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Beauty brands, seeking the spotlight at fashion week, are making bolder plays beyond backstage makeup attention.
During the Spring/Summer 2025 season, Starface decorated models’ wrists using its bestselling pimple patches, reminiscent of jewellery, and dangled its new Star Balm in beaded holders at the Susan Alexandra and Rachel Antonoff show. YSE Beauty, Omorovicza and Revlon capitalised on the show spotlight at Simkhai, Nanushka and Christian Siriano, respectively, to debut their latest products. 111Skin hosted a VIP client dinner in partnership with Erdem during London Fashion Week.
Hourglass joined forces with Barneys to put on the must-visit pop-up of this New York Fashion Week season, while Olaplex hosted a hotel stay for 2,000 guests in the city. The Ordinary, beyond being skincare sponsor of Copenhagen Fashion Week, opted for its packaging and branding to be reconstructed into a clothing format at (Di)vision’s show. Meanwhile, L’Oréal used the power of the catwalk entirely to host its annual beauty runway show at Paris Fashion Week, starring ambassadors such as Kendall Jenner, Simone Ashley and Viola Davis to raise the beauty brand’s profile.
Backstage beauty is often overshadowed — that is, unless it’s a standout makeup moment like Pat McGrath’s porcelain doll look at Maison Margiela’s spring 2024 couture show. And as fewer shows call for overtly bold and artistic looks — Fendi, Burberry and JW Anderson opted for barely-there makeup this season, while Johanna Parv and Collina Strada went makeup-free — it’s harder for makeup brands to stand out. As a result, beauty brands have to work harder and push beyond backstage to leverage the buzz and attention from fashion month.
Are the efforts worth it? Experts think so. “Brands have a lot to gain at fashion month, but it’s less about controlling the narrative and trends backstage and more about being a part of the month. There’s a tremendous opportunity to leverage those moments for content, engage with influencers and create stories that resonate with audiences far beyond the fashion world,” says Chris Salgardo, CEO and founder of Atwater Skin. For Salgardo, fashion weeks are still an incredible platform for visibility and a time for beauty brands to showcase innovation, community, artistry and expertise, but the key is making the moments accessible and engaging for its audience online and offline. Meridith Rojas, McoBeauty’s chief marketing officer, agrees: “It [fashion month] is another opportunity for brands to generate content and connect with its audiences while the buzz and energy is high.”
Beauty brands also still see fashion month as a crucial avenue of opportunity. 111Skin co-founder Eva Alexandrides says the brand’s main ambition throughout the month is to raise brand awareness. “While [brand awareness] is harder to measure, we believe our activations and intimate gatherings with customers drive long-term financial returns,” she says. 111Skin has partnered with Brandon Maxwell, LaQuan Smith, Jason Wu, Oscar de la Renta and Erdem over the seasons, but has moved on from just product seeding and providing backstage skincare prep in hopes of social visibility, to a 360-degree approach that stretches from maximising show content and hosting facial suites for influencers and celebrities to bringing its community into the fashion month fold.
“Through these partnerships, we have marketed exclusive show and backstage content on social media and email channels straight to our customer base. We have also extended our fashion partnerships beyond the show circuit including hosting a VIP client dinner at Erdem’s flagship store in London where we’ve brought together 111Skin and Erdem’s most loyal customer base,” says Alexandrides.
Measures of success
To fashion month newcomers YSE Beauty, presence still matters. In addition to debuting its Like A Gloss Hydrating Lip Mask (launching in October) on models walking the Simkhai show, the brand also used its backstage access and content to share with its community and hosted a large influencer dinner to drive further awareness off the runway. “The partnership objective with Simkhai was broader than an immediate revenue driver. We saw this as an opportunity to be part of an impactful and cultural moment that resonates with our community and provide a look behind the scenes at fashion week so they could feel like they were part of it,” says Lindsey Rollin, the brand’s SVP of marketing. “That said, we did see an uptick in sales, an increase in site traffic, and a significant increase in our engagement rate.”
The brand declined to share figures, but Traackr, a data-driven software company based in San Francisco, reported an additional 33,000 video views and a brand vitality score (Traackr’s measure of the content’s visible reach, its impact on engagement and brand trust) of 116, up from 64 at the end of August. “It [YSE’s vitality score] increased 144 per cent week-on-week during NYFW. This boost in vitality underscores why it’s smart to go beyond backstage beauty and build a loyal creator community to amplify any collaborations on the runway,” says Kayla Quock, director of brand marketing at Traackr.
Reaching a new audience through fashion month was a key metric for Olaplex. The haircare brand chose to make use of the additional eyes at NYFW to set up a ‘Leave Inn’ hotel stay, hosting 2,000 guests and over 300 one-to-one styling sessions, under the launch of its latest Moisturise and Mend Leave-In Conditioner, instead of opting for backstage hair prep. “We’re constantly looking for new ways to reach loyal and new audiences. There’s power in these cultural moments for consumers and our newest Leave Inn activation was the perfect setting to invite guests for a refresh, recharge, and to feel our newest product during NYFW,” says Olaplex chief marketing officer, Katie Gohman.
It’s a similar story for The Ordinary, which says its decision to dress models in The Ordinary-coded clothes was a way of stepping outside of beauty to explore where it could show up in unexpected places, as well as to diversify its audience while pushing the boundaries of how a skincare brand can show up in the cultural zeitgeist. Per brand performance agency Launchmetrics, this collaboration earned the brand $112,000 in media impact value (MIV) and 1.9 million video views. (MIV analyses the monetary value of posts, article mentions and social media interactions.) “We also noticed an increase in social media mentions and engagement from show attendees and fashion enthusiasts who appreciated the creativity. These are important indicators of how our involvement drove awareness in new consumer categories,” the brand said over email.
Hourglass tapped TikTok content creator Nara Smith to host a meet and greet at its NYFW pop-up, which Smith detailed in a vlog to her 9.6 million followers. The video garnered 7.6 million views. “It’s not by any means ‘traditional backstage beauty’, but it’s the behind-the-scenes access that today’s beauty community craves — Smith blend of high fashion and accessible glamour builds a meaningful connection between Hourglass and Smith’s audience,” adds Caner Daywood, director of content strategy at creator agency Buttermilk. The metric was more light hearted for Starface. “We wanted to embrace the fun side of the brand that helps our community express themselves. They inspire joy, which is always one of our main goals,” says Paige Kozak, Starface’s director of social and content.
What happens to backstage beauty?
Backstage beauty will always be a part of brands’ fashion week plays, but for beauty brands to cut through the noise, they’ll need to rethink how to approach it. “Now, it’s about creating a cultural moment; an authentic collaboration between fashion and beauty that captures the attention, imagination and spending of a wider audience — outside of purely the beauty obsessed,” says Madeleine Boyd, Karla Otto SVP of global beauty. She says backstage beauty should be a space where beauty brands capture assets that feature aspirational or tutorial-based social content to demonstrate how products work and can look across a diverse model casting.
Instagram content
Patrick Ta Beauty and Tresemmé are examples of this consideration. Patrick Ta used the backstage of Monse to showcase his new foundation launch on the runway, and followed the moment up with vlog-style content on Instagram and TikTok detailing the product application and seeing it in action on a range of models. Tresemmé used its backstage access at Simkhai, Christian Siriano, Area and Luar to create a “new view of the runway” where hair was the main character — content included runway footage and tutorials of the hair looks. The approach garnered $679,000 in earned media value (EMV) as per influencer insights firm Lefty’s SS25 beauty brand activation data. (EMV is the equivalent monetary ad spend of the impressions gained.)
“It’s performance art for brands, especially with real-time social media exposure. It’s still a powerful platform to showcase innovation and expertise, and it can provide credibility if executed well. But for consumers, it’s no longer the untouchable world it used to be. It’s about authenticity now — people want to feel like they’re part of that backstage moment, not just observing it,” concludes Salgardo.
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