021- $160 Lipstick, AI Hair, and a Shakeup in Luxury Beauty.

Aug 19, 2025

👋 Hello everyone.

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⭐️ = What excites me most this week.

🇮🇳 Jing Daily: As China slows, India emerges as beauty’s next bet. Indian executives and consumers are reshaping global beauty, as brands pivot from slowing China to India’s booming, fast-evolving retail and digital markets.
⭐️ Jing Daily: Luxury beauty shakeup - Hermès hits 1st setback. French luxury giant’s fragrance and beauty division posts first sales decline since 2020 launch, contrasting sharply with aggressive growth at LVMH and Kering.
- Just for fun:
  - 📁 A cool flash drive.

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🧴 Skin / Personal Care:

🇳🇿 San Margo - personal care - haircare, skincare, and wellness from New Zealand [Instagram].
🇦🇺 Fat Lab - tallow based skincare [Instagram].
⭐️ Pattern Beauty is expanding into body care [Instagram].
ALLEVEN founded by Celia Forner, offering skincare and makeup [Instagram].
Weleda’s Serum Drops - are definitely giving a more youthful look to the brand.
weleda
A post shared by @weleda
Vogue Business: Navigating the clinical skincare gold rush. ‘What’s the science behind this?’ That’s the question skincare consumers keep asking on social media. Here’s what brands need to know.
⭐️ Louis Vuitton is launching a makeup line with Pat McGrath called La Beauté - starting with a $160 lipstick (with a $69 refill), there are more products with sky high prices…I understand these types of launches attract consumers who might not otherwise be able to afford the brand, but it is interesting timing.
louisvuitton
A post shared by @louisvuitton

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👩‍🦱 Haircare:

Arachne - a new hair tool brand with a Conair legacy [Beauty Independent; Instagram].
Seen launched a treatment mask for frizz.
seenskinandhair
A post shared by @seenskinandhair
Beekman 1802 ventures into haircare.
Better hair modeling from NVDIA - renderings of hair in gaming have always looked a bit odd, the new models are hoping to change that [The Verge].

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🐕 Pet Care:

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👩‍🔬 Femtech:

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🛍 Retail: DTC, Brick + Mortar, Social Commerce, and more...

Retail Brew: Dibs Beauty CEO on tariffs - ‘You control the panic’. Speaking about the state of the shopper, Lee said the customer is pressured. He added they are still spending the dollars, but they’re watching for every single dollar.

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🩺 Digital Health: Wearables, Smart Devices, and more...

Smithsonian Magazine: Inside the quest to understand the link between cannabis and schizophrenia. Recent studies have examined the relationship between the drug and psychoses and looked at how the brain responds to the substance.
The New Yorker: The family fallout of DNA surprises. Through genetic testing, millions of Americans are estimated to have discovered that their parents aren’t who they thought. The news has upended relationships and created a community looking for answers.
⭐️ Crunchbase: Eight Sleep lands $100M in fresh funding to help you get a better night’s rest.
⭐️ Most wearables are not really great at detecting / differentiating stress [The Guardian]
Undark: Proposed NASA cuts could affect public health research. From space, NASA collects data that’s crucial for public health. Potential cuts could threaten that work.
Weill Cornell Medicine: Gut neurons help the body fight inflammation.

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🗣 Social Media: News about TikTok, Meta, BeReal, Snapchat, X...

🇦🇺 Wired: The tweens down under - life without social media in Australia. As Australia rolls out a ban on social media for kids under 16, tech companies face steep fines and teens face life without TikTok, Instagram, and other platforms. Will it work?

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♻️ Sustainability: Sustainable Design

Scientists can now decode imagined speech directly from the brain, enabling silent communication for people with paralysis but raising new questions about mental privacy [Cell].
⭐️ A new study found that in a genetic analysis presence of certain bacteria on the skin could be linked to melanoma risk specifically - Proteobacteria to higher melanoma risk, Staphylococcus to lower risk, and Bacteroidetes to higher basal cell carcinoma risk [Medicine].

Spate: 2025 Hair Report - Care & Styling.
- Scalp serum searches are up +143.0% YoY, with TikTok holding 56.7% of the trend’s popularity share.
- Texturizing powder has seen +348.3% YoY growth in popularity, with 81.8% of engagement coming from TikTok.
- Divi Scalp Serum searches have grown >1,000% YoY, driven by interest in ingredients like caffeine and rosemary oil for hair growth.

💡 Enjoy,

-Anne

The Juicy Byte