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Breakthrough Brand of the Year, Mass: Good Molecules
Image Credit: Courtesy of Good Molecules What started in 2018 with a humble $6 hyaluronic acid serum has turned into a booming business of no-fuss, affordably priced skin care goods. With viral offerings like its $6 Yerba Mate Wake Up Eye Gel and $12 Discoloration Correcting Serum, Good Molecules has won the attention — and the even more coveted trust — of value-focused Gen Z. The brand’s growth is outpacing that of the skin care category at large, and Good Molecules is also winning on a volume level: its Yerba Mate eye gel sells more than 40,000 units monthly on Amazon, while its hyaluronic acid and discoloration serums respectively exceed 20,000 monthly orders on the platform. That’s not counting the Beautylish-owned brand’s growing brick-and- mortar footprint, which includes Ulta Beauty, Walmart, Target and Shoppers’ Drug Mart. Propelled by its signature blend of efficacy and accessibility, the sleeper hit is, suffice it to say, stepping firmly into the spotlight.
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Breakthrough Brand of the Year, Prestige: Kayali
Image Credit: Courtesy of Kayali The number-one fragrance brand at Sephora, Mona Kattan’s Kayali embodies the key drivers of its category. Layerable scents? Check. An affordable price point? Check. On-trend, gourmand blends? Bestsellers include Yum Boujee Marshmallow | 81, and Vanilla | 28, if that’s any indication. Rooted in the hallmarks of Arab perfumery — its viral Oudgasm collection has even sold Gen Alpha on ouds — Kayali ranks as the number-one fragrance brand by earned media value, per CreatorIQ, cementing itself as both an entry point for newcomers to the world of fragrance, and a favorite among longtime #FragranceTok devotees. And the brand’s most consequential chapter is only getting started, with Huda Beauty in February selling its ownership stake in Kayali, now jointly owned by Kattan and General Atlantic. Since then, Kayali has expanded its Sephora at Kohl’s footprint from 200 doors to all 1,100 stores nationwide. It has also debuted a dedicated direct-to-consumer website for the first time, which will soon be available in markets beyond the U.S. and U.K. as the Dubai-based brand continues to go global. Fitting, indeed, that Kayali is Arabic for “my imagination” — the brand’s success is just what dreams are made of.
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Innovator of the Year, Makeup: M.Ph by Mary Phillips
Image Credit: Courtesy of Mary Phillips Artistry-driven makeup brands are hardly new. Combining artistic authority with tried-and-true techniques, good-for-skin ingredients, a megawatt client roster and social media stardom, however, is much rarer — and it’s become Mary Phillips’ secret sauce. With the launch of M.Ph earlier this year, Phillips proved herself a Swiss Army knife of product know-how, marketing genius, cultural relevance and technique mastery. It’s no wonder Sephora was the brand’s exclusive launch partner, where it debuted in August and is expected to bring in between $20 million and $25 million in first-year sales at retail. Even if the idea for the range started organically — Phillips started making kits for clients and teaching them her signature underpainting technique if she couldn’t take a gig with them — the appeal reaches beyond her clientele, which includes Kim Kardashian, Kendall Jenner, Kaia Gerber and Hailey Bieber. Phillips herself has had quite a winding career path, earning an aesthetician’s license, working as a brow artist, cofounding talent agency Highlight Artists with Jen Atkin and Justine Marjan in 2024 and accruing millions of followers on Instagram in her own right. Alchemize all of those experiences together, and you see Phillips is driven by the feel-good factor. “I always want my clients to look like themselves, just the best version,” she told WWD in July. “It’s effortless- looking even though it’s not effortless. There’s sometimes a sexy eye or mouth, but the skin’s glowing. I don’t want to change their face, I want to enhance their features.”
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Innovator of the Year, Wellness: Olly Mood + Skin
Image Credit: Courtesy of Olly History indicates that it’s tough for a beauty brand to move into ingestibles and vice versa. This year, Olly shattered that assumption with the launch of Mood + Skin. The brand, which has been synonymous with the growth of benefit-driven supplements including gummies, capsules and its cheeky L’Olly Pops, shook up the wellness world again in 2025, straying from the supplement category for the first time with its body care range. While an entirely new category, the team employed the Olly mission, focusing on benefits and functionality like Sleep or Calm. Each Mood + Skin product is infused with vitamins and scents that promise both topical and neurological benefits — benefits that also match up with some of Olly’s bestselling supplements, creating an inside-out wellness ecosystem that looks to become a blueprint for the industry.
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Innovator of the Year, Hair: Crown Affair
Image Credit: Courtesy of Crown Affair Not many brands exceed launch week goals by a triple-digit margin, but Crown Affair, founded by Dianna Cohen, has become queen of prestige hair care by doing just that. Since its debut in August, Overnight Repair Serum has become the brand’s bestselling stock-keeping unit at Sephora — not bad for a brand with another holy grail product, Refillable Dry Shampoo, which also excels and was the top-selling dry shampoo at Sephora’s 2025 Spring Savings event and the number four dry shampoo overall. Leave-In Conditioner has also become a stalwart in the lineup. The ability to create breakthrough innovation is enabling Crown Affair to perform, well, head and shoulders above the competition, tripling its year-over-year business in Sephora’s brick-and-mortar locations.
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Innovator of the Year, Skin Care: Medicube
Image Credit: Courtesy of Medicube Turning an ingredient like salmon sperm into top-selling skin care products and the hottest trend online is no easy feat. It’s light work for K-beauty superstar Medicube, though. From capsule creams to one-day ampoule shots and collagen masks, Medicube’s PDRN product suite took hold of TikTok this year, blowing the competition out of the water. But let’s not forget, the brand made a splash with its multi-use Age-R Booster Pro long before shoppers were snapping up the pink stuff. A pioneer of the second K-beauty boom, Medicube first generated buzz online in 2023 with its lifting and toning device designed with microcurrent and electrical muscle stimulation technology. Two years later, Medicube is a top- five seller on TikTok Shop and the single fastest-growing brand on Amazon, as of the first half of this year, accounting for 4.2 percent of the platform’s total beauty sales thanks to its buzzy innovations, most of which are under $30. In August, Medicube entered U.S. brick-and-mortar retail for the first time, launching into 1,469 Ulta doors with a healthy assortment of products. The move not only marked a major milestone, but paved the way for other virality-driven beauty players to enter the brick-and-mortar space.
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Innovator of the Year, Fragrance: Rare Beauty Fragrance
Image Credit: Courtesy of Rare Beauty With the debut of its first fragrance, Rare Beauty entered a new chapter this year — and for founder Selena Gomez, it was personal. The creation of the fragrance happened simultaneously with the blossoming of her relationship with now-husband Benny Blanco — and the joy is reflected in the scent itself, Rare Eau de Parfum. Tapping into one of the hottest trends in fragrance, gourmands, perfumer Jérôme Epinette employed warm notes of caramel and vanilla combined with a bit of spice. What made it truly unique, though, were the Fragrance Layering Balms that launched concurrently and can be worn on their own or layered to enable users to customize their own scents. The result: One of the standout launches of the year, and already a key contributor in helping Rare Beauty close in on almost a half-billion dollars in sales.
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Deal of the Year: E.l.f. Beauty’s Acquisition of Rhode
Image Credit: Courtesy of New York Stock Exchange Call it the ultimate win-win: When E.l.f. Beauty announced its acquisition of Rhode in May, the deal not only helped one of beauty’s top-performing companies counter macro headwinds, it also created the newest billion-dollar baby, Hailey Bieber. E.l.f. Beauty’s largest acquisition to date, consisting of $800 million payable at closing and an additional payout consideration of $200 million based on the future growth of the brand over a three-month period, the deal was a presage of big numbers to come. Rhode’s launch at Sephora in September was the retailer’s largest ever, netting $10 million in sales according to YipitData, with roughly three Rhode products selling every second. Its November launch at Sephora in the U.K. was just as highly anticipated, driving the highest number of consumer sign-ups ever for a brand launch. All of this helped E.l.f. record its 28th consecutive quarter of growth in November, with CEO Tarang Amin citing Rhode’s performance. “It was a phenomenal launch,” he said. “We remain confident in our strategy to grow market share and capitalize on the significant white space ahead of us.”
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Excellence in Marketing: Valentino Born in Roma
Image Credit: Kate Owen/Courtesy of Valentino Rome is known as the eternal city — so it seems only fitting that Valentino’s Born in Roma has proven to be equally as enduring in a very competitive fragrance market. Since its launch in 2019, sales have risen from $13 million to over $500 million, making it the fourth-largest fragrance franchise in the U.S. What’s working? An innovative lineup of fragrances, flankers and line extensions, all of which have been given a megawatt marketing treatment. From a social strategy that deftly combines user generated content and the brand’s own culturally connected assets to launch activations that pack a punch (Valentino’s resurrection of Studio 54 was a highlight of New York Fashion Week) to an always-on program that’s deployed during key moments like Mother’s Day, the strategy is working. Gen Z can’t get enough. “We do things our own way,” said global president Claudia Marcocci. “There’s a mix of grace and intrigue and it’s not a flat brand. People believe that something cannot be exclusive and inclusive, and we’ve shown with Born in Roma that we can be both.”
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Retailer of the Year: Mecca
Image Credit: Josh Robenstone/WWD In a year in which many have paid lip service to the idea of experiential retail, Mecca put its money where its mouth is, opening the world’s largest beauty store in August. Measuring 40,000 square feet spread over two floors and located in the heart of Melbourne’s Central Business District, the flagship is the ultimate beauty playground — literally. A giant carousel in the center of the store serves as a centralized play station, where customers can try, test and learn, and each category “zone” has both brands and services; over 80 services in total are on offer, some paid and others free of charge. There’s also an apothecary (with a full-time naturopath), a florist, a Maria Tash piercing studio, a Josh Wood hair salon and a café from the hip Melbourne baker Lune. There’s even a purpose-built mezzanine dedicated to gifting. “It doesn’t take space to sell beauty,” said Mecca founder and co-chief executive officer Jo Horgan at opening. “It takes space — and a lot of it — to experience beauty as we push into the blue zone of experiential retail.” It’s a strategy that seems to be resonating. At opening, Mecca predicted about 50,000 visitors per week would pass through the doors by yearend. Already that number has been surpassed, with more than 600,000 customers visiting since opening (this in a city with a population of 5 million); sources say Mecca is well on its way to ending the year with 1.8 billion Australian dollars in turnover. Horgan declined to comment on the figures, and emphasized that the goal wasn’t to do big for big’s sake. “Our mantra is no vanity projects,” she said. “When we opened our flagship in Sydney, we were blown away by how customers embraced it. That emboldened us to say that our flagship strategy of experiential retail on steroids is something customers clearly want.”
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Icon of the Year: Pantene Pro-V
Image Credit: Courtesy of Pantene How does a brand maintain relevance within the competitive landscape of beauty? Just ask Pantene. This year, the household hair care brand, which is celebrating its 80th birthday, proved its possible to be forever young with the help of Alix Earle, a Gen Z influencer who claimed her Pantene shampoo and conditioner made her hair the “softest it’s ever felt.” Earle’s video immediately sparked a debate over drugstore versus prestige products and catalyzed sales. The post, which generated more than 31 million views in the first 24 hours, resulted in a 20 percent sales lift for several of Pantene’s bestselling products and amplified its relevance scores by 500 percent in one month. That didn’t go unnoticed by execs. Four months later, Earle and Pantene teamed up for a collab called the “Unexpired Pantene” collection, a limited-edition assortment that promised double the moisture for just $9.99 each. Keeping its finger on the pulse of tomorrow with hero products has worked: Pantene is outpacing growth in the overall hair category, posting high-single digit growth overall and triple- digits on select products, according to parent company P&G.
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Beauty Executive of the Year: Kecia Steelman, Chief Executive Officer, Ulta Beauty
Image Credit: Courtesy of “It’s been a crazy 24 hours, that’s for sure, but really exciting at the same time,” said Kecia Steelman, when she took the reins as chief executive officer of Ulta Beauty on the first Monday in January in an appointment whose timing took the industry by surprise. Steelman made it clear, though, that she has been preparing for this role for her entire career — and she wasted no time in laying out a bold vision for the Bolingbrook, Ill.-based retailer. “Competition isn’t getting any easier. Every single day, more and more people are coming into beauty because it’s an attractive category,” she said. “We’re in it to win it.” Steelman moved fast, unveiling her Beauty Unleashed strategy that included doubling down on wellness, tapping industry veteran Lauren Brindley as chief merchandising officer, launching the Ulta Beauty Marketplace, overseeing Ulta’s expansion in Mexico and the Middle East and, in a mic-drop moment, snapping up British beauty retailer SpaceNK. Wall Street seems to approve. Ulta’s stock has risen from $450.01 on Jan. 6 to $509 as of press time. Rather than being overwhelmed by an ultra- competitive beauty retail landscape with Sephora, Amazon, TikTok Shop and more all vying for customers, Steelman views the current environment as a tool to breed innovation. “For those of us that are in this competitive environment together, it just helps us all get better, which means ultimately the consumer wins,” said Steelman. “Those that are continuing to reinvent themselves and grow and learn will be successful. I like competition. It makes you get even better and look at how you’re going to do your business differently in the future. A dose of competition is good for all of us.”
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Brand of the Year, Prestige: Cécred
Image Credit: Courtesy of Cécred Founder Beyoncé Knowles-Carter’s entertainment career started roughly three decades ago. But in 2025, a new hair care star was born. In addition to the famed mogul’s global Cowboy Carter World Tour and the reincarnation of her partnership with Levi Strauss & Co., Knowles-Carter’s Cécred became a bellwether for other brands when it became the largest hair care launch in exclusive partner Ulta Beauty’s history, complete with an all-door rollout and salon integrations for product demonstrations. Later on, Cécred introduced its new Protection Collection, which targets need states endemic to protective hairstyles. Nevertheless, the brand’s key launches are universal in appeal, and its consumer base ranges in age, ethnicity and geography: Case in point, Cécred’s Restoring Hair & Edge Drops amassed a 100,000-strong waitlist at launch, and as of August, sells once every 16 seconds — which would put the $56 product at a run rate north of $100 million. The range overall has dozens of industry beauty awards, despite not even being two years old. The female version of a hustler, indeed.
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Brand of the Year, Wellness: Lemme
Image Credit: Courtesy of Lemme Kourtney Kardashian Barker’s Lemme is on a roll. In 2024, the brand launched hit products like Lemme GLP-1, which sold out in record time, and Tone, a complementary supplement to support muscle mass. While its focus on metabolic health garnered buzz, the excitement didn’t stop there. This year, Lemme, founded by Kardashian Barker and Simon Huck, expanded into sexual wellness with Lemme Play; launched a new format with liposomal Lemme Colostrum; entered online supplement retailer iHerb, making its products available internationally for the first time; expanded its assortment in retail with Target and Ulta Beauty, and launched a slew of other products, including Lemme No. 2, Lemme Greens and Lemme Immunity. The goal? To democratize women’s health and provide a solution for every life stage and time of day. The approach is working. Lemme’s Debloat and Sleep have gone viral several times over, and Purr is the number-one gummy vaginal probiotic in the U.S. While supplements have become the hottest category in wellness, it’s no secret that consumers are facing pill and powder fatigue, which is where Lemme has won with its indulgent formats like Lemme Purr lollipops and its new liposomal format that doubles as a vanilla creamer. As if this wasn’t buzzy enough, Lemme gained traction with campaigns starring Julia Fox and Kim Kardashian. After its busiest year yet, Lemme has no plans to slow down with a pipeline of innovation set to debut in 2026.
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Brand of the Year, Mass: Nyx Professional Makeup
Image Credit: Courtesy of NYX Makeup may not be having its best year, but Nyx Professional Makeup isn’t one to follow trends. Instead — it creates them. In fact, the brand — the largest contributor to dollar gains in the mass market this year, across categories, according to Circana data — has navigated 2025’s choppy waters with a mix of agility and innovation. Nielsen reports that Nyx is growing 4.4 times faster than the market overall. Case in point, out-of-the-box collaborations with the likes of “A Minecraft Movie,” athletically inspired campaigns with USC basketball’s JuJu Watkins, and shortly thereafter, soccer stars and sisters Alyssa and Gisele Thompson. And though the brand’s faces describe how the products make them feel — “We talk a lot about our confidence and how that’s grown over the years, and we want to continue that [through this campaign] and help spread that to other people coming and seeing us play,” Alyssa Thompson said when the campaign launched — it’s mainstay products like Fat Oil Lip Drip and Lip Lingerie XXL Matte Liquid Lipstick that continue to power the success of Nyx. On TikTok, viral products include Lip I.V. Lip Gloss Stain (the top lip stain in the mass market), Crazy Lift Brow Gel and more. Sealed with a kiss, indeed.
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Creator of the Year: Golloria George
Image Credit: Courtesy Photo For 24-year-old Golloria George, beauty influencing isn’t just a career but an avenue for change. In recent years, the Texas-based creator has emerged as a leading voice in the fight for makeup inclusivity, amassing more than 4.5 million followers across platforms for her efforts, candid reviews and tutorials. George has even gone behind the bench to consult with brands like Hailey Bieber’s Rhode and Patrick Ta Beauty to inform product development and help ensure shade diversity that accounts for people of all — and particularly darker — skin tones. She doesn’t only use her platform to talk about beauty, though: George, who is from South Sudan, has routinely taken to social media to educate her audience about humanitarian crises around the world. Her commitment to her values — in beauty and beyond — is emblematic of her generation at large. In true Gen Z form, George is using her platform to rewrite the rules and make the world a more beautiful place— in every meaning of the phrase.
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Creative Force of the Year: Nicola Formichetti, Global Creative Director, MAC Cosmetics
Image Credit: Courtesy of Nicola Formichetti It’s no surprise that one of makeup’s most iconic brands picked an equally storied image maker to become its global creative director this year. When fashion designer/ artistic director Nicola Formichetti was named to the post in May, he lost no time in making a mark. “The world is craving creativity, beauty and connection, and I can’t wait to help bring that to life in a magical way,” Formichetti said when he was appointed. His first move: Tapping famed photographers Inez & Vinoodh for a striking campaign called I Only Wear MAC, starring the likes of Doja Cat, Kris Jenner and Cortisa Star. “For me, this is going back to the roots of MAC — it’s all stripped back,” he said. “It’s all ages, all races, all genders.” MAC, of course, has a long legacy of breaking creative barriers, from RuPaul fronting Viva Glam to the nearly 70 shades offered of hero Studio Fix Fluid SPF 15. Formichetti’s mandate was to distill all of that into culturally relevant creative that feels just as compelling out-of-home as it does on-screen. Case in point, when Doja Cat literally bit into a tube of MAC lipstick at the MTV VMAs, it drove $2.8 million in media impact value, per Launchmetrics. “A lot of brands have understood that culture is a currency,” said Aïda Moudachirou- Rébois, MAC’s senior vice president and global general manager, in September. “It’s about creating moments of thoughtfulness, connection to and affinity for the brand.”
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Launch of the Year: La Beauté Louis Vuitton
Image Credit: George Chinsee/WWD Louis Vuitton’s origins are in travel — its namesake founder introduced his first trunk in 1858 — and this year the company set out on a new journey: makeup. La Beauté, consisting of 55 lipsticks, 10 lip balms and eight eye shadow palettes, launched in August under the aegis of creative director (and makeup artist extraordinaire) Pat McGrath. The prices are lofty — lipsticks are $160, the eye shadow palettes, $250, and accessories such as a lipstick-sized miniature trunk costs $2,990, but so is the goal: to redefine beauty as a lifestyle and elevate it to an art form. Every detail was meticulously thought out, from the bespoke scents created by in-house perfumer Jacques Cavallier-Belletrud to the 55 highly pigmented lipstick shades, a number that reflects the Roman numerals LV — also the house’s initials. “It was important to make a real object of desire,” said McGrath, “a product that was made to be treasured, like the Louis Vuitton bag — heirloom worthy.” Nearly four years of research and development went into the initial range, and Vuitton chairman and chief executive officer Pietro Beccari promised much more to come. “We give ourselves the time to establish these lines with success,” he told WWD. “Beauty is a large category, so we’ll have many more launches foreseen in the next five years, covering all categories.”
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An Appreciation: Leonard A. Lauder
Image Credit: Nick Machalaba In December 1967, WWD published its very first interview with Leonard A. Lauder. In it, the 37-year-old, who was then executive vice president of Estée Lauder, shared his views on the “look” for 1968 (“Women love the glow of a tan without necessarily being in the sun,” he declared, touting the launch of a new bronzer.), the biggest challenge ahead (knock-offs), international expansion and the next big opportunity. “The fragrance business is the wave of the future,” he said. The story marked the beginning of a lifelong relationship between WWD and Lauder, who passed away in June at the age of 92. In total, Lauder was mentioned over 1,000 times in the Eye, beauty, business, media and other sections. He was Beauty Inc’s first Visionary of the Year awardee in 2010 and received WWD’s John B. Fairchild Honor in 2018. Lauder’s final interview with WWD was on the occasion of Neiman Marcus honoring him with its 2024 Award for Distinguished Service in the Field of Fashion, which his mother had received in 1962. “I’ve always said that relationships are the foundation of success,” Lauder told us — and WWD will forever cherish the relationship we had with him.
Kourtney Kardashian Barker’s Lemme, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter’s Cécred Among 2025 Beauty Inc Award Winners
