There are no Black Friday deals in this email.
Just the most interesting beauty news right now.
Hello. HI. Heading into Thanksgiving, I would like to give you a few interesting beauty headlines. You know! Topics to talk about with your family. Forget politics. Forget our “careers.” Let’s talk about BEAUTY. Let’s talk about our skin care routines. Although our families did not ask or hint at the desire to know any of this, lets suck our relatives into the world of beauty. We luv 2 see it, and we luv 2 talk about it! Now let’s subject our families to it.
Onward!
Naomi Campbell x Jackie Aina
Coty, Inc. buys 51% of Kylie Cosmetics
Hair maintenance as a barrier to exercise for Black women
How to cover a racist makeup guru and their potentially recording breaking product launch
Naomi Campbell on Jackie Aina’s Channel: Why this was *such* a moment
This was an iconic moment all fronts. Although at different points in their careers, Naomi Campbell and Jackie Aina’s paths compliment each other almost perfectly. Naomi was the first Black supermodel on the cover of French Vogue, and pushed for inclusivity in fashion, via the catwalk. Jackie has done the same in beauty, via YouTube as her platform. Now we see both fashion and beauty trying Very Hard to take inclusivity seriously — thanks to these two. Moreover, they are creative forces who rose to fame and popularity by being themselves. I sat in Jackie’s home for a story I wrote on her. I pitched it to BuzzFeed News, and it was my first profile. Although I don’t think her or her publicist liked it (she never shared it (likely for the best) and her publicist sent my editor an angry email LOL), the only thing that’s changed about Jackie over the past 10 years is her bank account and her closet. Of course people and their circumstances change, because growth (and time). But I did get the sense, from sitting with Jackie, that her personality, candor and comedy are here to stay.
Kylie Cosmetics sells $51M to Coty, Inc. So what does it mean?
Let me remind you how lucrative Kylie’s makeup company is: In March 2019, it was valued at $900 million dollars. Also, have you seen her office? 💲Rise and shine 💲 Although we don’t know the details of the deal, Kris gave more purported details on the reason Kylie sold the majority of her shares: to build a “global powerhouse brand.” Coty — Gucci, Adidas, CoverGirl — has a system in place to take it there. Also a reminder that KC is not Kylie’s only company — and if anything, we should expect to see Kylie expand into other categories in a very robust way. To me, the question shouldn’t be what she’s losing in the long run by “partnering” with Coty, but what will she gain? (Kylie made $600M from the deal, btw.)
For Black women, hair care is a barrier to working out — but it’s never mentioned in research
This is an interesting (and incredibly true) article by Essence’s Associate Beauty Editor Jennifer Ford. She says, as a public health graduate student, factors such as access to a gym, transportation and plain old motivation are always mentioned as barriers to exercise by her professors, but never hair maintenance. Dr Sophia Tolliver, a physician at The Ohio State Wexner Medical Center, surveyed a group of doctors on their attitudes toward hair as a barrier and found that 76% of those doctors have never talked about hair maintenance as a factor with African America female patients, and only 34% felt comfortable starting the conversation. I definitely struggle with this. If you follow me on IG, you know I got to hot pilates a few times a week. Right now, I’m using the slick backed bun method — and I’ve gotten pretty damn good at it. “We have to start valuing our health over our hair.” For Black women? That’s a hard pill to swallow. Check our Dr. Tolliver’s 2 minute video on her findings.
The “controversial” world of Jeffree Star and Shane Dawson likely made history
I’ve struggled with a way I could write about Jeffree Star and Shane Dawson, two YouTubers with racists pasts who have been cancelled several times, but seem to always come out on top. The reason why I was so intrigued by it all was not because I’m a particular fan of Jeffree or Shane. Rather the bird’s eye view of the situation: A beauty juggernaut teamed up with a self deprecating, Pepsi drinking fellow YouTuber friend who rarely shaves and isn’t associated with glamour by any stretch of the imagination — but has a talent for comedy and storytelling — to create a beauty product. Shane filmed a 7 part docuseries on the making of the eyeshadow palette (along with merch) and showed a BTS version of making a product that beauty brands are too afraid to show people like you and I. How Scaachi Koul of BuzzFeed News wrote about Jeffree is the perfect way to cover them both: through the lens of cancel culture, and at times, the illusion of it. Jefree says they’ve sold 1.1 million eyeshadow palettes since launching on Nov. 1, which are now sold out.
That’s it for me. I’m in Ohio for Thanksgiving. I’ve deleted Twitter and IG off my phone because holiday social media beats more over the head every year (same photos, same jokes), and it tarnishes my creativity. I love you all.
CIAO!
Darian