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The beauty industry has seen an unprecedented upheaval since our last Vogue Business Beauty Index in 2024. The roller coaster of tariff rises and pauses has affected how beauty brands source ingredients and price products, while the cost of living crisis has led already non-committal beauty consumers to reconsider the brands they’re putting their money behind, as 31 per cent plan to buy from less expensive brands if prices rise.
Legacy players and conglomerates are feeling the effects. Financial performance was a mixed bag over the most recent earnings season, with companies like Puig seeing success in its skincare and fragrance categories, while Estée Lauder saw a decline in its travel retail business.
Beauty M&A has heated up since last year. Among the big acquisitions of 2025: L’Oréal has taken stakes in Medik8, Color Wow and Jacquemus Beauty, while Elf Beauty added Rhode to its portfolio in one of the most high-profile beauty deals of recent times.
In the industry’s biggest deal in years, the beauty brand founded by Hailey Bieber has been acquired by Elf.
It’s not surprising, therefore, to see the seismic effect this has had on the 2025 Vogue Business Beauty Index. A perfect digital marketing score helped Charlotte Tilbury rise three positions to usurp The Ordinary, which has held the top spot since the inception of the index in 2023. The Ordinary, still holding onto its crown for ESG and consumer sentiment, moved into second place, while clinical skincare brand La Roche-Posay sat in fourth position. Fenty Beauty and Nars made their way back into the top five this edition, thanks to improvements in their digital marketing and their communication of sustainability efforts.
This edition saw some small but scrappy brands join for the first time: Sol de Janeiro (11th), Byoma (27th), Merit (28th), Beauty of Joseon (29th) and Refy (30th). Sol de Janeiro, the only brand of the five owned by a conglomerate (L’Occitane Group), holds the greatest awareness among new entries at 50 per cent. The remaining brands, while small, hold loyal and captive audiences. K-beauty brand Beauty of Joseon holds an awareness score of 31 per cent, but for those who know the brand, it has the second highest purchase intent, sitting just behind The Ordinary. Byoma, meanwhile, has leveraged strategic technology partnerships to ensure a competitive positioning within the innovation pillar.
For the consumer sentiment pillar, we examine how consumers expect to spend their money on beauty going forward. Spoiler: the general beauty buyer is undeterred, while Gen Z is forging its own path, which lies more with skincare over makeup.
The digital marketing pillar saw a lot of the movement of this year’s Beauty Index, as brands compete for consumer attention in a saturated field. Charlotte Tilbury knocked Cerave off the top spot with its tongue-in-cheek swipes at dupe culture, while brands like Rhode and Glossier utilised physical pop-ups to drive UGC, and Huda Beauty employed a range of micro to macro influencers in a bid for consumer trust. But while the consumer-facing approach seemed to work from a digital perspective, the innovation pillar saw a slowdown in the same area amid a more economically conscious market. Fewer brands are investing in gamified experiences and NFTs than this time last year. However, there is still investment in the places that truly matter for consumers: new product development and the integration of technologies such as AI in research and development processes. It’s likely that these will be the areas that generate tangible results for brands.
All of this culminates in the pursuit of trust, which was seen nowhere more clearly than in the ESG pillar. A focus for brands this year was around certifications to improve accountability. However, while the focus on improving internal processes is commendable, brands are missing out on a critical element of what makes a product sustainable: end of life.
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Brand performance for the Vogue Business Beauty Index is evaluated against over 120 data points across consumer sentiment, digital marketing, ESG and innovation.
The overall weightings of the assessment categories and their metrics are determined by industry relevance and importance to the consumer, allowing for an objective assessment of a brand’s performance. The final weighting for each category is agreed upon following a review process with our data analysts and expert editors. Thirty brands are assessed, including both established leaders and emerging beauty disruptors, enabling learnings from global brands and rapidly growing newcomers alike.
Consumer research remains fundamental to the Vogue Business Beauty Index, with readers across several Condé Nast titles — including Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair and Condé Nast Traveller — participating in a bi-annual luxury consumer sentiment survey that ensures granularity is achieved when it comes to understanding awareness, customer challenges and beliefs about brands.
Future iterations of the Vogue Business Beauty Index will continue to maximise the brands, metrics and digital platforms assessed, with additions prioritised in line with industry needs and developments.
