FEBRUARY 5, 2021
A Publication of WWD
Lash PointIn an otherwise dismal year for makeup, lashes and brows
have been a bright spot in the category. For more, see pages 5 and 6. PLUS: Sharon Chuter’s latest initiative and a 2021 outlook for the British beauty scene.
PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRIS MIGGLES ¬ STYLED BY ALEX BADIA ¬ MAKEUP BY KUMA
ISSUE #41
Wing & Weft's leather gloves
Beauty Bulletin
2
FEBRUARY 5, 2021
THE BUZZ
¬ A new campaign, called “Make It Black,” from beauty entrepreneur and activist Sharon Chuter aims to reverse the negative connotations associated with the word “black.”
In a press conference held via Zoom on Jan. 28, Chuter cited currently listed synonyms for the word “black” — “vile, evil, nefarious, threatening and oppressive” — that stem from the false, colonial thinking that “white is right.”
“We're taking a stand this Black History Month against that language,” Chuter told reporters. The goal of Make It Black is “not only to reject the definitions, but also to celebrate the beauty of black, and we hope in doing so people can actually see that black is beautiful and black means more.”
In conjunction with Chuter's Pull Up For Change, Make It Black will partner with Briogeo, Colourpop, Dragun Beauty, Flower Beauty, Maybelline, Morphe, NYX Professional Makeup, Pur and Uoma Beauty, the brand Chuter founded and leads, to repackage each brands' most popular products in black. The limited-edition items will be sold throughout the month of February via Ulta Beauty's website, as well as Make It Black and the participating brands' own channels.
Dave Kimbell, president of Ulta Beauty, which just appointed Tracee
Ellis Ross as its diversity and inclusion adviser, expressed the retailer's commitment to “amplify and celebrate Black voices.” The product assortment “can spark a powerful dialogue, help shift perceptions, and very importantly, accelerate future beauty leaders on their journeys,” he said in a provided statement.
All proceeds from the Make It Black campaign will go to the newly established Pull Up For Change Impact Fund, which aims to address the lack of investment in Black-owned businesses. A 2019 report by RateMyInvestor and Diversity VC found that out of nearly 10,000 venture-backed founders, more than three-quarters were white. About 18 percent were Asian, while 1.8 percent were Latine. Only 1 percent of those founders were Black.
In an effort to combat these statistics, the Pull Up For Change Impact Fund will provide grants, via live pitch contests, to pre-seed funding stage businesses that might be able to use the money to create prototypes — and receive further investment. The live pitch contests are meant to be “completely democratic and completely transparent,” Chuter said. Make It Black's website will also display a live, fund allocation tracker for transparency's sake.
“We will be deploying between
$25,000 to $100,000 per founder to make sure that it can make a change in their businesses,” Chuter said, specifying the fund's goal of raising $5 million in February.
“We are not taking equity in any of [these] businesses, it is not a loan, they're not required to pay [it] back,” she said. “The onus is on us to do the due diligence to make sure that we are giving [grants] to the best ideas.”
The Make It Black campaign approached roughly 30 venture capital firms, including VMG Partners, where Alisa Williams, one of only a handful of Black women venture capital investors, is a partner.
“[Williams is] helping us pull together a network of VC firms [and] wants to do early-stage [investing] so that when we invest in founders, they are on the radar of these firms,” Chuter said.
The fund will not focus much on mentorship, as “Black founders are very often over-mentored and under-invested,” Chuter said.
The “Make It Black” campaign also comes with a Change.org petition to rewrite the definitions and synonyms for the word “black.” In her open letter to both the Oxford English dictionary and Merriam-Webster dictionary, Chuter wrote that language “should be neutral, unbiased and reflective of our current realities.”
Speaking to reporters, Chuter offered alternate entries for dictionary definitions of the word “black.”“Let me tell you what should be in there to define black: luxury,” Chuter said. “Black is the color of luxury. That is the reason why The Batmobile is black. It's the reason why Amex, the highest color is black. Black is classic, black is timeless, black is stylish, black is chic. When I say to somebody, 'That person dresses black,' you instantly know what I'm talking about — you know that person has rhythm.” —Alexa Tietjen
Sharon Chuter Calls for Redefining ‘Black’ in ‘Make It Black’ Campaign
Prestige Beauty Sales Fell in 2020 Year-end numbers from the NPD Group show that e-commerce grew 46 percent in 2020, in spite of market-wide tumbles. BY JAMES MANSO
PRESTIGE BEAUTY SALES dropped 19 percent in the U.S. in 2020 to $16.1 billion, posting a $3.8 billion loss year-over-year, according to year-end data from the NPD Group.
Brick-and-mortar declined almost 39 percent, said Larissa Jensen, vice president of beauty and industry advisor at the NPD Group, while digital sales increased 46 percent and represented over 50 percent of sales for both hair care and skin care for the first time.
Bright spots included prestige hair care, which grew 8 percent. Treatment products like masks did well, while styling products slowed the category's momentum. “The category was growing double-digits and it still did soften,”
Jensen said. “Shampoos, conditioners as well as specialty hair products like masks – the segment did well, which is due to the stay-at-home economy.”
Makeup sales bore the brunt of the crisis, plummeting 34 percent. The challenges the category faces are manifold. “The biggest markets for makeup are big cities, which are also having a harder time with economic recovery from the pandemic. Those cities have the steepest makeup declines,” Jensen said. “The declines in makeup are dragging the industry, and the industry's recovery is tied to makeup.”
Jensen said that in 2020, every segment of color declined.
“Makeup has a lot of headwinds. It's up against a lot.” Jensen said. Lip faced the steepest drops.
Makeup is still the largest category in prestige beauty, but Jensen predicted skin care may overtake it by the end of 2021. Skin care sales dropped 11 percent, with the biggest losses in face creams, eye treatments, serums and lotions. More surprisingly, the typically staid body category softened skin care's losses, along with hand soap, targeted skin treatments and facial devices.
Within skin care, clinical brands became the largest brand type in sales, overtaking natural. “Clinical, as a brand type, always had a higher penetration of sales in e-commerce. It makes sense
online: it's a technical category, you might want to be doing more research to learn more about products,” Jensen said. “When the entire industry moved to online, they stood to benefit from that. They actually posted growth, the only brand type to grow at 3 percent.”
As for fragrance, that category fell 8 percent, but showed resilience in the second half of the year. “Since August, fragrance has had positive monthly dollar performance,” Jensen said.
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Hair was the only category in prestige beauty to post growth year-over-year.
Uoma Beauty’s Sharon Chuter.
Sharon Chuter aims to redefine "black" and raise money for Black-owned businesses.
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FEBRUARY 5, 2021
NEWS FEED
LONDON — Should beauty brands
ditch the influencers, and collaborate
among themselves? Should brands
“go silent” online every once in a
while, and is a post-pandemic punk
movement brewing?
A new report called Beyond Beauty
addresses those questions, and more,
and looks at the trends for 2021, and
the coming decade.
Compiled by the business-to-
business and business-to-consumer
platform and digital bookings site,
Beautystack, and The Digital Fairy,
a creative agency and consultancy,
it draws on hundreds of surveys of
industry players, chiefly in the U.K.
Indeed, Beyond Beauty is a
state of the union address to the
industry, taking in micro and macro
movements, new formats, attitudes
and habits, and examining the
impact of COVID-19 on brands,
stylists, technicians, consumers,
entrepreneurs and business leaders.
The report was commissioned
by Sharmadean Reid, the British-
Jamaican entrepreneur behind
Beautystack, founder of the former
WAH Nails salon in London and a
female empowerment advocate. The
Digital Fairy is an all-female business
that works with brands ranging from
Chanel and Estée Lauder to Bleach
and Topicals.
Reid, who talked through the
report in a webinar alongside The
Digital Fairy’s Olivia Yallop, sees
beauty as a force for change. The
report's findings, she said, gave
her hope for the future “primarily
because the power is back in the
consumer’s hands. The playing field
has leveled and things have become
more democratic.”
The two pointed to a mega-shift
in the industry, with consumers’
and beauty professionals' attitudes
adapting and changing as the long
months wore on.
Consumers' routines swung in all
directions — some binged on at-home
or stealth treatments in car parking
lots; others went makeup-free, and
others still took an “anti-aesthetic”
route by shaving their heads or
embracing extreme looks or makeup.
Some tried them all.
The report said, “How do I shave
my head at home?” was one of the
most frequently asked questions
online throughout the first lockdown
in the spring.
Some “anti-aesthetics” advocates
refused to shave their legs or
groom their brows. Others swapped
glamorous looks for Gothic ones. Reid
noted that subcultures always grow
out of crisis and trauma, and said
she’s curious to see what aesthetics
emerge from the COVID-19 era.
The report also talked about the rise
in unconventional products, including
Topicals, the skin care brand that
specializes in conditions such as
psoriasis. The brand encourages
women to embrace their flaws, and
openly acknowledges that no one can
be happy with their skin all the time.
New sustainability movements,
including “blue beauty,” which
focuses on water conservation in
products and manufacturing, also
made their way into the report.
The authors pointed to the “anti-
establishment, anti-capitalist mood”
that permeated industry circles
during lockdown. The beauty industry
in the U.K. was hit hard by lockdown
as most workers are self-employed,
and didn’t necessarily qualify for the
government’s furlough scheme.
Industry organizations including
CEW U.K., the British Association
of Beauty Therapy & Cosmetology
and the British Beauty Council
all lobbied government for help
throughout last year.
But it was just last month that
a sector-specific team within
government, dedicated to supporting
personal care, was set up.
“The government had no
understanding of what was going on,”
said Reid adding that, during lockdown,
beauty industry figures became activists
and prioritized social justice.
“This industry is female-employed
and female-owned, and it was time
to speak up,” said Reid, adding that
the beauty industry contributed
28.4 billion pounds in 2018 to the
U.K. economy.
“People had to show actionable
change against their (stated) values,”
said Reid, adding that beauty
consumers were also looking at the
difference between what brands say,
and what they actually do.
Dark salons and strict social
distancing measures also forced
beauty professionals to become
“hackers and hustlers,” creating
new businesses on the fly. Reid and
Yallop said many became influencers
and content creators, or “upskilled”
and learned how to give vitamin C
injections or stealth lash lifts in open
places like car parks.
Yallop also pointed to a surge in DIY
beauty with “microbrands making
home batches of candles or hair oils or
making small runs of product,” just to
keep themselves afloat.
The report argues that the next
decade will belong to “the rule
breakers and rebels,” and pointed
to the overlap between beauty and
gaming, and to all the beauty action
on TikTok.
Yallop believes the next years
should bring “brand-to-brand
collaboration, or multibrand
alliances — an untapped area in
beauty. Brands could unite around
a product or a cause,” she said.
She also argued that “we’ve hit
capacity with brand-influencer
collaborations. Many influencers
have now launched their own brands,
and people are tired of the model.”
Yallop also wondered whether big,
online beauty communities will in
the future give way to smaller, more
private, micro gatherings.
She believes people are tired of
corporations using algorithms to
create communities, and that they
will naturally migrate to “niche, gate-
kept, invite-only, safe groups,” which
are untraceable by the corporate
marketing machines.
These new micro-groups might
even be pay-for-play, “because
consumers today are prepared to
pay for quality content,” said Reid,
whether that is advice, a tutorial or a
therapy session.
Looking ahead, brands will
also have to rethink their content
strategies, perhaps adding audio and
“digital rest stops and moments of
silence” with no ads or content so
viewers can take a break and avoid
“screen fatigue.”
Beauty’s overlap with wellness, and
the necessity of striking a balance
between internal and external beauty
was another big theme.
The authors said that with
meditation and other mind-body
practices becoming part of people's
daily routines, “self-mastery” —
getting to the root of personal
problems via meditation or other
practices — will overtake one-off
“self-soothing” beauty remedies.
The trend certainly plays to Reid's
overriding philosophy that “beauty is
a way we can all find a little hope in
the world.”
Beholding Beauty: Report Looks at Impact Of COVID-19 on Industry, Trends to Expect “The power is back in the consumer’s hands,” said Sharmadean Reid, whose company Beautystack is behind a comprehensive survey of beauty trends in 2021, and beyond. BY SAMANTHA CONTI
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An illustration from the new "Beyond Beauty" report.
5
FEBRUARY 5, 2021
DEEP DIVE
IN THE AGE OF COVID-19, face
masks have made eyes — and brows
— the focus.
“Right now, the eyes are the thing
that is captivating everybody’s
look,” said Yasmin Maya, known as
BeautyyBird to her more than 1 million
YouTube subscribers. “Everyone wants
to have their eyes looking beautiful or
having them stand out.”
When the beauty vlogger decided
to start her own brand, launching
with false lashes was a no-brainer,
she said.
“Lashes is what does it for everybody
right now,” she continued. “Even if you
were to go on a date, I mean, you still
have to wear your mask, so how can
you be flirty and be seductive and all
that? It’s just kind of having the eyes
speak for themselves.”
She launched Birdy Lashes in
December with two faux-mink lash
styles and two eyeliners that double as
adhesives. The liner-glue combo makes
daily false lash wear easier, she said, and
her aim is to provide quality and light-
weight vegan options at an affordable
cost. Everything is priced at $12, and
lashes can be reused up to 25 times.
Innovation in the category has
been centered on enhancing the
application process of false lashes.
Jenna Lyons, for example, the
designer turned lash entrepreneur
who launched Loveseen last year, has
introduced a $34 bespoke tool that
looks like tweezers crossed with the
curvature of a mascara wand, to make
application easier for consumers.
Meanwhile, Ann McFerran,
founder and chief executive officer of
Glamnetic, has become a major player
with her magnetic eyelashes and
eyeliners, which allow for false lashes
to be applied in seconds (with both
vegan and mink products, starting
at $29.99 for a pair). Launched in
August 2019, Glamnetic’s revenue
doubled month-over-month and
reached $50 million in total sales
last year. It’s projected to grow into
a nine-figure business in 2021, said
McFerran, who has grown her team
to 70. Along with being direct-to-
consumer, Glamnetic is found at Ulta
and Amazon and plans to expand into
other retailers this year.
Before launching her brand,
“magnetic lashes had gone viral for
a moment and then went crashing
down,” said McFerran, adding that the
execution was poor, and as a result,
the trend fizzled away. She saw a
gap in the market, as someone who
regularly used false lashes herself, and
developed a magnet mechanism that
worked well and offered a variety of
lash styles including a “full glam look.”
Eyelash trends, as with all beauty
norms, vary across cultures and have
changed from decade to decade.
The business of lengthening and
thickening eyelashes dates back to
at least the 19th century in France,
where a procedure involving sewing
human hairs onto eyelids developed
in Paris. By 1911, a Canadian woman
named Anna Taylor reportedly
received a U.S. patent for false
eyelashes, placing pieces of fabric
with hairs onto lash lines with an
adhesive — a technique that’s similar
to the lash strips used today.
These days, it’s not just about
products but treatments, too. Salons
offer eyelash perms, where a relaxer
is used to manipulate and curl
natural eyelashes, as well as eyelash
extensions, where either mink fur (the
hair is brushed off the animal) or faux
hairs — typically made of a plastic
fiber called polybutylene terephthalate
— are manually glued onto existing
eyelashes by licensed cosmetologists.
Costs vary tremendously depending
on the salon but start around $150 for
a basic full set. �
Eyeing a Bright Spot for Makeup In a tough makeup market, the eye category — particularly lashes and brows — is giving the business a much-needed lift.
BY RYMA CHIKHOUNE ¬ PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRIS MIGGLES
STYLED BY ALEX BADIA ¬ MAKEUP BY KUMA
Alexander McQueen's antique silver, gold and
pavé ear hook set.
6
FEBRUARY 5, 2021
DEEP DIVE
“There are 34,000 lash services in
the U.S., growing about 30 percent
a year,” said Philippe Sanchez,
CEO of Luum. “And yet it’s still
very fragmented. It’s not a very
sophisticated service today.”
Luum, founded by Nathan Harding
and Kurt Amundson in Oakland,
Calif., is looking to innovate the
category in the service industry. The
company, which is three years in the
making, has developed technology
and machinery using computer vision,
artificial intelligence and robotics to
reinvent the business of eyelashes.
The service is “exactly like a
manual extension,” Sanchez said.
Customers close their eyes as the
machine applies the lash extensions,
while a certified technician is present.
The benefit, he said, is a much
faster service, cutting down what can
be a two-and half-hour endeavor to
20 minutes. The robotic element is
quick and precise, he said, while the
computer vision is able to work on a
microscopic level, and AI is used to
adapt to the varying types of human
faces and eyelashes.
“The way the technology works,
it’s extremely safe because the lash
is very, very light, therefore we
don’t need force to manipulate the
lash,” Sanchez said. The arm-like
part of the machine that applies
each lash is light in weight. “It’s a
tool, a technology that transforms
the experience for consumers and
empowers the expert lash artist to
do what he or she is best at, to give
stylistic guidance, advice, prep and
finish off.”
The company, which raised $10
million and is looking to collect its
next round of funding, will open
its first salon in the Bay Area in the
coming months, offering a premium
service “at a competitive price.” Los
Angeles — the number-one market in
lash extensions, according to Sanchez
— is next, followed by locations in Asia.
It was in Asia, predominantly in
Japan during the Aughts, that eyelash
extensions first boomed. In the U.S.,
Hollywood has influenced eyelash
trends since the days of silent film
starlets. Then came Fifties glamour
with icons like Marilyn Monroe,
followed by the 1960s with more
playful looks worn by fashion figures
like Twiggy. There was Cher in the
'70s, Madonna in the '80s, and the
supermodels in the Nineties, who
repopularized bold, voluminous lashes.
But culturally, it was when modern
celebrities such as Paris Hilton and
Jennifer Lopez were seen wearing
false lashes regularly that the public
took notice, and the industry grew
in the mass market (Lopez famously
wore a pair made of red fox fur by Shu
Uemura to the 2001 Oscars).
The global false eyelashes market
size was valued at $1.1 billion in
2018, according to market research
firm Grand View Research and is
expected to reach $1.6 billion by
2025. The entire eye market, which
includes both eyelashes and brows,
was estimated at $14.52 billion in
2018, the company reports. In the
U.S., though eye makeup sales dipped
in 2020 due to the pandemic, the
category was the most profitable
segment in cosmetics last year, with
a sales revenue of $1.96 billion,
according to market and consumer
data firm Statista.
On the retail side, Sephora saw
success last year in both brow and
lash categories, as clients “prioritized
above the mask beauty,” said
Alison Hahn, senior vice president
of merchandising in makeup, in
a statement.
“Specifically, we saw increased
demand for brow and lash
enhancements,” she said. “Prior
to mask-wearing shifting client’s
beauty habits, we saw a new trend
developing toward a more natural,
fluffy brow look that helped drive
heightened interest in the category….
We anticipate continued growth for
brow and lash products as clients
remain home without regular access
to salons. Clients will continue to
prioritize above the mask beauty —
like focusing on the eyes and tending
to brows and lashes.”
Eyebrow trends, too, have shifted
throughout the years, yo-yoing
between the influence of full brows
with pop culture figures like Brooke
Shields and Cara Delevingne or pencil
thin variations, most notably seen on
Pamela Anderson and Gwen Stefani
— who now has fuller brows.
“The greatest eyebrow makeover of
all time is Gwen Stefani, because she
had this uber thin brow in the 2000s
when she was going through her
rock stage, her solo artist debut,” said
Natalie Plain, founder of Billion Dollar
Brows. “If you look at her now, she’s
completely transformed her brow.”
Plain launched her brand in 2004
with Brow Boost, a brow primer
and conditioner. While there were
eyelash serums on the market at the
time, there were few brands focused
on brows.
“It just took off,” she said. Plain
then released the Universal Brow
Pencil, formulated with a creamy
pomade to fill in the brow. “It’s our
number-one selling product to date
and always has been.”
Billion Dollar Brows saw growth in
2020, she said: “We closed our year as
our strongest year yet.”
Big names in brow include
Anastasia Soare of Anastasia Beverly
Hills, who parlayed her signature
Golden Ratio brow technique into a
billion-dollar beauty brand and social
media superstardom status.
“By '94, I had a line outside of every
celebrity you could think of,” she said.
“I was working 16 hours a day six
days a week, sometimes seven. On
Sundays, I used to do house calls.”
A significant change in the industry
throughout the years has been the
influence of social media and how it
has morphed and accelerated trends
in brows, she said.
Young consumers are
experimenting more than ever, like
removing the wing of their brows
for a #foxeye look, as popularized on
TikTok, or opting for the “feathered”
style — which was made fashionable
by celebrity brow artist Kristie
Streicher of Striiike. When it comes
to services, consumers can now get
semi-permanent shaped brows using
the lamination technique, a perming
treatment that keeps a look on for
six to eight weeks, or microblading,
which is more invasive and lasts one
to two years.
“It’s human nature that people get
bored and want to play around with
their brows, but all of us that have
gone through all the trends of brows
know better,” Streicher said. “It takes
a long time to grow back or may
never grow back.”
Though she’s now based in L.A.,
she moved to New York City in 2001,
when thinner brows were the trend.
Coming from Northern California,
she brought natural, fuller brows to
the city and to her clientele.
“It’s like eyelashes,” she said. “The
more eyelashes that you have, the
more youthful and beautiful you
look. Same thing with eyebrows…I
have [clients] grow the hair and work
with what they’ve got and embrace
whatever it is that they have, whether
they’ve over-tweezed — how to
cultivate the best shape working with
what hair they have and tools like
pencils — or have a giant unibrow.”
Embracing individual beauty is
where the industry has been heading.
And it’s the motto at TooD Beauty,
founded by ceo Shari Siadat — who
makes a point of celebrating
the unibrow.
“I grew up in a very small town in
Massachusetts,” she said. “I had less
than 3,000 people in my town. I like
to say that I grew up in a sea of blond
hair and blue eyes. I loved playing
with Barbie, too, so I definitely
thought having dark hair there was
something quite different about me.
Before I really had an opportunity
to truly understand how different I
looked, my classmates made it quite
apparent to me that I looked different
than them.”
She was bullied for her darker
skin, unibrow and “just my overall
hairiness,” she said. “All I wanted to
do was fit in.”
In her teens, she got rid of the
unibrow, made her eyebrows “as thin
as humanly possible” and bleached
her facial and body hair.
“I did anything I could do to
look more and more American,
Euro-centric, to fit the norm of
what I saw in the media,” she said.
“I was obsessed with it.”
Things changed after she had
her third child. While her first two
daughters were blond and blue-
eyed, her youngest daughter was her
spitting image — which kicked off a
turning point. Becoming a mother
made Siadat reflect and changed her
point of view. “If my kids don't see a
woman who really loves herself, they
really don’t have a chance.”
She let her eyebrow hair grow,
and it felt liberating. She hopes to
offer the same with her brand, TooD,
a clean d-to-c color cosmetics line
launched in January with products
like the Brow Color Cream (made
in bold colors) that can be worn
anywhere on the face or body. There
are no rules, Siadat said.
“TooD is short for attitude,” she
added. “It’s about understanding and
honoring that at any moment you can
pivot and you have the opportunity
and agency to change how you feel
about yourself, change what you
think is a beauty standard of how
you wear makeup, where you wear
makeup and who it’s for.” ■
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@kuma1206
How did you get your start? I always wanted to work in the beauty industry. After
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My style is influenced by graphic lines and colors.
My five must-have products:
¬Bobbi Brown Vitamin Enriched Face Vase
¬Kryolan Dermacolor Camouflage Creme
¬MAC Taupe Powder Blush
¬Addiction Tokyo The Glow Stick
¬Shiseido Moilip Lip Treatment
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FEBRUARY 5, 2021
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A LOOK BACK
THE BEAUTY INDUSTRY HAS a
long history of Black entrepreneurship
that stems largely from women.
Before the days of direct-to-
consumer, Annie Turnbo Malone,
Madam C.J. Walker and Sara Spencer
Washington sold their homemade
beauty products door-to-door,
scaling their businesses beyond their
humble beginnings and amassing
extraordinary wealth.
Here, WWD takes a look back at
Black-owned beauty businesses from
decades past.
ANNIE TURNBO MALONEAnnie Turnbo Malone was one of
the first Black women to achieve
millionaire status in America. The
niece of an herbalist and daughter of
formerly enslaved parents, Malone
created a chemical hair straightener
called Wonderful Hair Grower and
developed and patented the pressing
comb. Her net worth was once
thought to be as high as $14 million,
according to the University of Illinois'
Historical Archaeology and Public
Engagement website.
After moving to St. Louis from
Illinois, Malone opened a retail
outlet at the 1904 World Fair, where
positive consumer response to her
hair care products led her to expand
distribution nationally by 1910.
Malone trained local sales agents
to travel door-to-door, including
to Black churches and community
centers. Madam C.J. Walker, who
would go on to create her own beauty
products, was one such sales agent.
Malone is known for building a
campus called Poro College, which
consisted of her offices, manufacturing
operations, a training center,
classrooms, barber shops, laboratories,
an auditorium, dining facilities, a
theater, gymnasium, chapel and a roof
garden. Valued at more than $1 million,
Poro College employed 175 people and
nearly 75,000 more through franchised
outlets in North and South America,
Africa and The Philippines.
ANITA PATTI BROWNAnita Patti Brown, a.k.a. the "Bronze
Tetrazzini," was a soprano singer in
the early 1900s who launched a line
of beauty products under the name
Patti's Beauty Emporium, according to
Racked. Brown advertised her products
in The Crisis, the magazine published
by the N.A.A.C.P. According to one
advertisement unearthed by Racked,
Brown's beauty business spanned
creams, powder and perfumes.
MADAM C.J. WALKERMadam C.J. Walker, born Sarah
Breedlove to enslaved parents in
1867, was a washerwoman-turned-
entrepreneur who went from making
$1.50 a day to becoming a successful
businesswoman with a reported net
worth of $600,000 at the time of her
death. Walker was a sales agent for
Annie Turnbo Malone, whose products
inspired Walker to develop a hair
tonic — made of coconut oil, beeswax,
copper sulfate, sulfur and violet extract,
for fragrance — to remedy her own
hair loss, according to The New York
Times. Walker eventually expanded her
business to include hair straighteners,
hair-growth elixirs, shampoos and
pomades. She gave back thousands
of dollars to the NAACP, the Tuskegee
Institute, churches and YMCAs.
In an interview with The Times in
1917, Walker was quoted as saying,
"Perseverance is my motto."
SARA SPENCER WASHINGTONSara Spencer Washington, known as
Madame Washington, was a hotel,
golf course and beauty magnate. In
1919, Washington founded the Apex
News and Hair Company in Atlantic
City, N.J., employing 215 people at
the height of the business, according
to "The Sarah Spencer Washington
Story," a documentary on her life.
Washington, who sold her beauty
products door-to-door in the early
stages of the business, went on to
employ thousands of Apex sales
agents. She founded a beauty school
and gave interest-free loans to
graduates to help them jumpstart
their own businesses.
ANTHONY OVERTONAnthony Overton was a lawyer and
judge who founded Overton Hygienic
Manufacturing Co. with $2,000 of
savings in 1898. The company made
baking powder, as well as cosmetics
and perfumes, which Overton
patented under the name "High
Brown," according to the African
American Registry.
In 1911, Overton relocated from
Kansas City, Mo. to Chicago where he
expanded manufacturing to include 62
products that shipped internationally
to Egypt, Liberia and Japan. Overton
Hygienic Manufacturing Co. counted
both salaried employees and 400
door-to-door sales people, earning
a Bradstreet rating of $1 million.
Overton founded The Chicago Bee
newspaper in 1926.
After his death in 1946, Overton's
family continued to run the
manufacturing business until
the 1980s.
GEORGE E. JOHNSONGeorge E. Johnson founded Johnson
Products Co., known for mass �
A Brief History of Black-owned Beauty Brands Beauty Inc looks back on Black-owned beauty brands from the 1900s on, featuring Annie Turnbo Malone, Eunice Johnson and Naomi Sims. BY ALEXA TIETJEN
Businesswoman, author and model Naomi Sims talks to WWD
about the state of Black beauty on Sept. 8, 1975, in New York City.
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market hair care products such as
Ultra Sheen and Afro Sheen, in 1954.
Johnson expanded into cosmetics in
1970, and his overall business earned
$24.2 million in sales in fiscal 1973,
according to WWD's archives.
Johnson's company owned,
produced and sponsored the
television show "Soul Train," on
which it advertised its products.
Johnson was also a chairman of the
Independence Bank of Chicago and
owned 26 percent of it.
In 2004, Procter & Gamble Co.
acquired Johnson Products Co. P&G
sold the company five years later
to Eric Brown and Renee Cottrell-
Brown, a husband-and-wife duo.
BARBARA WALDENBarbara Walden is an actress-turned-
beauty entrepreneur who launched
Barbara Walden Cosmetics, Inc.
in 1968. The company, based in
Culver City, Calif., manufactured and
distributed hair set cream, shampoo
concentrate, makeup and skin care
products, according to its website.
In 1993, annual sales exceeded $5
million, Walden told WWD at the 25-
year celebration of her line's launch.
EUNICE JOHNSONEunice Johnson was the founder
of the Ebony Fashion Fair, which
showed European and American
couture and ready-to-wear via a
traveling fashion show. She and
her husband, John H. Johnson,
cofounded Johnson Publishing Co.,
which published and edited Ebony,
Jet, Black Stars and Black World.
Upon noticing that Ebony Fashion
Fair models could not easily find
makeup that matched their skin,
Eunice Johnson launched Fashion
Fair Cosmetics for Black women.
In 1972, the company had sold
80,000 sample kits, priced at $5.95,
within 10 months, WWD reported.
It entered department stores the
following year.
Eunice Johnson died of kidney
failure in 2010, when she was 93.
NAOMI SIMSOne of fashion's first Black
supermodels, Naomi Sims was a
beauty entrepreneur who developed
a fiber, called Kanekalon Presselle,
for her high-quality wig collection,
The Naomi Sims Collection.
Produced by Metropa Wigs, the
collection launched in 1973 and was
carried in some 700 stores, including
Macy's, Gimbels and Alexander's
in New York, with prices ranging
from $7 to $30, according to WWD's
archives.
Within five years, the collection
had reached $5 million in annual
sales, according to The New York
Times. Sims would go on to author
a number of books on modeling,
beauty and health. She would
also launch a cosmetics line and
a collection of prestige fragrance
products, financially backed by
Wagman & Co. As part of the
marketing for her fragrance launch,
Sims tucked samples of the products
into wigs from her collection before
shipping them off to customers,
according to WWD's archives.
LISA PRICELisa Price, who once worked as
a writer's assistant for the last
two seasons of "The Cosby Show,"
founded Carol's Daughter — which
makes hair, body and facial products
geared toward women of color — in
1993. Carol's Daughter received a
round of celebrity investment from
Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith,
Tommy Mottola, Thalia, Jay Z, Jimmy
Iovine, Andrew Farkas and Steve
Stoute, who brokered the deal and
joined the company as a managing
partner in 2005. It received a $50
million investment from Pegasus
Capital two years later.
In 2014, L'Oréal acquired Carol's
Daughter for as much as $70 million,
WWD reported.
IMANAfter years of mixing her own makeup
formulas as a model, Iman founded
an eponymous mass-market cosmetics
line offering foundation shades for
women of color. Five years after its
1994 launch, Iman Cosmetics was
generating $22 million in sales per
year, WWD reported.
After forming a company called
Impala with two silent investors,
Iman launched I-Iman Makeup,
a prestige beauty line, in 2000.
The line launched at Sephora and
consisted of 16 products, including
foundation, blush, eyeshadow,
lipstick and mascara. Iman later
signed a significant multiyear
licensing deal with P&G involving
both of her cosmetics brands.
RICHELIEU DENNISWhen he graduated from college in
1991, Richelieu Dennis planned to
return to Liberia, where he was born.
But when civil wars broke out in the
country, Dennis stayed Stateside
and cofounded Sundial Brands
with his mother.
The two made soaps and
creams inspired by those Dennis'
grandmother had sold in Sierra
Leone. By 2017, Sundial Brands was
projecting to do $240 million in sales,
and was acquired by Unilever for an
estimated $1.2 billion — one of the
largest beauty deals in recent history.
As part of the deal, Unilever and
Sundial committed $50 million to the
New Voices Fund, meant to provide
business funding to women-of-color
entrepreneurs. ■
Linda Johnson and Eunice Johnson of Ebony/Jet magazines and Fashion Fair attend a party for the debut of Emlin cosmetics line in Chicago on Aug. 2, 1977.
Businesswoman Barbara Walden, founder of Barbara Walden Cosmetics, talks to WWD about about Black beauty on Sept. 8, 1979.
Iman applies her makeup backstage before the Bill Blass fall 1986 fashion show.
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¬ Couture season for spring 2021 was particularly lovely beauty-wise, with models’ hair often adorned.
For Giambattista Valli, Odile Gilbert pumped up the volume. Valli told her he wanted a hairstyle proportionate to the collection’s large dresses. So they went for big hair festooned with flowers and bows.
“To make it happy,” said Gilbert. “The inspiration was Marisa Berenson, when she was a model and used to do a lot of pictures with Avedon and Penn. It was like a girl who was going to a big ball — something that doesn’t exist anymore, at the moment.”
Karin Westerlund focused on volume, too. “In the makeup, that is translated into enlarged eyes, inspired by Sophia Loren and manga girls,” she said.
Warrior princesses appeared at Viktor & Rolf.
“We were inspired by rebellious
girls with punky hair and makeup, juxtaposed with upcycled, delicate embellishments and vintage jewelry, pieced together to make up elegant hair adornments to match the embellished bras,” said Viktor Horsting.
“With this season’s hair and makeup, we wanted to create a dramatic flair,” continued Rolf Snoeren.
At Valentino, Pat McGrath decorated faces with swathes of gold color.
“[It’s] major minimalism meets the subversive splendor of Leigh Bowery in an haute couture manner,” she said.
This was a season of high beauty, also apparent at houses such as Dior, Chanel, Fendi, Iris van Herpen, Stéphane Rolland and Area.
“Everything has to be soft and dreamy — because we are living in a tough world,” said Gilbert. —Jennifer Weil
Valentino
Giambattista Valli
