This article is part of the Vogue Business 100 Innovators: Class of 2025, an annual list of individuals Vogue Business editors believe have the potential to change the luxury industry for the better.
Beauty in 2025 is about so much more than what’s in our makeup bags.
The beauty industry has been upended by cultural shifts, new consumer demands and the warping definition of wellness, all of which have skewed beauty standards, introduced new it-ingredients to the market and prompted a need for new formulas and products that are more suited for the Ozempic era. This, as AI becomes more prevalent in the images we see online and our digital selves come to play a defining role in our identity, has moved the goalposts for a sprawling category rife with competition.
So who wins in beauty today? And who’s making sure the industry’s uglier side doesn’t win out? This year’s Vogue Business 100 innovators are ushering in beauty’s next era by bringing innovative brands to market, changing the way we shop for beauty, haircare, skincare and more, and reshaping how we interact with and consume beauty in the digital era. They include CEOs, founders, perfumiers, retailers and creatives, all of whom are changing the face of beauty.
CEO | Olaplex
Amanda Baldwin joined Olaplex at its lowest point. In 2023, the brand reported a 35 per cent drop in annual revenue after a series of lawsuits and complaints over damaging ingredients. Within a year, Baldwin stabilised operations, narrowed the revenue decline to 7.8 per cent, and got the business back on track, closing 2024 with $422.7 million in sales. Her turnaround wasn’t cosmetic. Baldwin rebuilt the executive team, bringing in a new CMO from Marc Jacobs and its COO from Away, and re-established credibility through product-focused messaging rooted in performance and trust. There’s still ground to be made up. But under her leadership, Olaplex is no longer relying on past dominance; instead, it’s being reshaped into a functioning, credible player in a far more competitive haircare market.
Founder | V-Metics
As beauty enters the era of technology, avatars and Web3, beauty futurist Alex Box is reimagining how to preserve the human hand. She founded virtual cosmetics software company V-Metics in 2023 and is building the first intuitive virtual cosmetics brand. It blends game engine technology, material appearance capture and 3D immersive design, and secured funding from the UK government in August 2024.
Formerly creative director at anti-conformist beauty brand Illamasqua, Box gained a cult following with her surreal makeup artistry and collaborations with the likes of Alexander McQueen and Lady Gaga. Box has already launched tie-ups with Chanel, Nars, Epic Games and Microsoft to bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds. She joined the British Beauty Council’s board in September 2024.
Founder and CEO | Debut
Carmine — a red pigment derived from crushed beetles — has long been embedded in beauty’s colour chemistry. In 2024, Joshua Britton made it obsolete. His biotech company, Debut, created the world’s first lab-grown ‘bio-carmine’, a molecular replica produced through precision fermentation. The breakthrough is more than a sustainability move: bio-carmine offers brands a vegan, scalable and allergen-free alternative to an ingredient increasingly scrutinised by regulators and consumers alike. Debut succeeded by applying pharmaceutical-grade chemistry and a vertically integrated supply chain that spans research and development, manufacturing and formulation in-house. Britton’s company has also engineered ingredients using Beauty ORB, its AI-powered platform that accelerates ingredient discovery by predicting molecular function and viability. Already working with a range of cosmetics and fragrance conglomerates to develop biotech replacements for dyes, actives and botanicals, Debut is redefining beauty ingredient sourcing. As the sector enters an era of biotech innovation, Britton’s work is shifting the field from a niche alternative to an industry backbone.
Head of beauty | TikTok Shop UK
Beauty on TikTok Shop has grown triple digits in the last year, and Emily Caine has been central to that surge, positioning TikTok to become the UK’s fourth-largest beauty retailer, with over 6,000 live-shopping sessions running daily and a beauty product sold every second across the country. Caine has mentored emerging brands such as P Louise and Made by Mitchell to drive record-breaking sales in several cases, generating more than £1 million in a single live stream. Rather than replicate traditional e-commerce, she’s built infrastructure around real-time community engagement, creator-led storytelling and comment-based feedback loops. She’s also partnered with the British Beauty Council to train new brands in creator commerce, lowering the barrier to entry and helping reshape product discovery for the next generation. Live streams now account for a third of TikTok’s total revenue in the UK, and beauty sits at the core of that ecosystem. As major retailers rethink digital strategies, Caine’s work shows what a native-first retail model can look like when social and selling remain in unison.
President of global markets | Florasis
C-beauty is on a high, and one of the global breakout brands to emerge from China’s domestic beauty scene is Florasis. With strong storytelling, product artistry and elevated packaging, the brand has been scaling internationally, including in Southeast Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Japan, through a mix of direct-to-consumer and wholesale partnerships. This strategy is being steered by Gabby Chen, an accomplished executive with over 18 years of experience in the Asia-Pacific region, and a successful entrepreneur and investor in her own right. She founded Mood Editing Cosmetics, a joint venture with leading technology company Netease, before joining Florasis in 2023, and is an angel investor in Alesca Life, an agricultural technology company that builds indoor, vertical farms and farm management software to make food production more environmentally friendly.
Last year, Florasis opened a smart factory in Hangzhou to help the brand ensure quality as it scales, while shortening lead times. Speaking to Vogue Business, Chen described it as the brand’s attempt to set a new industry benchmark for beauty production — what it calls the “Florasis standard”.
Principal perfumer | DSM‑Firmenich
Amandine Clerc‑Marie may not be a household name, but her scents are everywhere. In 2024 alone, she created Burberry Goddess eau de parfum (Fragrance Foundation’s Women’s Prestige Fragrance of the Year), a top market performer for beauty conglomerate Coty, and Valentino Born in Roma Donna (Women’s Luxury Fragrance of the Year). Clerc-Marie was also the nose behind indie launch Veronique Gabai Délices des Bois, winner of the Fragrance Foundation’s Indie Fragrance of the Year. Following her promotion to principal perfumer at DSM-Firmenich, Clerc‑Marie is the latest perfumer to join a small group of women who hold senior creative statuses at some of the world’s top fragrance manufacturers. What distinguishes her work is its versatility: blockbuster vanillas and florals, buoyed with structure, clarity and emotional resonance that make them feel less templated than other mass-market counterparts. As niche scent codes increasingly influence mainstream offerings, Clerc‑Marie’s fluency across categories makes her both prolific and directional. In an industry flooded with limited-edition volume, her work continues to feel both strategic and sensorially enduring.
CEO | Neko Health
Co-founder | Neko Health
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Founded in Stockholm in 2023 by climate tech entrepreneur Hjalmar Nilsonne and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, Neko Health offers AI-powered full-body scans for £300, in a setting that feels more luxury spa than clinic in both London and Stockholm. In January 2025, the company raised $260 million in series B funding, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, to accelerate expansion plans in Europe, the UK and the US. Over 10,000 scans have already been completed, with a waitlist of more than 100,000. Early detection of conditions like aortic aneurysms has been reported. More than 80 per cent of customers pre-book annual follow-ups — a powerful signal in a category where repeat engagement is rare. What sets Neko apart is its visual identity, customer journey and interior design, all built for comfort and curiosity versus clinical sterility. With US expansion underway pending FDA approval, Nilsonne and Ek are reframing diagnostics as a core pillar of modern selfcare: personal, data-led and designed for scale.
Head of commercial operations | F1 Academy
Since joining F1 Academy in March 2024, Karin Fink has brought beauty and prestige closer to the Formula One grid. In her role as head of commercial operations, Fink is spearheading the repositioning of the racing franchise from technical sport to cultural platform — one capable of attracting, activating and retaining partners in beauty, wellness and fashion. At F1 Academy, the female driver development series, Fink is creating entry points for brands to tap into the racing class. In 2024 and 2025, she has helped secure and guide partnerships with beauty brands including Charlotte Tilbury and Elemis, plus activations around races and VIP programming. Since joining the company, Fink has led on the Charlotte Tilbury partnership, which this year involves driver Chloe Chong wearing a new Tilbury-designed race suit and driving a branded car, the largest showcase of this industry-merging to date. These partnerships prove that sport’s cultural capital can move product, drive engagement and reach new audiences. In a media environment where fandom and commerce intersect more than ever, Fink is turning F1 into an engine for prestige consumer categories.
Co-founder and creative director | Refy
Co-founder and CEO | Refy
Jess Hunt and Jenna Meek have become leaders in modern brand-building. While others chase virality, they’ve placed community at the core of their beauty brand, which has successfully broken through the noise of a highly competitive market. In the past year, they replaced influencer press trips with a community-led retreat in Mallorca, where handpicked Refy customers joined product trials and became campaign faces. Brand dinners in London and New York, community-built broadcast channels on Instagram and an active tiered loyalty scheme in Refy World have kept the brand in constant dialogue with its customer base. This foundation has supported serious growth: projected 2025 full-year revenue sits at £100 million, up 60 per cent year-on-year without outside investment. While the broader market reconsiders its dependence on algorithm-led scale, Refy has quietly built a model rooted in retention, feedback and emotional equity. Hunt and Meek’s approach challenges the prevailing narrative that speed is everything, instead amplifying the idea that intimacy is what translates to scale.
Founding partner and chief product officer | Medik8
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With next-gen peptides, hydrators and bioengineered actives, the skincare market has never been more competitive. Despite that, retinoids remain the gold standard. As chief product officer and founding partner at British dermatological skincare brand Medik8 (which his brother, Elliot Isaacs, launched in 2009), Daniel Isaacs has transformed the way retinoid formulations are understood. Notably, he turned retinaldehyde — once considered too unstable for daily use — into the brand’s best-selling Crystal Retinal, catapulting the ingredient into the mainstream. This year marked a major milestone for Medik8, as it was acquired by L’Oréal Group in June for an undisclosed sum.
Medik8 is known for formulating and manufacturing its innovative products entirely in-house. Isaacs is guided by research-led principles, with a chemistry degree from the University of Leeds, and has created over 100 original formulations, many of which are patented. He is an industry expert in SPFs and pigmentation, and is the inventor of three patents in skin ageing and formulation stability.
Co-founder | Kay Beauty
As an actress and former model who often did her own makeup on set, Katrina Kaif spotted a gap in India’s beauty market: products that delivered performance, comfort and inclusivity at an accessible price point. To turn that vision into a reality, she partnered with Nykaa, India’s largest beauty retailer, whose reach, infrastructure and understanding of local consumers made it the ideal partner.
Launched as a joint venture in 2019, Kay Beauty quickly became India’s leading celebrity beauty brand, growing to more than 200 SKUs, serving 2.5 million customers to date and surpassing INR 240 crore ($28 million) in sales. Its success lies in making high-performance makeup affordable. After expanding to the United Arab Emirates in 2024, Kay Beauty made its UK debut this month at Space NK — establishing itself as the retailer’s first Indian brand. Known for disruptive campaigns including a digital launch with beauty mogul Huda Kattan in Dubai, Kaif understands the value of both online reach and physical touchpoints. With a growing international presence and affordability as its edge, Kay Beauty is now poised to take its journey from India to the world.
Co-founders | Wonderskin
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While the 20th century brought advances in formulation, packaging and safety, much of modern beauty has been shaped by trend cycles, from contouring crazes to ever-evolving brow shapes. Wonderskin is one of the few contemporary brands to reinvent a product category. Its viral Wonder Blading lip stain — a blue-tinted peel-off formula that leaves long-lasting colour once wiped off — introduced a patented pigment-infusion technology that’s also now used in Wonderskin’s brow products.
Founded in 2020 by Michael Malinsky (CEO), Marina Kalenchyts (brand director) and Doug Cooper (COO), the brand bootstrapped its early growth by leaning into TikTok. In May 2025, it raised $50 million in series A funding, led by Insight Partners (which has previously invested in Shopify and Quince). The funding will fuel Wonderskin’s product development and international retail expansion.
Chief creative officer of US brands | L’Oréal
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What does Gen Z want from skincare? Cerave’s accessibly priced products and clinical-grade formulations have drawn consumers in, but beyond that, its digital strategy has redefined how clinical skincare shows up on social media. Behind that strategy is Adam Kornblum, chief creative officer of US brands at L’Oréal, where he oversees 17 brands including Cerave — a role he took over in April 2024, promoted from Cerave’s SVP head of global digital marketing. Kornblum has also held an advisory role at La Roche-Posay for its brand campaigns and founded and leads L’Oréal USA’s first in-house creative agency.
Under Kornblum’s leadership, Cerave crafted its viral Emmy-nominated Super Bowl campaign starring unlikely star Michael Cera (playing on his surname). The brand has also leaned into TikTok-native storytelling, dermatologist influencers, and educational content that’s equal parts credible, entertaining and buzzy. For a brand with serious science-backed credentials, its unserious marketing approach has certainly resonated with customers.
Founder and CEO | Myavana
In building one of the most sophisticated personalised beauty tools for textured hair, Candace Victoria Mitchell has moved the needle for the category. Her company, Myavana, uses proprietary AI and lab-based hair strand analysis to deliver tailored product recommendations to consumers with textured, curly, coily and relaxed hair types. The technology decodes microscopic details like porosity, density, moisture level and damage, then maps this to a data-informed routine. Major players are paying attention. In August 2024, Myavana closed a $5.9 million seed round led by Ulta Beauty’s Digital Innovation Fund, with existing retail and brand partners including Nordstrom, Unilever and P&G. Mitchell’s technology offers the kind of diagnostic rigour typically reserved for dermatology or wellness. In doing so, she’s repositioning textured haircare from an underserved segment to a data-rich, high-tech vertical. As AI personalisation reshapes everything from skincare to diagnostics, Mitchell’s work is a case study in precision beauty for communities that were never built into the algorithm.
Chief sustainability officer | L’Oréal North America
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Nestled within one of the world’s biggest beauty conglomerates is L’Oréal for the Future, a sustainability and transformation platform that’s dedicated to solving environmental and social challenges across the beauty industry, working to make L’Oréal’s business model more sustainable over time. It’s no small task: L’Oréal is a $50 billion company with operations all over the world.
Marissa Pagnani McGowan is up for the challenge. As the company’s chief sustainability officer for L’Oréal North America, McGowan works with the global sustainability and North American leadership teams to steer the initiative forward, overseeing the company’s climate, water, biodiversity and natural resource commitments as well as its philanthropy, human rights and social impact initiatives. McGowan has specialised in sustainability since making the leap to the business side after working as a corporate compliance lawyer, with years spent at PVH. She’s also served on the board of the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, and the Fair Labour Association. In her role, she’s shaping what sustainability progress looks like for the beauty industry as packaging, production and ingredient sourcing comes under scrutiny.
Managing director | Sephora Middle East
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Hasmik Panossian is building Sephora Middle East into a region-defining beauty platform. Overseeing more than 90 stores across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), her remit spans merchandising, marketing and category leadership in key markets including the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. In 2024, Panossian spearheaded Sephoria Middle East, the region’s first immersive Sephora beauty festival. Held in Dubai’s Coca-Cola Arena, it drew over 6,000 visitors and featured 60 brand activations and live masterclasses tailored to local consumer preferences. On a deeper level, Panossian has refined Sephora’s regional assortment, onboarding brands like Saie and expanding clean beauty representation across six markets. She’s also grown Sephora’s loyalty programme and digital footprint, blending content and commerce in a landscape where omnichannel retail is still unevenly adopted. While much of the industry’s retail innovation is led from Western HQs, Panossian has carved out a distinct model for the Middle East, one that fuses Sephora’s global positioning with localised execution. In doing so, she’s reframed the region not just as an emerging beauty market, but as a proving ground for new modes of experiential, culturally attuned retail.
Chief creative officer | Amouage
Since 2019, Renaud Salmon has reoriented Amouage’s creative identity. As chief creative officer, he guided the Omani fragrance house through a period of dramatic growth, during which revenues have more than doubled in three years, surpassing $210 million in 2023. In February 2025, L’Oréal Group took a minority stake in the brand, affirming Amouage’s new position in the global fragrance market. Under Salmon’s direction, Amouage has opened immersive stores in London, Dubai, Muscat and Shanghai, each designed to foreground sensory storytelling. He also modernised the brand’s visuals, packaging and campaign strategy, helping it resonate with a younger, Gen Z-adjacent audience without diluting its identity. As niche fragrance moves from underground to aspirational mainstream, Salmon’s approach shows how artisanal craftsmanship and commercial scale can co-exist. His repositioning of Amouage is a creative blueprint for heritage brands navigating relevance in a shifting luxury landscape.
Founder | Vyrao
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Yasmin Sewell became a well-known name in fashion circles, having spent years leading creative for retailers like Liberty London and Farfetch, and spending time as a fashion director for Style.com. When she stepped away from that world in 2018, she worked as a consultant, putting her creative energy into her own Ltd. But it wasn’t until 2021 where she tapped into her passion for wellness.
Sewell is the founder of Vyrao, a fragrance brand that blends aromatherapy and neuroscience into eight glass bottles of genderless perfume. The brand was ahead of the curve: launches today in the fragrance space are tapping into the same properties that blur the lines between fragrance and wellness, offering customers something more meaningful than a scented mist. Vyrao’s early-adopter positioning paid off when it became the first beauty or fragrance brand to raise money from L Catterton, and also gained funding from Estée Lauder Ventures and Gwyneth Paltrow’s Kinship Ventures. This autumn, Vyrao will bring its scent experiences to life with its first experiential pop-up in New York’s SoHo.
Chief marketing officer | Rare Beauty
Katie Welch has propelled Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty into a Gen Z phenomenon. Now the second most-beloved beauty brand among teen shoppers, per Piper Sandler’s ‘Taking Stock with Teens’ survey, it is currently valued at $2 billion. As part of the founding team, Welch forged a brand identity rooted in authenticity, inclusivity and mental health advocacy — proving that value-driven storytelling can deliver blockbuster growth.
In 2025, Welch is pushing beauty marketing into new territory with Rare Beauty Secrets, a long-form Substack offering unvarnished behind-the-scenes narratives and mental health reflections. Produced entirely in-house, it’s driving standout engagement and growing subscribers 17 per cent through organic discovery. Her ad strategy is equally sharp: blending AI-powered targeting with YouTube and search to achieve a sevenfold return on ad spend, showing that purpose and performance can scale in tandem. Beyond Rare Beauty, Welch is shaping the next generation of marketers. Nearly 100,000 TikTok followers turn to her for candid career advice and real-time mentorship, drawn to her belief that “marketing is conversation, not broadcast”.
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