Advertise on podcast: The Glossy Beauty Podcast

Over the past week, the internet has been ablaze discussing the beauty industry’s biggest controversy of the year. From social media to global news outlets, everyone is talking about something that’s been dubbed "eye patch gate." Around September 17, several beauty brands, including Fenty Beauty, Glow Recipe and Huda Beauty, began to tease the release of products that appeared to be almost identical. A small plastic jar that twisted to reveal a freshly sliced hydrogel eye mask. What was meant to be a first-of-its-kind innovation from each of the brands ended up looking more like an April Fools' joke.  As a response, Fenty Beauty and Glow Recipe meme'd themselves before continuing their launches, while Huda Beauty announced it was pulling the product from production. Turns out, the products all came from the same K-beauty manufacturer named Samhwa. “It really comes down to a question around exclusivity, meaning these brands likely received some degree of the [same] innovation in a very similar capacity [but have no exclusivity on the innovation],” Jaimee Holmes, veteran beauty exec-turned-brand founder, told Glossy. “[When] I was leading merchandising at Goop [from 2019-2023], I was really seeing this across every single category. So many brands presented quite literally the same product from the same suppliers, same presentations, but sometimes there might be a price difference of up to $100 between two [of them].”  Holmes knows a thing or two about innovation. She got her start at Sephora, followed by Benefit Cosmetics, then Too Faced, where she was an integral part of bringing one of the top-selling mascaras of all time, Better than Sex, to market in 2013. She’s also held executive roles at Kendo Brands, Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, Memebox and L’Oréal-backed Timeline Longevity.  At Goop, Holmes “would get samples from the same suppliers sent to my doorstep [on behalf of different brands],” she said. “It gave me a lot of pause. … Ultimately, it's what led me to step away and create something of my own called Fel Beauty.”  Fel Beauty (pronounced like "feel") launched in December of 2025 at Sephora and DTC with just one product. Called Kissylips, the $22 lip-and-cheek hybrid launched in eight universal shades and has since sold out several times. The line is made in Canada with a custom formula and custom packaging, which was far from easy. “This was a two-year development cycle to create [the product],” Holmes said. “It was 56 trials, which means we failed about 55 times before we succeeded to create this at all. And we didn't give up.”  Fel Beauty has taken on minimal funding from angel investors. With a lean team of five – including secret weapon Erik Frey, a packaging design expert who’s made products for Rhode, Tatcha and MPH – Fel Beauty has since added an overnight lip mask and is soon expanding into other categories. Certain shades, like CutiePie, have sold out four times at Sephora. “We've been beating our plan as a brand by over 200%,” Holmes said. “The last time we tracked and pulled this number, it was around 35,000 [units sold].”  Holmes sat down with Glossy Beauty Podcast host Lexy Lebsack to unpack the innovation struggles in the industry, share lessons from her career, and spill the secret sauce behind 10-month-old Fel Beauty’s quick success.

What does it take to thrive within the notoriously competitive world of Sephora?  In many ways, Ilia Beauty is a case study in success in America’s biggest specialty beauty retailer. The brand has thrived within Sephora for a decade and makes the retailer’s No. 1 mascara, and Ilia founder Sasha Plavsic helped to architect the industry-leading "Clean at Sephora" program.  “Going into Sephora was really a game changer [for Ilia],” Plavsic told Glossy. “That's when the business really took off.”  But that doesn’t mean it’s been easy. “You have one shot, more or less, to prove that you can do what they need you to do,” Plavsic told Glossy. “If they're investing in you and giving up space for you to use, you do have to perform. … You have to be ready for the opportunity.”  Plavsic launched Ilia in 2011 in direct-to-consumer e-commerce and small beauty boutiques. In 2016, the brand entered Sephora and quickly became the "guinea pig" for Sephora’s industry-changing Clean at Sephora assortment, Plavsic told Glossy. In 2022, Ilia was acquired by Famille C, the Courtin-Clarins family holding company and owner of the Clarins brand. Between launch and today, Ilia has also diversified its retailer presence to include Amazon, Credo, Mecca, Revolve, Nordstrom and, as of 2025, Ulta Beauty, which Plavsic sees as a separate customer from Sephora.  Cumulatively, Plavsic and her team have successfully navigated the challenges of a diversified retail presence and an expanding clean beauty landscape, all while maintaining their stronghold within Sephora. She sat down with Glossy Beauty Podcast host Lexy Lebsack to share Clean at Sephora’s origin story, advice for brands looking to make it in Sephora and her perspective on diversified retail channels. “Growth can be painful, and I think, with [Sephora], it can be the most painful because they can probably grow you faster than anybody out there,” Plavsic said. “That is an opportunity that you cannot pass up.”

What does it take to win Allure’s Best of Beauty awards? In today’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, Allure editor-in-chief Jessica Cruel sits down with host Lexy Lebsack to unpack the ins and outs of its prestigious beauty awards program, including how beauty and wellness brands can better appeal to her team of editors.  Launched in 1996, five years after the first issue of Allure hit newsstands, the annual Best of Beauty awards anoints the best products across dozens of categories with its coveted Best of Beauty seal.  “The seal can be licensed, so you can put it on your packaging, you can put it on your social media, you can put it in ads, and that's because we know from [our] research that the seal helps that product move,” Cruel told Glossy. “We know that when people see that seal, [the winning product] is more likely to be purchased than the thing that's sitting right next to it, so that seal has power.”  The awards are a hallmark franchise for the Condé Nast publication and a powerful tool for the brands that win. The seal is a recognizable differentiator in the market, which is why Allure’s team tests products all year in anticipation of the big reveal.  The 2026 award winners will be announced today, September 17. To celebrate, Glossy tapped Cruel to talk through the nuances of making it through the first rounds, how the process works and how winners are selected. Cruel also shares candid advice for brands that want to stand out to her editors year-round, including insights around timelines, the categories and topics performing well today, what’s interesting to her, and what she wishes more brands and publicists understood about working with Allure.

Helmed for the past six years by veteran beauty executive Mary van Praag, 25-year-old mass beauty mainstay Milani Cosmetics is in the midst of meteoric growth. In today’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, van Praag sits down with host Lexy Lebsack to discuss Milani’s growth engine, including the tactics and retail partnerships she’s betting on to reach $500 million in annual sales in the next three years.

CPG disruptors have entered just about every legacy category over the past few years in hopes of capturing bored consumers looking for more interesting everyday products.  We’ve seen this play out across dandruff shampoo, toothpaste and mouth wash, supplements, sunscreen, and, most recently, the allergy aisle.  “We did a ton of consumer work up front, probably too much, pulling research reports, data and our own survey of 600 consumers, and what we realized was that there is a huge experience and efficacy gap,” Loren Lucree, the CEO and founder of 9-month-old allergy-care brand Wizard Wellness, told Glossy. “[We found that] only 7% were loyal to their current solutions, which is bananas. … [The] lesson is nobody's writing love letters to Flonase or Zyrtec.”  Lucree is a beauty industry veteran formulator and executive. His CV includes Unilever and Estée Lauder brands. “One morning I woke up and told my poor husband, ‘I have to do this,' … because somebody else will do it if I don't,” Lucree said. “[I thought], ‘I have this amazing beauty network around me, and now's the time’.” Lucree secured $7 million in funding from True Beauty Ventures, G9 Ventures, Able Partners and The Venture Collective to launch Wizard Wellness via a DTC model in January. The brand is built on a beauty industry playbook, including cleaner ingredients, clear positioning, clinical testing, a dynamic OOH advertising funnel and social-first marketing. Now, just nine months post-launch, Wizard Wellness has entered CVS, Walmart and, as of Monday, Target stores.  Glossy West Coast correspondent Lexy Lebsack sat down with Lucree to learn firsthand how he took on allergy incumbents and what it’ll take to become a leader in the space.

There’s an interesting tension happening in the beauty industry today around makeup.  Last year, consumer beauty publications and industry executives heralded 2026 as the year bold, maximalist makeup would return. Top publications predicted a shift away from the persistent "clean girl aesthetic" that entered the zeitgeist around 2021 toward bolder, brighter makeup. Meanwhile, executives from Sephora, Ulta Beauty and Revlon told Glossy they were betting big on a return to more expressive makeup in 2026. But that hasn’t happened at scale – at least not yet. Instead, sales at conglomerates that report earnings, like L’Oréal Group and E.l.f. Beauty, tell us that top-selling categories in 2026 remain the mainstays of "no-makeup makeup," like lip gloss, balm and liner; complexion products, like tinted sunscreen, blush, bronzer, and setting spray; and mascara.  For today’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, host Lexy Lebsack sat down with veteran celebrity makeup artist Jamie Greenberg to unpack exactly where makeup is headed next.  Greenberg has been a working makeup artist for more than 20 years. Her client list today includes Rashida Jones, Kaley Cuoco, Chelsea Handler, Tracee Ellis Ross and Kristen Stewart, among others.  Greenberg is also the founder of the DTC makeup line Jamie Makeup, known best for its blush/highlighter hybrid product called Blighlighter and spray makeup remover named B.F.M.R. Mist. She’s also a prolific social media creator with more than 700,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram, and she runs a monthly subscription beauty box called SwagBag that features her latest favorite products from a wide array of brands. Press play now for a candid conversation on where makeup is headed, including the trends and signals Greenberg is paying attention to now.

Midi Health is betting on topical skin care and body care as it diversifies its telehealth offerings to capture more women. “Women in midlife go through amazing changes with their hormones, … [and] our skin care needs actually change over time with our hormone evolution,” Dr. Kathleen Jordan, MD, chief medical officer of Midi Health, told Glossy. “I usually talk about [this care expansion] as ‘hormone informed skin care’ because that's really what the market's been lacking.”  That is, skin care that treats a variety of skin concerns that can develop in mid-life such as dryness, loss of collagen, hyperpigmentation, and acne.  “We saw patients for many years without having [skin-care] products, but what we saw was them struggling to get good products that were actually designed for them,” Dr. Jordan said. “We now see tens of thousands of women every week, and we actually hear from them. We hear their questions. We understand where they're struggling to get products that actually are meaningful [for their skin concerns], and then in response, we can develop products that actually help them.”  For Midi Health, this means offering prescription and OTC products with ingredients like estrogen, retinol, hydroquinone and tretinoin. In June, Midi expanded its skin-care selection to include topical copper peptides. According to Dr. Jordan, this is just the start for the company. Midi Health launched in 2021 and currently treats around 25,000 women per week. Oftentimes, this includes care for issues dismissed by the traditional medical industry, like fatigue, weight gain, mood and sleep disturbance, which can be treated with things like hormone replacement therapies or other OTC and prescription interventions.  Midi Health is privately held by its founders plus investors like Connie Britton, Brandi Chastain, Tory Burch, Amy Schumer, and Meghan Markle, as well as private equity firms like Google Ventures and Emerson Collective, plus a laundry list of tech execs including Sheryl Sandberg, the former COO of Meta, and Tekedra Mawakana, the co-CEO of Waymo. Midi Health was valued at $1 billion following a $100 million series D funding round in February.  Glossy West Coast correspondent Lexy Lebsack sat down with Dr. Jordan to discuss Midi Health’s skin- and body-care aspirations, the category’s role in telehealth in the future, and how Midi Health hopes to earn more market share.

Behind every great in-person beauty or wellness event is an invisible team of insiders that has engineered the gathering for maximum impact.  Bilal Kaiser, the founder and principal of Agency Guacamole, is one of those insiders. Kaiser and his team have produced events for leading retailers and brands like Olive Young, NYX, Therabody, Matrix, Redken, Ole Henriksen, Evereden and many more.  Kaiser is a former L’Oréal Group executive and marketing instructor at UCLA and NYC’s General Assembly. He launched Agency Guacamole in 2016, a boutique communications agency based in Los Angeles and New York City that provides experiential, media communications, and influencer marketing services to the beauty and lifestyle industries.  For today’s episode, host Lexy Lebsack challenged Kaiser to break down the ins and outs of eventing in 2026. More specifically, he was asked to break down the nuances behind a successful event made for different age groups, including Gen Alpha, Gen Z, millennials and Gen X, and industry demographics, like press, influencers and consumers. Kaiser also fielded questions about event budgets, timelines, the future of eventing, and the optics to consider when planning luxury events or brand trips.

Have you ever wondered how awards show beauty partnerships come together to create big, splashy red carpet moments that seem to reverberate across social media for weeks or months? Award season partnerships are big business for everyone involved: the celebrity, who may be fulfilling, or courting, a spokesperson deal; beauty and lifestyle brands, which are often promoting a new product or simply seeking brand awareness; and professional artists, who are oftentimes the glue that holds it all together. In today’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, host Lexy Lebsack interviews beauty industry agents Marissa Alfe and Lauren FitzGerald. The duo opened their full-service Los Angeles talent agency, Prtnrs Mgnt, in 2020. They currently represent 18 standout hair, makeup and nail artists including Patrick Ta, Ariel Tejada and Laura Polko. Together, their artists work with stars like Gigi Hadid, Rosalia, Kylie Jenner, Olivia Munn and Alix Earle, while Alfe and FitzGerald have brokered deals for their clients with brands like La Mer, Chanel, Morphe and Redken. Alfe and FitzGerald are longtime friends and former colleagues at competing agency Cloutier Remix Agency. Alfe’s CV also includes Burberry and founder of Greyscale Management, while FitzGerald has held roles at InStyler and Digital Brand Products, the licensing and products division to Digital Brand Architects.

Teen boys have become an increasingly important consumer demographic over the past few years thanks, primarily, to their insatiable appetite for fragrance.  This includes the accumulation of "fragrance wardrobes," where users rotate their fragrances daily based on mood and occasion, often selecting from a robust collection of both designer and dupe scents. Teen boys also care about their fragrance atomizers and save for niche fragrances that signal access and knowledge about the category. Much of this stems from TikTok or Reddit, where "fragheads" — short for "fragrance heads" — follow the latest trends and industry news.  “It is very much a collector mentality,” said Glossy senior editor Emily Jensen. “There are actually a lot of parallels with how [teen boys] are discovering and purchasing [fragrances today] with the ‘sneakerhead’ community that was big in the 2010s.” But teens are also notoriously fickle, changing their minds with such vigor that it can be considered a curse to attract too much focus from young people. For example, attention from teens and tweens crushed the once skin-care darling Drunk Elephant after young shoppers claimed the brand as their own, then quickly moved on, causing quarterly sales to fall by as much as 65%.  Teen boys today straddle two generations: Gen Alpha boys 16 and younger and Gen Z boys 17 and older. Together, they’ve been dubbed Gen Zalpha.  So how do brands and retailers reach Gen Zalpha boys hungry for the latest fragrance to add to their wardrobes?  In today’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, we unpack the latest strategy shift from Ulta Beauty reported by Glossy’s international fashion reporter Zofia Zwieglinska. Launching this week, the retailer is partnering with fragrance brand Snif to attract young male fragrance enthusiasts with its first dedicated masstige men’s fragrance brand, Notewrks. Through this, the brand and retailer hope to target the gap between mass and prestige fragrance.  Host Lexy Lebsack is joined by Jensen and Zwieglinska to unpack the rise of the Gen Zalpha fraghead and how Ulta Beauty is hoping to woo them.

As competition in the beauty industry heats up, leaders are looking for new ways to stand out.  “I've worked in beauty for 24 years now, and I don't think I've ever seen it more competitive than it is right now,” Amy Liu, CEO and founder of Tower28, told Glossy. “Maybe in five more years, I'll say that again. Who knows, right? But it feels like we are at a real peak right now, and a bubble of sorts.”  In a lot of ways, the industry is moving away from speaking at consumers and leaning into a two-way dialogue — but what does that look like for out-of-home advertising?  In June, Tower28 gave the industry one of its best examples: The company debuted a custom-made NYC billboard with a large button that spritzed passersby with its hero SOS Daily Skin Rescue Spray. The billboard was up for two weeks in June, located on Canal Street in SoHo. Developed with outdoor advertising agency MilkMoney, the billboard was a first-of-its-kind endeavor. “[The billboard] was very bespoke — and, actually, there were a lot of problems that ensued, which is normal anytime you do something that has never been done before,” Liu said.  This included space limitations, technical challenges in the actual mister and storage of the product, and a liability issue that caused a last-minute location change. Luckily, Tower28 got lucky: The weather was hot and sticky – making a refreshing face mist especially alluring — and the city was busy and buzzing from its Knicks Championship win.  The primary ingredient in Tower28’s SOS Daily Skin Rescue Spray is hypochlorous acid, an increasingly popular ingredient in the skin-care space because it’s safe and gentle, yet helps prevent acne, especially after sweating or working out. It's also great for conditions like eczema because it helps to reduce inflammation.  Tower28’s SOS spray is a darling in the category and has been a hero for the brand since it launched in 2020. The brand sells various sizes of the popular mist, including a mini for $12, a 4-ounce bottle for $28 and a refill jug for $68.  Overall, Liu estimates that Tower28 spent around $200,000 on the billboard investment — $150,000 to MilkMoney and another $50,000 on promotion, staffing and ancillary campaign. The billboard garnered industry attention and spritzed more than 188,000 New Yorkers during the two-week run.  Liu sat down with Glossy Beauty Podcast host Lexy Lebsack to unpack the experience and investment, and discuss — knowing what she knows now — if she would do it again.

The beauty industry disruptor that brought clean beauty into the mainstream is back with a shiny new brand concept.  Gregg Renfrew, the entrepreneur behind Beautycounter and Counter, is launching her third beauty brand on September 1 in an effort to reach consumers ages 14 to 30.   The brand is called Beecee and, in a lot of ways, is an iteration of now-defunct Beautycounter. The line will launch direct-to-consumer with lip gloss, skin balm and face mist at premium price points. The company is currently in the midst of a community meet-up tour — hosting events with Renfrew in Nashville, New York, Chicago and Charleston, among other cities — to recruit and mobilize excited young brand advocates who can earn a commission on sales.  But do young people care about clean beauty? “The answer is unequivocally yes,” Renfrew told Glossy. “I've actually been really surprised by how many of the young women with whom we've been interacting have said that this really matters to them.”  In 2013, Renfrew launched Beautycounter, a first-of-its-kind beauty business built off ingredient transparency, independent sellers and ‘boots on the ground' industry advocacy in Washington, D.C. The concept struck a nerve and forever shifted the beauty industry toward better transparency.  But Renfrew was very early to the "clean beauty" wave — something that, today, is very much table stakes for new brands. This has presented its own challenges for Renfrew’s ongoing success.  “It's both a blessing and a curse to be the leader and the disruptor in any industry at any moment in time,” she said. “In some ways, I have the luxury now of coming back in through Counter and Beecee to see all the things I did well and all the things I didn't do well, of which there were many, and iterate on those models to do them better than I did before.” Beautycounter officially shuttered in 2024, giving Renfrew the opportunity to buy back her IP from the VC firm The Carlyle Group. Renfrew then parlayed her bestselling formulas and clean beauty mission into Counter, her brand launched DTC in 2025 to serve women 35 and older.  Glossy Beauty podcast host Lexy Lebsack sat down with Renfrew to discuss Beecee, the future of clean beauty, how to best reach Gen Z and why the best days of specialty beauty retail are behind us.

To discuss what makes a successful retail pop-up, Glossy is joined by three powerhouse executives in today’s roundtable episode: Jacquelin Barrett, Patrick Ta Beauty svp of marketing; Matte Projects president Neda Whitney; and Michelle Lee, chief brand officer at Front Row Group, fractional CMO of Landing International and former editor-in-chief of Allure magazine.

It’s tough to compete with Supergoop, the sunscreen startup that entered the market in 2006 and quickly became the industry darling before selling to private equity firm Blackstone in 2021. In many ways, the company created the modern sunscreen playbook by marketing it as skin care, not sun care.  “[Supergoop started] with the mission of really transforming the SPF category, so that people wouldn't think of it as a seasonal thing,” Lauren Weinberg, chief marketing officer of Supergoop, told Glossy. “The way the brand did that was really by coming out with formulas that debunked, I would say, all the things that people didn't like about sunscreen. So, it wasn't sticky, it wasn't greasy, it didn't have an odor, and it could go as a primer underneath your makeup.”  Today, Supergoop sells one unit of its cult-favorite Unseen Sunscreen every 16 seconds, but staying on top requires constant evolution, Weinberg told Glossy. For Supergoop, this has included evolving the company’s channel mix this year to better reach new and existing consumers.  “Consumers don't really think about where they see and hear about brands,” Weinberg said. “One of the things I noticed when I came [into this role in February 2026] is that the way we were storytelling as a brand, or how we were communicating with consumers, was not really cohesive across all of our channels. So we've really been trying to focus on doing cohesive storytelling.”  Small shifts this year have helped to grow sales through a more diversified channel mix. For example, Weinberg’s team is focused on promoting lesser-known SKUs on evolving platforms, such as TikTokShop, while launching its best-sellers across new channels, including Target in February and Amazon Premium starting in May.  Weinberg joined Supergoop at the top of the year after more than two decades in marketing. Her CV includes six years at Yahoo, ending her tenure as VP of marketing, plus another six years at Square, where she was the global chief marketing officer. She held the role of CMO at Peloton before joining the Supergoop team five months ago.  Glossy Beauty Podcast host Lexy Lebsack sat down with Weinberg to discuss everything mentioned above, plus the challenges of tackling Amazon in-house through a Premium storefront and entering mass retail at a prestige price point, and the power of emerging social channels and social commerce.  The following conversation was recorded in front of a live audience at Glossy’s annual E-Commerce Summit in Miami on June 1.

Cindy Gustafson has checked off a laundry list of accomplishments during her first 18 months as CEO of Nutrafol.  This includes an app launch designed to improve retention and a product release tailored to reach one of its smallest customer demographics in men over 50. These rollouts happened while she led the team toward double-digit growth during 2025, her first full year as CEO, on a path to soon reach $1 billion in annual sales.  “You need a real commitment to delivering on something someone actually needs [in order to win this category],” Gustafson told host Lexy Lebsack. “We actually have quite a small portfolio of products, [unlike our competitor] brands that have hundreds and hundreds of SKUs. We are not that kind of a brand. We are not that kind of a business.” Instead, Gustafson has stayed hyper-focused on delivering on its main promise of improved hair growth. “We have been so fixated on really delivering against what a customer needs and what a customer is looking for, and staying very, very grounded in that,” she said.  Gustafson is a veteran exec whose CV includes Weight Watchers, Bark, Mindshare and Unilever. She spent 18 months as chief marketing officer of Nutrafol before taking over the CEO role from Nutrafol’s co-founder Giorgos Tsetis after its Unilever acquisition. In today’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, Gustafson unpacks her secret sauce for growth, how the supplement consumer has evolved and much more.