…..what in the Jane Birkin is this basket!? It’s not lost on us that Jane Birkin carried a basket for years before Hermès ever named a bag after her. Naturally, we looked up the price. Ahem, sticker shock!

At Sylvia Antiques, real provenance starts around $750 and climbs past $5,000. The Etsy versions are made by second-career weavers working in the tradition rather than on the island. ShearwaterBasketsCo sells a 6-inch round basket for $325 and a 9-inch purse for $825, while NantucketWeavers offers a 6-inch cherry wood version for $385. Similar techniques and materials, slightly different lineage—hence the gap between prices. Those versions had us daydreaming about swapping our Dragon Diffusion Market Tote for one, before common sense stepped back in. For the record, the 6-inch holds a phone and a lip balm and not much else, so the 9-inch is the only one doing any real work at the farmers market.

@bethennyfrankelA tiny piece of handbag #nantucket #ack #nantucketbasket

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Ginger Spark: We admit it outright, these baskets are absurdly expensive, yet we understand the appeal anyway. Having the perfect one is considered slightly gauche. The dream is really to stumble across one at a Nantucket estate sale or inherit one from a fabulous rich auntie who summered there.

The provenance carries as much weight as the object. Owning one matters less than “getting a nod of approval” from the club of people who can identify one on sight. Which is also the risk. Writer Amy Odell has been asking whether the Birkin has become overexposed, and the Lightship basket may be on the same path, with TikTok doing the work that decades of celebrity sightings did for Hermès.

The Five Star Weekend

Jamie recommended we watch Peacock’s The Five Star Weekend, and it did what a good Nantucket story does: make everyone want to go. Jennifer Garner plays Hollis, a food influencer who invites three friends from different eras of her life to her vacation home, joined by a social media follower who somehow ends up on the guest list. Chloe Sevigny, Regina Hall, D’Arcy Carden, and Gemma Chan round out the cast, though we would argue the real eye candy is Timothy Olyphant. The aesthetic is a Pinterest board given a production budget: quiet luxury interiors, weathered shingle, and Coastal Grandmother filtered through Summer House.

Costume designer Susie DeSanto built the wardrobe from Simkhai, Frame, Ralph Lauren, Reformation, and L.L.Bean, and Lilly Pulitzer followed with a shoppable capsule organized into six themed categories tracking Hollis’s actual itinerary, from the arrival cocktail party to the farmstand run. Lilly has done this before from the other side, dressing Kristen Wiig in an original tangerine shift in Palm Royale, where Alix Friedberg built the whole club palette around Lilly and Pucci prints, then curated a RealReal edit of 600-plus vintage pieces. Believe us, we have put Palm Royale in presentations and on mood boards ourselves.

This isn’t the first time we’ve written this article. Santorini, Miami, Nashville, and Montana have all had their turn, each one arriving as a sociocultural cue, color palette, and a silhouette before it arrived as a plane ticket. The White Lotus runs the same play with a bigger passport, and the Four Seasons Koh Samui reported bookings up 40 percent after season three (watch the French Riviera for Season Four). WWD reports 53 percent of global travelers are interested in screen-inspired getaways, with set-jetting projected to hit $8 billion in the US alone. Nantucket is the domestic version, and the ferry is considerably cheaper than a flight to Koh Samui.

What’s new is the speed to market. Places like this used to be raw material for trend and creative roles, mood boards built around a specific place that took months to reach a consumer through a season of design and production. Now someone can watch the house, screenshot the dress, price the ferry, and order the capsule in one evening.

Nantucket did try to hold the line. In 2006, residents voted overwhelmingly for a Formula Business Exclusion Overlay District to keep chain stores off the island, grandfathering in only a handful, including Ralph Lauren and Lilly Pulitzer.

Ginger Spark: A destination is intellectual property now, licensed in layers from the streaming rights to the capsule collection to the hotel booking. Nantucket wrote a law to keep chains off the island, then watched a show and a resort-wear collection sell the aesthetic to everyone who will never get there. The only question left is which island is next.

No Influencers

There are many shops on the island to note, but the one everyone is talking about this summer is Four Winds Craft Guild, which has been selling handcrafted baskets, purses, artwork, and carvings since 1948. The shop’s actual history stretches back further: John Sylvia’s grandfather founded Sylvia’s Antiques in 1927 (yes, the same one we mentioned up top regarding Lightship bags), which later merged with Four Winds to form the business Sylvia runs today. Earlier this summer, Four Winds posted a photo of a permanent wood sign hanging inside the store reading “No Influencers,” captioned “Came for the friendship baskets, stayed for the shade.” Sylvia insists he made it for people walking past the window rather than for the internet. The internet found it anyway, and the post cleared 10,000 likes before getting reposted across Reddit and by small businesses everywhere.

Influencer Paige Paul, founder of lifestyle brand Dairy Boy, pushed back in the comments almost immediately. She has her own storefront on the island now, Dairy Boy’s flagship and its first-ever retail location, which opened on Federal Street over Memorial Day weekend to a line of teenage and twentysomething shoppers snaking down the brick sidewalk. Paul isn’t there purely for the foot traffic, though. Her grandparents kept a house on Nantucket, and she has been visiting her entire life. She told ELLE Decor the island “shaped my understanding of summer, home, tradition, and East Coast culture,” and called it the most special place in the world. Two businesses, one selling since 1948 and one open since May, both betting everything on the same island, and both agree that it’s worth fighting over.

She may not have been there since 1948. Still, she’s not a total outsider either, and she’s selling the same nostalgic Americana as Four Winds, just through gingham and lily-of-the-valley pajamas (they’re actually quite cute) instead of woven baskets. “If you call yourself a feminist but proudly put up a ‘No Influencers’ sign, it’s worth asking who you are attempting to delegitimize, and why,” she wrote, noting how strange the message reads coming from a store built on a craft with a rich history of women shaping the island and its economy.

As the backlash built, Four Winds posted a follow-up, framing the sign as an invitation to conversation, not a ban: “This is a cultural discussion, one to talk about openly and honestly in your own community.” One verified commenter turned the whole argument around, pointing out that astronomical hotel prices, months-long reservation waits, nonexistent parking, and small businesses steadily converting into chains have done far more damage to the island’s charm than any influencer could possibly instigate.

Four Winds’ Instagram picked up about 8,000 new followers since the sign went up, and per the shop’s own account, the drama also brings in business. Paul’s answer landed Tuesday: a photo from her own Dairy Boy storefront, with a sign of its own. “Everyone Welcome.”

Ginger Spark: Whatever resonates with you—old or new—on an island trading in authenticity, the most honest thing anyone said was “it brings in business,” and that is exactly what happens when an island becomes a brand. There’s really nothing more American than that.

Okay, we are officially all Nantuckered out. What do you want us to look at next?

🔄 Restack if you have ever coveted something purely because someone told you that you could not have it.

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Summer on the island, own a Lightship basket, or have thoughts on the sign? Email us at gingergeisty@gmail.com. We read everything.

Hey Gingergeist readers, thank you for being here and for all the support that keeps this newsletter going. This one goes a little deeper than usual, so part of it sits behind the paywall for paid subscribers. If you've been on the fence about upgrading, this is a good one to jump in for. Either way, we're grateful you're reading.

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The Breakup Nobody Needed

Ulta is leaving Target this August, and the read online has been a “surprising breakup.” The partnership was a pandemic artifact from the start. Ulta’s doors went dark in 2020 while Target stayed open as an essential retailer, and the highly anticipated August 2021 launch solved that moment’s problem, not 2026’s. The buzz was real; over 50 prestige brands rolled into the first 100 stores, and by 2022 both companies had set a public goal of 800 locations. The depth never caught up to the buzz.

Growth landed at 610 stores, nearly 200 short of that original goal, and stayed there through the wind-down announcement. Most of those stores also sit within a few miles of an actual Ulta, so the redundancy was baked in from day one. Five years later, both sides are calling the split mutual because neither wants to say it plainly: this never needed to work long term, and the numbers show it never quite did.

Building Its Own Authority

Target Beauty Studio launches across roughly 600 stores by autumn, pairing 80 existing beauty brands with 60 new to the retailer, on top of the 3,000 products and 60-plus brands (Supergoop, Morphe among them) already added for spring. Over 90 percent of that assortment is under $20, and this is the actual story:

Target’s own framing calls it a prestige beauty destination, not a mass reshuffle, promising “elevated, prestige products and trend-driven innovation across skincare, haircare, fragrance and cosmetics.” That language already had a marketing push behind it: a New York Fashion Week activation at Target Soho, held in February, with Jodie Turner Smith, Rachel Zoe, and Lana Condor among the guests. That is real budget behind a launch, not a quiet shelf reset. The timing tracks with where the category is actually headed: more guests are seeking prestige beauty items, and Circana research found prestige beauty retail dollar sales grew 4 percent year over year to reach $36 billion in 2025. With Beauty Studio, Target is aiming to build authority across both the prestige and mass markets at once, not just backfill the SKUs Ulta is taking.

The rollout copy also promises dedicated, knowledgeable beauty staff and a beauty-specific Circle rewards program, worth side-eye, not face value. Trained staff is the first promise every beauty relaunch makes, and the first to be cut once the labor budget is revisited. Believing it will take more than a press release. The stores are bright, aisles are wide, and the product mix is already showing up on TikTok, proof that someone on Target’s beauty team did their homework instead of just signing off on it. Maybe they read Gingergeist? We flagged this instinct in How Wellness Is Reshaping Retail Strategy in 2026, where Target’s supplement and wellness tech buildout showed the same pattern: infrastructure over spectacle, repeat behavior over discovery theater. Beauty Studio reads like that same playbook applied to the category Ulta is leaving behind.

What the Shelves Actually Show

Gabrielle went hunting at her local Target this week to see the outgoing Ulta shop firsthand, and one detail told the Gingergeist team more than any press release. Nearly every fixture, Kopari, First Aid Beauty, Milk, Clinique, Peach & Lily, Farmacy, SITS BEHIND LOCKED ACRYLIC. A nearby sign frames it as a service: “Secured shelves in the store keep the products on your list in stock.”

That is theft-deterrent lockup dressed as convenience. Whatever this is, it is not a luxury beauty experience, and no amount of prestige branding on the endcap changes what it feels like to ask an employee to unlock a case for a $9 concealer.

Locked cases are not a neutral loss-prevention choice either. Retailers that have leaned hardest on them typically lose 15 to 25 percent of sales on locked items, according to anti-theft technology CEO Joe Budano, and fewer than one in three shoppers actually bother to find an employee to unlock the case. More than half just give up and try another store entirely. CVS itself has started piloting app-based unlocking for loyalty members, a tacit admission that the friction was costing more than the theft. Messy merchandising and locked glass send the same message: browse elsewhere. There is also a more basic inconvenience worth naming. A Sephora or Ulta shop-in-shop rarely lets a customer return a Sephora item or complete a Sephora transaction with the same ease as they would inside an actual Sephora, since a different company runs that footprint. That friction, not just the lock-and-key, is part of what a shopper is quietly weighing every time she decides whether beauty is worth the trip.

By Michelle, Target never carried Ulta, so that store is already living a few steps further into the future the rest of the chain is heading toward. The brand list reads like a group chat everyone actually wants to be in, kids and adults both: Byoma, Bubble, Good Molecules, Hero’s Mighty Patch, Supergoop, Curology, e.l.f.’s new “beauty edit” endcap, and a Being x Frenshe wellness table stocked with gummies and mood-based skincare. It is buzzy without being a carbon copy of the algorithm, and there is still something left to discover.

What remains to be solved is the presentation. Sections read as cluttered rather than curated, and the same locked glass cases reappear on dermatological skin care, La Roche-Posay, Bioderma, and Avene, sealed behind acrylic doors, proving the security friction is not unique to the outgoing Ulta shop. The assortment instinct is there, but merchandising discipline is the part still catching up.

The Beauty Rebuild Playbook

Jamie and Michelle have both seen a version of this challenge from the inside at different points in JCPenney’s history, both on the beauty side of the business. This is not one person’s read on an old job. It is two people who separately watched this exact category evolve at the same retailer and then compared notes years later.

Jamie was there first, transitioning out of a Fashion Specialist role into Forecasting, and wrote a white paper that became the internal case for what came next. At the time, JCP’s beauty offering was a mix of Iman, the now-defunct Revlon Ultima II, celebrity fragrances, and a private-label bath line modeled after Bath & Body Works. Jamie’s paper argued against leaning further into private label, which was the direction conversations were already heading, and made the case instead for the open-sell, heavily merchandised, experiential shopping concept she had seen thriving throughout Europe, Sephora chief among them. That argument became the prelude to JCPenney signing its actual Sephora contract in 2006.

Michelle later worked at JCPenney on Home and Beauty Trend as the Sephora partnership was winding down. She translated cultural trends into stories that buyers, designers, and the visual and experience teams could act on, weaving beauty into the retailer’s broader narrative. Indie brands made up a large share of the early assortment post-Sephora, as JCPenney was still rebuilding out of bankruptcy and the vendor pool willing to sign on was smaller than it might have been otherwise. Bigger names came on board over time, and the early mix likely reflected vendor willingness as much as customer demand.

A strong beauty and salon team ultimately built a solid business there, bringing in a trend-right, high-low mix of heavier hitters across categories: cosmetics like Too Faced, Smashbox, NYX Cosmetics, RMS Beauty, and KimChi Chic Beauty; skincare like Supergoop, CosRx, Murad, Mario Badescu, and Black Girl Sunscreen, plus a growing assortment of K-beauty brands; hair care like Olaplex and Naturelab in Salon; and fragrance including Dolce & Gabbana, Marc Jacobs, Azzaro, Rabanne, Golf Le Fleur, and Sabrina Carpenter.

This is not the first time a beauty partner has exited JCPenney, and what happened next is instructive. Iman Cosmetics launched at JCPenney in 1994 and left in 2004 for a distribution deal with Procter & Gamble that put it into Target and Walgreens instead, trading department-store counters for mass reach. The brand did not fail when it left JCP. It found a bigger stage elsewhere, which is the same question worth asking of any beauty exit: does the departure actually hurt the retailer being left, or does it just prove the brand, or the customer, had outgrown that shelf?

Beauty is a fickle category, and no retailer can will a conversion into existence by simply wanting one. The beauty customer demands wooing, not just square footage; borrowed credibility does not automatically transfer in sales. Sephora itself sat inside JCPenney for years, and the Sephora customer never quite converted into a JCP customer, which says something important about how hard this category is, regardless of who is running it. Birchbox built real early buzz around beauty discovery and shrank dramatically once the novelty wore off. It eventually changed hands entirely before quietly shutting down. Riley Rose, Forever 21’s own beauty concept, opened with genuine fanfare and closed every freestanding store within a couple of years.

The model itself is not the problem, though. Sephora at Kohl’s proves a specialty shop-in-shop can work inside a department store when it is funded and executed properly: the partnership passed $1.4 billion in sales in 2023, brought in more than 1 million new customers since its 2021 launch, and grew Q3 2024 sales 15 percent year over year as the shop-in-shop count passed 1,000 stores.

It is worth remembering why department stores lease out beauty in the first place. In arrangements like this, beauty pays the rent, generating real income for the host retailer, as leased brand footprints have for Nordstrom and others for years. That arrangement is not automatically a winner, either. Kohl’s was once in talks with Estée Lauder to expand its own lower-priced American Beauty line, launched in 2004 with Ashley Judd as the face, before Kohl’s shifted direction entirely toward Sephora and the line was phased out. Beauty real estate is valuable, but it is not a guarantee for the tenant or the landlord.

Assortment and design are not the whole equation, and neither is a familiar name on the door. What built Sephora’s authority elsewhere took years of specialized service, a testing culture, and a loyalty infrastructure, and Target is not importing all of that simply by stocking Ulta’s SKUs on its shelves. The Beauty Studio assortment suggests Target has learned the brand-mix lesson, pairing recognizable names with a price point she can defend, but time and sustained investment are the ingredients no press release can announce in advance. Know-how and design ethos get a launch. Whether Target commits to this like a real specialty business over the long run is the actual open question.

The Target Run

Target has done this before, more convincingly than most. Sonia Kashuk, Cindy Crawford’s makeup artist, built a Target-exclusive line whose powder once genuinely rivaled Laura Mercier or T. LeClerc, with foundations and concealers that introduced mass consumers to real yellow-toned shade matching, before the line was eventually reduced to little more than brushes and travel bags. Target also brought in Boots in 2004, giving American customers a No7 they would otherwise have needed a plane ticket to London to find in the early aughts. That is the bar Target set for itself.

Walmart is now chasing the same instinct. It has expanded its premium beauty offering with a dedicated online marketplace carrying brands like ColorWow and Foreo, rolled out in-store beauty bars to hundreds of locations, and brought in prestige-adjacent names like Madison Reed at real scale. Beauty Studio is not just Target settling an old score with Ulta. It is Target trying to stay ahead of Walmart in the same fight.

Target also has a structural advantage: the Target run. Nobody drives to Target only for beauty the way they once drove to Sephora. They go in for Honest diapers, a Chobani Hazelnut Creamer, and a case of Coke Zero. They wander, add a Ninja Creami they did not know they needed, and leave with La Roche-Posay Thermal Water they never planned to buy.

Target has built an entire cult following on exactly this behavior. Somewhere out there, a segment of shoppers genuinely believes a red bullseye is the height of design sophistication, and Target has never once discouraged the idea. Isaac Mizrahi is now creative director at large there as of June 2026, nearly 25 years after his original 2002 collection first sold that particular fantasy. The mandate is cross-category, not confirmed for beauty specifically, but he is no beauty outsider. He launched the Fabulous fragrance in 2012 and a 144-SKU color cosmetics and skincare line, True Isaac Mizrahi, on QVC in 2015. If he ever gets his hands on it, that would be chic, affordable, and divine, to borrow his own line, and it would be the clearest signal yet that Target is not just assembling a category but designing one. Either way, it already gets to borrow that design halo along with the built-in traffic instead of manufacturing a reason to visit. Kohl’s did not have the same everyday errand traffic and still made Sephora work, so the advantage is real, but it is a tailwind, not the deciding factor.

Target confirmed the instinct is still active. Rosie Assoulin launched a collection with Target on July 25, spanning dresses, tops, skirts, and accessories, most pieces priced $25 to $50. It sits comfortably next to the Kashuk and Mizrahi playbook: borrow a designer's signature, translate it to an accessible price point, let the collection prove Target still knows how to borrow taste without diluting it.

Why This Matters

This is bigger than one retailer’s shop-in-shop expiring. Mass retail is done renting beauty’s credibility. It is starting to fund the infrastructure, buying teams, and wellness tech that used to be the exclusive domain of prestige and specialty players, as well as dermatologist-branded end caps. Target is uniquely positioned for that bet, functional for one shopper, a design store to browse for another. Beauty Studio is a wager that those two customers can be served from the same shelf, and that convenience and aspiration are not actually in conflict.

That small beauty high of finding something cute you did not go in looking for is exactly the feeling Target is trying to manufacture on purpose.

The brand mix increasingly says Target gets it. Whether execution, security friction, merchandising discipline, and follow-through funding catch up to that instinct is the story worth watching over the next year, not the exit itself.

Before you close the tab: if any of this felt true, restack it. It is how Gingergeist reaches the next reader who has not found us yet.

🔄 Restack if you have ever left Target with something you did not go in for.

Or: like it, forward it to the friend who still talks about the Sonia Kashuk era, or drop your own Target confession in the comments.

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Having traveled many a summer holiday to cover the street and retail scenes in St. Tropez, the Hamptons, and elsewhere (those expense accounts are sorely missed), we’re used to the typical pop-ups and summer activations luxury brands use to position themselves. Last Autumn, Gingergeist explored the rise of embedded retail for a post-mall generation. Windowswear recently did a story on Euro Summer 2026, inside fashion’s seasonal pop-up takeover.

We’ve also heard some grumbling this year that activations felt more like a rehash of last season than anything new (a few seemed content to let a stack of branded towels do the talking). We’ll let you draw your own conclusions on which ones. This is how brands build worlds, after all, and world-building is meant to be aspirational. (Hey, we can’t all be Ralph Lauren). But this summer we’re seeing something different, with continuing tariffs and pump prices taking a toll on summer travel budgets.

VB Beauty Brings Portofino to Nolita

Picture Portofino in 1997: Victoria and David Beckham, sun-drenched and in love, on an Italian Riviera getaway that would eventually become a fragrance. (Talking about turning a moment into a scent!) That memory is the whole premise behind Victoria Beckham Beauty’s NYC pop-up, and the resulting Portofino ‘97 fragrance, and a Gingergeist favorite. A limited-time pop-up at Caffè Paradiso from July 16th to 20th celebrated the fragrance and brought the Italian Riviera to Nolita, open to the public at no cost. A special menu featured an exclusive ‘97 Iced Vanilla Bergamot Latte alongside espresso and sweet treats. (Clearly, fashion has an eye on the food and beverage business).

Ginger Spark: Where most luxury brands have gone the obvious route, VB Beauty gave NYC a chance to post OOO with a little piece of Portofino, reimagined for Manhattan. Victoria Beckham’s latest address was where Italian Riviera fantasy met New York polish. Between the citrus-infused Mediterranean decor and a vintage 1972 Fiat 500 display featuring a custom “VB P97” license plate, Posh Spice pulled off something both savvy and budget-friendly for discovery.

At its core, the pop-up bottled a single moment in time, that 1997 getaway, and invited anyone wearing the fragrance to step into it. And what’s more captivating than that? 🩵

Jacquemus: From a Corsican Lighthouse to Terminal 1

After staging the highly anticipated and acclaimed runway presentation Le Bonheur on June 29th in a seemingly impossible location, a path to a 19th-century lighthouse on Île-Rousse, Corsica, Simon Porte Jacquemus did something even more impressive. The very next day, June 30th, the brand opened its first airport boutique at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport in Terminal 1. The 45-square-meter shop offers ready-to-wear, leather goods, and accessories.

The French label has been on the vanguard of creative activations from the get-go, popping up in unexpected locations and taking advantage of creative real estate experiences: from opening the lemon-themed Café Citron and Oursin at Galeries Lafayette, to giant bags on wheels in Paris, to an intimate space in Soho with a pop-up truck. This summer, the brand smartly returned to Monte-Carlo Beach (running through September 27th), and to the Jondal Beach Club in Ibiza, offering the Le Bonheur vision of simple summer pleasure, sea breezes, and light.

Ginger Spark: Surprisingly, in a LinkedIn Post, the brand asked, “Where to find us this summer?” and offered a list of seasonal boutiques and destinations. With the Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport location, the French label continues to grow its brick-and-mortar network strategically, taking the number of directly operated stores to 21. A huge plus: the comparatively small Terminal 1 location is open from Monday to Sunday, 7 am to 10 pm :) It’s also a savvy read on the traveler herself, who’s just as likely to need a passport as a last-minute swimsuit cover-up. Forgot your beach bag at home, or need something for the flight back that doesn’t scream airport purchase? Jacquemus has you covered, from morning check-in to wherever the night takes you!

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Sol de Janeiro Rides the Brazilcore Wave

“Brazilcore” is a major summer 2026 fashion trend movement, celebrating Brazilian identity (brasilidade) through vibrant color and fueled by international celebrities and sporting momentum. Key style elements include the iconic canary yellow and green national soccer jersey, styled with denim or streetwear. Tropical and handmade-looking textures abound, incorporating crafts like crochet, lace, weaving, and embroidery. Havaianas, tracksuits, and casual crop tops are being embraced, fueled by high-profile artists and models like Dua Lipa, Sabrina Carpenter, Tyla, and Hailey Bieber, and brands like Farm Rio are rapidly expanding. Brazil has become big business, so much so that Vogue weighed in!

Interestingly, French L’Occitane Group acquired an 83% majority stake in Sol de Janeiro in November 2021, valuing the skincare brand at $450 million at the time. Sol de Janeiro debuted in the summer of 2015 with a localized, body-positive philosophy inspired by Brazilian beach culture. Its first-ever drop consisted of exactly three items: Brazilian Bum Bum Cream (we love the scent and naming convention), Brazilian Golden Body Veil (later discontinued), and Samba Foot Fetish Care. It quickly grew into one of Sephora’s biggest brands. However, more recently, Sol de Janeiro experienced a bit of a backlash. In early 2026, Sol de Janeiro’s momentum showed clear signs of cooling, marked by ranking slippage at Sephora, a significant drop in online search interest, and executive changes, including the departure of founder Heela Yang. Much of it comes down to competitors like Kayali, Phlur, and Ellis Brooklyn crowding the viral body-mist wave the brand once had to itself.

Cue “Brazilcore” and Sol de Janeiro is back in action!

Launching Body Badalada Lotion, the brand planned global sampling events at Sephora Westfield White City, London, Wembley, and even a Harry Styles Concert, with lotion samples, Cheirosa perfume mist spritzes, and games. Additionally, the brand brought the sampling home, partnering with Sephora for a huge mailer sampling initiative.

Ginger Spark: According to DFNI, Marion Amirouche, Senior Brand Manager, Sol de Janeiro (L’Occitane Global Travel Retail), was quoted as saying: “Travel retail is a natural stage for Sol de Janeiro, where discovery, emotion and unforgettable experiences are at the heart of the journey. These exciting new launches perfectly capture the joyful spirit of the brand, inviting travelers to discover new textures, layer their favorite Cheirosa fragrances and take their Sol de Janeiro rituals with them wherever they go. With innovations such as our first-ever Jelly Perfume Balms and new travel-friendly formats, we continue to bring fresh, sensorial beauty experiences to travelers worldwide while celebrating the confidence and self-expression at the heart of Sol de Janeiro.” As Gingergeist has continued to emphasize, whether at home or away, know where your potential customers may show up, and meet them where they are!

If you know someone who still thinks a pop-up is just a folding table and a QR code, restack this. It's honestly the main way people who haven't found Gingergeist yet actually find us, especially if they've ever watched a brand nail the "meet them where they are" moment and immediately started planning their next trip around it.

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Walk into any Sephora right now, and the shelf tells you everything. Bronzer is gathering dust. Blush is sold out in six shades. The color cosmetic category has quietly staged a coup, and skin-first, low-effort application won. A naturally flushed complexion is no longer the finishing touch on a full face; it’s the whole point of the routine.

We’ve been calling this one since before it had a name. In our BeautyMark Autumn/Winter 2017 forecast, we wrote that draping, applying blush past the cheekbone and up to the temple to sculpt the complexion with peach and rose, was already starting to happen. Years later, the industry finally has a name for the technique we spotlighted back in 2016. Ginger Spark No. 8 flagged it again more recently, calling blush the new makeup darling, heightening the feminine flush across NYFW Fall 2026 collections.

So when Marie Claire UK designated 2026 the definitive Year of Blush, it confirmed something we’d bet on twice already: understanding the formulation and format innovation behind this category is what separates lasting success from a fading fad.

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Red lipstick never really left, but this week it came back loud. Three very different brands staked their claim on the perfect red within days of each other, and none of them are selling the same thing. Sephora crowdsourced a bracket. VIOLETTE_FR sold effortlessness. Ellis Faas sold permission to mess it up. Same shade, three completely different pitches: here's how each one is trying to win you over!

Sephora’s Red Lip Bracket

Sephora didn’t bother easing into it. The subject line cut straight to the point: “QUICK BREAK FROM ⚽ TO TALK ABOUT 💄,” dropping readers into the Chat for hot drops, insider expertise, and one very specific mission: finding the perfect red lip. Social marketer and content creator Natasha took on the search for “the one,” crowning a red lipstick for every category:

• Longest Wearing: Sephora Collection Cream Lip Stain 10 HR Liquid Lipstick in Always Red — $16

• Best Matte: Dior Rouge Dior Forever Liquid Transfer-Proof Lipstick in 999 Forever Dior — $48

• Most Innovative: Haus Labs by Lady Gaga Atomic Shake High-Shine Longwear Lipstick in Maroon-Mulberry Wine — $28

• Best Liner: Hung Vanngo Beauty Accentuating Longwear Lip Liner in New York Red — $24

• Most Comfortable Wear: Maed Signature Lip Pigment Matte Liquid Lipstick in Ritual Red — $36

Land on the product page and you get a full spread of shots plus a video of a woman applying it, declaring “red lips, but make it skincare.”

Maed bills the shade as a universally flattering red balanced with violet undertones, promising bold one-swipe coverage. Cherry coffee seed oil replenishes moisture, jojoba esters smooth things over, and tacuma butter locks in comfort, while a precision applicator sculpts the lip line for wear that holds its shape all day.

Ginger Spark: We're always here for a signature red lip moment, and this one is smart on two fronts. Sephora didn't just simplify the search; it stacked options across budget and niche brands, and the price spread backs it up: $16 for the Sephora Collection stain up to $48 for Dior, with $24 to $36 filling in the middle. That's an actual entry point for everyone, not just a marketing line. And that skincare-first formula language confirms what we've been tracking: lip color keeps absorbing skincare's language and ingredients. Having Natasha front the edit adds a peer-to-peer layer too; this reads less like a retailer pushing product and more like a friend who already did the research for you.

Effortless, But Make It French

The voiceover to VIOLETTE_FR’s Plume Lip ad asks, “Who is this woman? Confident, radiant, and ready to shine,” while text sweeps across the screen: Ultra Blurred Lips, Plume Lip, feather matte lip whip. The backdrop is NYC, but the mood is minimal French: a hotel hallway or apartment building, a trench coat, a straw bag, black oval sunglasses. The model applies the shade using her phone screen as a mirror.

Shade En Feu, which translates to “on fire” (fitting), is described as a warm, fiery red, bright and fresh. VIOLETTE_FR asks shoppers to “forget everything you know about liquid lipstick,” positioning Plume Lip as a feather matte, medium-coverage lip whip with a hydrating, gel-cream texture that cushions the lips and delivers bold color with an ultra-blurred, effortless finish. Built for intuitive, mirrorless application, the formula glides on without tools or precision, staying emollient-rich and comfort-first while nourishing lips through a weightless finish and a 12-hour stain.

Violette’s inspiration:

After launching the Bisou collection, I couldn’t stop thinking about the word Plume, feather, in French. The name lingered in my mind and eventually, a vision took shape: it was something light as a single feather, soft and airy, yet with the strength of powerful wings, color rich with depth. The first expression of that vision is Plume Lip. This formula is such a paradox, it’s bold and tender at once. It gives you a strong color payoff but the feeling and application are totally instinctive. It’s makeup that embraces imperfection, it invites you to play.

Ginger Spark: This lands right alongside Saia’s No Drama Makeup post on Instagram this week, another entry in the “effortless” lip conversation aiming squarely at the cool girl running out the door and still looking chic. Signature color, minimal effort, maximum impact. We’re into the statement feature, but designedbynatalyaponte offers a useful gut check on how the product actually performs: “Bought both reds and they are pretty mid. They are alright but not amazing and probably won’t buy again. Also, within a few weeks, the gold branding and text on the case completely flaked off. They weren’t even handled much or tossed in my bag. Flashy packaging that doesn’t hold up.” There’s always room to read the comments and wear test for life.

Ellis Faas Colors Outside the Lines

One of Gingergeist’s favorite brands, Ellis Faas, keeps inviting its audience to play on another level. This week, an upside-down male model with a smeared red lip anchored a caption that read, “Some people feel safe with instructions. Others prefer coloring outside the lines. If it doesn’t turn out how you wanted, grab the eraser and start over.” The week before, Ellis Faas released a video of children playing with the brand’s signature metal packaging, drawing all over their own and each other’s faces.

Perfectly timed for summer, the brand asked, “Don’t you ever miss that feeling of discovering things for the first time as a kid?” and explained further: “One sunny afternoon in Amsterdam, we propped open the door, stuck a sign outside, and invited passing kids to come in and play with our products.” Ellis Faas herself (1962 to 2020), named one of the most influential makeup artists of her generation by Vogue Paris, put it simply: “Just experiment. If you don’t like the result, simply remove it and try again, because, for crying out loud, it’s only makeup.” Marc Jacobs said something similar during his recent makeup line relaunch.

Ginger Spark: When we covered The Makeup Show NYC, Ellis Faas stood out for living in that rare space between professional-grade and genuinely consumer-friendly. This new marketing plays right into that positioning, mixing newstalgia with a dose of whimsy that sophisticated beauty offerings often skip entirely. We had the privilege of watching Ellis Faas do her lip artistry in person, and she was, without question, a huge fan of the red lip. Every shade she created was derived from humans and nature, and one red became so spectacular the brand nicknamed it Ellis Red. She was also known to laugh about being called “Ellis Fast,” a nod to how quickly she could turn a face around backstage.

The real question is texture:

• Creamy Lips (L101): traditional, full coverage

• Milky Lips (L201): slightly transparent

• Glazed Lips (L301): non-sticky gloss

• Hot Lips: ridiculously pigmented, for anyone who wants maximum payoff

The Ellis Red Set bottles the same blood-red shade across Creamy, Milky, and Glazed, wearable solo or layered together. Why commit to one texture when the set hands you all three?

Before you close the tab: if a shade in here is already sitting in your makeup bag, restack it. That is how Gingergeist reaches the readers who haven’t found us yet :)

💄 Restack if you have ever bought the same red lipstick twice because you couldn’t remember owning the first one.

❤️ Like it so the algorithm works in our favor for once.

📧 Forward it to the friend who has strong opinions about the perfect red.

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✉️ Got a tip, a collab idea, or your own red lip origin story? Email us at gingergeisty@gmail.com.

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Pitti Uomo and Paris Men’s Fashion Week just wrapped during one of the hottest summers Europe has seen in years, and the heat was doing more than making headlines. At the Maison Kitsuné SS27 “Urban Glide” presentation, the first model opened the show by misting his face with thermal water spray, a moment we flagged last week as a signal worth watching. It was a small gesture with a larger implication. Men are moving well past soap-and-water, trading in the bare minimum for something closer to a full skincare ritual. The industry is growing fast enough to confirm this is not a moment. It is only getting started.

Market Boom, Cultural Shift

According to Fortune Business Insights, the global men’s grooming market will surpass $85 billion by 2032. NielsenIQ data show men’s personal care sales in the U.S. grew 4.2 percent in 2025, outpacing total beauty’s 3.3 percent growth. Hair growth, hair spray, and skin exfoliants each grew at 15-plus-percent clips. Circana reports that men’s prestige fragrance sales rose 5 percent over the last twelve months, now accounting for 32 percent of the market.

The cultural story behind those numbers runs deeper. WWD has noted that internet-native young men have driven a surge of grooming interest, while older consumers have approached it from a longevity angle, building more considered routines around prevention and maintenance. Nearly 68 percent of Gen Z men now use facial skincare, a number that would have seemed unthinkable a decade ago.

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