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The 10 Most Groundbreaking Beauty Campaigns of 2018


Everyone who’s heard of a little brand called Fenty Beauty and its 40 shades of foundation knows that the beauty business is changing. It took years of women staunchly advocating for themselves and celebrating every milestone along the way, but we’re proud to say the beauty industry has made progress—even if there is still room for vast improvement.

This year followed the momentum set forward in 2017, resulting in beauty campaigns that were more inclusive, more inspiring, and less singular in what “beautiful” constitutes. A few of our favorite game-changing moments managed to celebrate people of all ages, sizes, and so-called “flaws” like acne and body hair. In a perfect world, these campaigns would be the norm. But until then, let’s give one more shout out to beauty campaigns that raised the bar in 2018. CEOs and marketing managers, if you’re reading, here are the groundbreaking campaigns to beat in 2019.

CVS Went Photoshop-Free

Back in January, CVS announced that it would no longer use digitally-altered images in its beauty advertising. The brand created the CVS Beauty Mark, a watermark that announces to customers that an image hasn’t been edited. The company pledged to no longer change or enhance “a person’s shape, size, proportion, skin or eye color, wrinkles or any other individual characteristics.” Watermarked products bearing the beauty mark logo and the phrase “Beauty Unaltered” hit CVS shelves this year. CVS is also reportedly working towards developing retouching guidelines for the drugstore beauty brands it carries, with the goal of transparency in advertising by 2020.

Billie Showed Off Body Hair

It’s hard to believe, but this year, razor start-up Billie became the first razor company to show body hair in its advertisements. Called Project Body Hair, the campaign proudly starred pubes, lip hair, and happy trails. “Shaving is a personal choice, and no one should be telling women what to do with their hair,” Billie cofounder Georgina Gooley told Glamour. “The fact is, we all have body hair. Some of us choose to remove it, and some of us choose to wear it proudly—and either way, we shouldn’t have to apologize for our choice.”

Billie doubled sales in the week that Project Body Hair launched and completely sold out of product. (Don’t worry, they’ve long since been back in stock.) Some customers appreciated the inclusivity while others confessed that no matter how splashy the advertising, they just don’t think too much about which razor they buy. Either way, we’re grateful that Billie helped us acknowledge that what you do with your body hair is purely personal.

Revlon x Ashley Graham

Ashley Graham has been pounding on the door of the beauty industry, and for years, no one listened. “In the past I’ve been been told things like, ‘Well, you’re only plus-size from your neck down; your face isn’t plus-size,'” she told Glamour. “What does that even mean? If my face isn’t ‘plus-size,’ then by that logic, why wouldn’t you put me in a cosmetics campaign?” Finally—after years of the industry ignoring plus-size women—Revlon had the good sense to cast Graham as the face of their “Live Boldly” campaign, a meaningful move for Graham and the women she’s been begging to represent for years. “At the end of the day, I hope people understand how groundbreaking this is—that Revlon now has a curve model with a contract on their campaign,” said Graham at the time. “This should be the norm. I’m really hoping and striving that in the next 10 years we don’t even have to discuss this. Beauty is beyond size.”

KKW Body

When Kim Kardashian West modeled the bottle of her first KKW Body fragrance on her own famous figure, critics were frustrated with its seeming endorsement of unrealistic beauty ideals. Amidst the backlash, one body-positive blogger even re-created the campaign to prove that there’s no real definition of a “perfect” body. But the conversation didn’t end there. Kardashian launched two new body fragrances, KKW II and KKW III, with a campaign that managed to celebrate bodies of all sizes.

The photos featured plus-size women, posed in the same nude, suggestive way as Kim (and her perfume bottle). Kardashian’s growth is exactly what we hope to see more of next year and beyond: She listened to the critics, she grew, and made the choice to be more inclusive. “I was talking to some friends of mine, and I had seen a couple other people re-create the [original KKW Body] campaign and I just thought, You know what? It’s not always about my body,” she told Refinery29. “The bottle obviously is my body shape, but I always celebrate and love confident women no matter what shape or size they are.”

Babor x All Woman Project

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Beauty giants aren’t the only ones making changes. Skincare brand Babor also ditched the airbrushed images this year to huge fanfare across the industry. In partnership with the All Woman Project, the company tapped non-traditional models and committed to publishing the photos without any editing. The campaign included 57-year-old model Nicola Griffin, international activist Nykhor-Nyakueinyang Paul, and former Glamour editor Lauren Chan. We can never use too many reminders that people of all ages, races, professions and sizes are beautiful, and Babor’s pared-down photos did just that. The campaign (and the accolades it gathered) helped set the tone for the future of beauty, and are working to inspire brands of all sizes to follow suit.

Isabella Rossellini Returns to Lancôme

In her late 20s, Isabella Rossellini signed a contract with Lancôme that made her the highest paid model in the world. She spent 18 years as the face of the brand, until, at age 42, she was told that she was no longer “aspirational” and let go. Even back in 1996, the break made headlines. But plenty has changed in the past few decades—including the fact that the General Manager of Lancôme International, Françoise Lehmann, is a woman.

This year, she approached Rossellini about returning to the brand. “[Lehmann] told me she wanted to be inclusive and not just portray women as beautiful when they’re young and thin with blond hair and blue eyes,” Rossellini told Glamour. “She wanted [the brand] to be an instrument of finding elegance and glamour, rather than dictating to women what they should be.” Rossellini said yes, and at age 66, she’s once again starring in a beauty campaign. The campaign is a reminder that beauty and youth aren’t synonymous, and as Rossellini notes, her fellow spokesmodels like Kate Winslet, Julia Roberts, and Penelope Cruz are also symbols of power. “Not only are these women incredibly beautiful, but they certainly speak up.”

The First CoverGirl With Vitiligo

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The definition of “CoverGirl” has evolved immensely in the past few years. In 2017, the brand welcomed 69-year-old Maye Musk into its family, along with Issa Rae (of HBO’s Insecure), chef Ayesha Curry, fitness trainer Massy Arias, and motorcycle racer Shelina Moreda. The women embodied the brand’s new, more powerful motto: I Am What I Make Up.

In 2018, CoverGirl continued to push past stale definitions of beauty, starting by teaming up with Amy Deanna, a Texan model with vitiligo. Instead of using foundation to cover up or even out Deanna’s skin tone, the advertisements used TruBlend Foundation to enhance her tone differences. “Amy’s skin happens to have variations in tone, and it’s equally as beautiful as the skin we’re used to seeing in beauty ads. It’s about flipping the script on the one-dimensional standard of beauty,” said CoverGirl’s senior vice president Ukonwa Ojo. In a year when Winnie Harlow walked the Victoria’s Secret runway, vitiligo is seeing more representation than ever.

Secret Tackles the Pay Gap

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Secret Deodorant took on both the gender pay disparity and the nuanced conversation about what exactly constitutes “women’s empowerment” with a music video that centered on the simple refrain: “I’d rather get paid.” Aside from its crazy-catchy melody, the video tackles the issue of power and taking back what we’re owed. Sample lyrics: “I see so many lovely gestures telling women ‘we’re strong,’ but paying us a fair wage is what we’ve wanted all along.” As part of the campaign, Secret teamed up with advocacy group Ladies Get Paid to develop a toolkit that educates women about their rights in the workplace.

Suave Gets Real

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“Shampoo commercial hair” is a windswept, idealized hairstyle we can all picture that pretty much none of us can re-create. In a series of commercials, Suave let customers behind the scenes of what it actually takes to get that hair. For the brand’s Hair You Can Believe campaign, Suave spotlighted the over-the-top ways that marketers create “perfect hair,” like hiding styrofoam balls underneath those lustrous waves to create volume or hiring people to stand in green-screen bodysuits to help a model’s hair flow in the studio’s fake wind. “Everyone just wants to see people in haircare ads that they can relate to,” hairstylist and Unilever expert Ursula Stephen told Glamour. “We all want to feel represented and have products available to cater to our specific needs.” The commercial went viral, and women everywhere heaved a sigh of relief and put down their blowdryers.

Calvin Klein Women Went Bare-Faced

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With the name “Women,” Calvin Klein’s new fragrance could have gone in a few directions. The clichéd campaign would probably have involved moody music, a woman slowly diving into a pool in an evening gown, and a whole lot of roses. But instead, creative director Raf Simons cast powerhouses Lupita Nyong’o and Saoirse Ronan as the face of “Women” and highlighted their career successes in a series of portraits that sits them among photos of Earth Kitt, Katharine Hepburn, Sissy Spacek, and Nina Simone, the women who inspired them. “Calvin Klein Women is inspired by the transmission of strength and inspiration from one woman to the next; by plurality combined with individuality; freedom of expression; and the notion that the collective is as vital as the individual,” Simons said in a statement. Instead of that cliché pool dive, the campaign videos showcase these two brilliant actors speaking to one another about craft. Not only that, the two were also shot bare-faced. Stunning.

Related Stories:
–9 Times Celebrities Have Spoken Out About Being Ridiculously Photoshopped
–The Rise of the Plus-Size Face
–Ashley Graham: ‘We Need More Size Diversity in Beauty Ads’



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Naomi Campbell Somehow Just Landed Her First Beauty Campaign


Would you believe it if we told you that supermodel Naomi Campbell has never had a beauty contract until now? It sounds bonkers given that she’s reigned supreme over magazine covers and runways for nearly 30 years, but—somehow—it’s true.

Thankfully, this egregious situation has been rectified as Campbell has just been named the new face of Nars Cosmetics for its spring 2019 campaign. “Naomi is a living icon and brings such strong personality to the camera,” says François Nars, the company’s founder who also photographed Campbell for the brand. “She and I are like family. I have known her since the very beginning of her career. From the start, I have admired her, her beauty, and her style.”

“Very excited to be the new face of NARS Cosmetics ? Shot by my dear friend François Nars✨,” Campbell wrote announcing the news to her 6.1 million Instagram followers.

It’s rather mind-boggling that at 48, Campbell is still experiencing “firsts” in her incredible career. Of course, she is one of the original supermodels who rose to international superstardom in the ’80s and ’90s. And she’s been breaking barriers ever since. In 1988, she was the first black woman to appear on the cover of French Vogue and in 1989 she was the first black model to grace American Vogue‘s coveted September issue.

Campbell has also long been a voice for diversity and inclusion in the fashion and beauty worlds. And the fact that she’s only now getting her first beauty campaign in 2018 is evidence that more work is necessary. “I’ve never done [a beauty campaign] for anyone. People say, ‘Oh you’ve got beautiful skin’ and yet I’ve never done one,” Campbell told The Evening Standard in 2017. The writer of the piece also noted, “She gives me a look that says, ‘You know why.'” Mmhmm.

Related Stories:
–Naomi Campbell Has Two Words for People Who Ask Her About Kendall Jenner
–Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell Just Reunited on the Runway, and It Was Predictably Epic
–One Year Later, This Is the Real Effect Fenty Has Had on the Beauty Industry





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What to Buy From Fenty Beauty – Reviews


If we had a dollar for every time a friend has asked one of our editors what to buy from Fenty Beauty, well, let’s just say we’d have enough to clear out the shelves at Sephora. Since Rihanna’s makeup line launched in 2017, every new drop—from lipstick to eyeshadow palettes to even blotting papers—has resulted in immediate fan frenzy.

Really, it’s not hard to see why. From her 40 foundation shades to her looks-good-on-every-skin-tone lip gloss, Rihanna has not only created a collection of quality products at reasonable price points (nearly everything from the brand is under $50), she also takes every possible shopper into consideration when formulating her line. No skin tone is forgotten or overlooked. Also, who doesn’t want cheekbones like Rihanna?

While—no exaggeration—you really can’t go wrong with anything from Fenty, the reality is you can’t buy it all at once. So over the past year, we’ve swatched, swiped, and tested our way through the best Fenty Beauty has to offer to distill down our top recommendations. Read on for our editors’ unfiltered reviews on their favorite Fenty Beauty products, below.



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What Luxury Beauty Means to Undocumented Immigrants and Their Children


I grew up poor. Not broke, which isn’t poor, and not bohemian poor, like a gentrifier living in the ghetto but able to afford nice clothes. Undocumented-child-of-undocumented-immigrants poor, which means that even as I worked to g degrees from Harvard and Yale, delivering the American Dream at my parents’ feet, my mother and father are in a perpetual, worsening state of poverty because they are aging out of manual labor in a country that is trying to expel them. They’ve paid their taxes for decades but haven’t been able to put a penny towards their retirement. They do not qualify for public benefits. That kind of poor.

For my family poverty is like walking in a hurricane. I spend my money buying my parents umbrella after umbrella; each provides some relief, then breaks—cheap fixes, all of them. The rain has paused for now. But it will resume. In Spanish, we call that pause escampo. The rain has escampado. I have some discretionary income. Most of that goes towards my family, my reporting, or towards immigrants in my community who need it. It will not last forever.

But about a year ago, a curious thing happened. I walked into a Sephora and realized I could buy whatever I wanted.

I walked right out. That didn’t feel right. Later I went back in to Sephora with my mother and I told her I would buy her whatever she wanted. That felt better. She has studied fashion magazines since she was a kid in Ecuador and had her wishlist: Nars Blush in Orgasm. YSL Touche Éclat Radiance Awakening Foundation. A tube of Rouge Dior lipstick in deep red. A bottle of Byredo “Rose Noir” Eau de Parfum that Sephora didn’t have in stock. And on and on.

Up until that point, she had owned drugstore products. My mother was emotional and cleared her dresser bureau to organize the new makeup. The Chanel shadows never left their velvet sleeves with their trademark hot-stamped logo. I think she used her fingers to smudge on the shimmers not to maximize pigment, but because she didn’t want to stain the tiny applicators. The Byredo perfume would be spritzed twice (just twice) whenever she went to a graduation or a funeral. She never even removed the BeautyBlender from its plastic case to keep it clean. She kept purchasing drugstore bronzers so she wouldn’t have to deplete the Bare Minerals one I got her, the same one I use. It’s called “A Little Sun” and it’s golden brown with a slight red tint. I’ve never gone on a vacation, but I always liked the way white girls at Harvard looked in September after they’d spent weekends biking through the Cape.

For my mother, a top shelf is a magical cloud of luxury, a delicious feel-good fantasy.

My mother and I had disagreements about it. I could see that she rarely used her makeup, reserving it for special occasions or for church. Weeks passed, and she continued to venture into Manhattan barefaced. I panicked and pleaded with her to wear it whenever she encountered white people who determined her life or livelihood, like at work or at the doctor’s office. I asked her to wear a full face of makeup whenever I was not with her to serve as her interpreter, whenever my credit card could not communicate in a demented shorthand that we are human too. But she wouldn’t listen. For my mother, a top shelf is a magical cloud of luxury, a delicious feel-good fantasy.

But my mother doesn’t read the news in order to preserve her sanity and I have to for my job—I’m an immigration writer—so she doesn’t know about the Border Patrol agents who dump gallons of water that humanitarian groups have left in the desert for migrants. I do. For me, as a formerly undocumented young woman and the daughter of undocumented immigrants, makeup has become a talisman—an attempt to ward off evil.

PHOTO: Photo by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

A look at my mother’s vanity

I didn’t learn to use makeup from my mother, as I know many young women do. Growing up, my Latinx immigrant family followed strict traditional gender roles where my dad worked out in the world and my mom stayed home with me and my brother. My father had expectations when he came home from work—dinner, a clean house, the usual. But he also expected my mother to look beautiful. He expected her to do the work with her hair down, makeup on, in heels. Instead, she wore sweats, sunscreen, and her hair in a bun. I admired that about her, even when it ended in a fight. My mother made it clear she’d never wear makeup for a man.

Like she had, I learned about makeup from magazines, where the beautiful models and celebrities were mostly white. It wasn’t until Jay-Z said, “Put some colored girls in the MoMa” in 2011 that I stopped wanting to look like a French gamine. Jackie Aina on YouTube came to me like a revelation. I watched her videos and learned how to address hyperpigmentation, color correction, and a status quo that doesn’t want to cater to dark skin. It took a gorgeous black makeup artist who had been through hell and back to make me understand what it could mean to talk about makeup in terms of self care. Her looks were radical acts—declarations of delight and exuberance.

My mother is beautiful. Sometimes I attempt to conjure up what a racist person might see if he looked at her at her most glamorous and regal, with her fig-brown skin and a caravan nose straight out of a Renaissance portrait. I think about the tear-gassed toddlers on the border, their parents desperate for asylum. I wonder if he processes her as human.

I can’t protect my mother from getting fired from her job, or detention, or deportation. I can’t even protect her from daily encounters with racist abuse. But I can use the master’s own tools to prepare her to step into the master’s house.

I understand this is twisted.

I think a lot about an experiment I read about in Scientific American in which black and white participants in a mall were asked to determine how much to spend on a pair of expensive headphones. Half of the black participants were first made to review a list of racist traits associated with African-Americans. Afterwards, when the participants were shown photographs of the headphones, the individuals who had been forced to read the list offered to pay a lot more money than either the white participants or the black participants who hadn’t had to confront those stereotypes.

PHOTO: Photo by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

The author

I pay for nice makeup because I want to prove that I can—once a saleswoman at a department store asked too pointedly if I needed help and I ended up buying two Chanel lipsticks and a blush that I didn’t need—and because maybe it’ll make someone think twice before they assume who my mother and I are based on the color of our skin.

Earlier this fall, I bought the Tom Ford Shade and Illuminate. It costs $85, what my father earns for a full day of work as a salad maker. But the packaging is gorgeous. It contours and highlights, and I like to sweep it over Sonia Kashuk Undetectable Crème Bronzer to deepen my brown skin. A good dupe for it is the Wet n Wild MegaGlo Makeup Stick, which retails for $3.99. I use both. The truth is I like the Wet n Wild one even better because it’s dispensed in a stick, so I don’t need to use a brush, and the color is warmer.

But when I have to go into spaces where I know I will feel intimidated because of my race or when I have to talk to powerful white people whom I know do not see me as an equal—even if it’s on the phone, even if I’m just in a towel, right out of the shower, even if I have to drink a vodka soda to muster up the courage to voice my opinion—I wear a full face of makeup and every cream and powder that touches my skin is designer. YSL, Dior, Chanel, Tom Ford. My armor.

I feel beautiful when I am able to grit my teeth and get it done, when I can bite the inside of my cheeks and not cry, when I can show off a steely face to the world. Makeup helps me do that.

Some more enlightened women than I will tell me they feel beautiful when they are surrounded by the people they love, when they drink a lot of water, when they spend time with their children. I feel beautiful when I am able to grit my teeth and get it done, when I can bite the inside of my cheeks and not cry, when I can show off a steely face to the world. Makeup helps me do that.

I have nightmares about deportation and internment camps every night. But sometimes when I can’t fall asleep, I fantasize about meeting the President of the United States and I feel a surge of warm pleasure as I imagine step-by-step how I’d prepare. I’d line my lips in red liner then fill them in with multiple coats of MAC in Russian Red. Long, curled lashes coated in Too Faced Better Than Sex Mascara. If I needed to cry, I’d cry in the bathroom, silently. The formula is waterproof, so I’d be able to hide the evidence.

Makeup makes me feel beautiful and it makes me feel powerful, but it doesn’t make me feel like a pretty girl. Makeup makes me feel like a woman with a plan for survival. I don’t play with makeup. I unleash it.

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio is a writer living in New Haven, Connecticut. She is an Emerson Collective Fellow. You can follow her on Instagram @kcornv.

Main Photo: Getty Images





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Ulta Holiday Gift Ideas: Best Beauty Gift Sets


The countdown to Christmas is on which is exactly why a foolproof gift idea with fast shipping is key. Luckily beauty gift sets are one of the greatest last-minute gift ideas of all. They’re already packaged like a gift, come with a great selection of beauty products for less, and are available on Ulta Beauty with free standard shipping that’ll get it to you in three to five days. Even better, most of all these gift sets are under $50.

From an essential set of brushes to a kit of all the best lip shades to beauty products that literally come inside a cake, these are the nineteen best beauty gift sets from Ulta to give this holiday season.



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Zodiac Holiday Gift Ideas: Jewelry, Beauty Gift Sets, and More


The only thing people who love astrology are into more than astrology is talking about astrology or specifically about their astrological sign. They want everyone to know their rising sign, their birth chart, their compatibility to other signs. Maybe they’re hard to read (Scorpio) or maybe they’re not (Aquarius). Regardless, there is an obvious gift idea that will work for all astrological signs: presents that help them wear their sign (or their rising sign or their moon sign) on their sleeve (or their neck or their finger or around their shoulders). Basically anything with a constellation or zodiac symbol on it is fair gifting game.

Below find all the best zodiac gift ideas for your favorite astrologically savvy friend, from beauty gift sets to engraved gold jewelry.



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