As Bella Hadid walked down the runway at Yves Saint Laurent on Wednesday, it marked not only the close of Paris Fashion Week, but the end of fashion month for the Autumn/Winter ’25 season. There have been collections presented by design houses from Schiaparelli to Valentino, Burberry to Alexander McQueen and the theatre and artistry that makes these fashion months so engaging was back with a bang.
As always, alongside the innovative clothes designs were also displays of what we can expect to be trending next season across hair, make-up, nails and skincare, as beauty brands collaborated with labels to produce looks that complemented the fashion on the catwalk. Fashion month is a big stage for beauty, so it’s little surprise that brands want in.
“The theatre and artistry that makes these fashion months so engaging was back with a bang.”
Collaborations between beauty brands and fashion houses for shows has been happening since as early as the 1980s, initially in the form of Key Artists selecting products organically and brands informally marketing off the back of this. However, by the 90s, this had formalised with the likes of MAC Cosmetics, Maybelline and L’Oréal sponsoring shows and providing Key Artists for fashion houses to design the hair and make-up looks for the shows. This model has now become an in-built part of the period, being used as a strategic move for many beauty brands to market themselves as ‘professional’ and demonstrate the efficacy of their products in real time.
There are certain brands that have embedded themselves into the fashion scene thanks to these sponsorships: in beauty, MAC Cosmetics and NARS always make appearances across the month; for hair, L’Oréal Professionnel brands are often seen backstage; skincare is generally tied to make-up brands like Bobbi Brown, or veers towards highly luxe offerings like 111Skin; and when it comes to nail products, Essie, OPI and The GelBottle are staples. For these regular returners, fashion month is written into the marketing calendar as the association with ‘artistry’ is also written into their branding.
Take MAC Cosmetics for example; although not the tagline, a marketing slogan it has used over the years is ‘make-up for make-up artists’. This kind of branding is predominantly possible because of its close association to fashion weeks and allows MAC to position itself as reputable, desirable and high quality. A similar story can be said for designers’ own beauty brands, as Dior created an entire collection titled ‘Backstage’ after being used for the label’s shows, giving the products credentials above and beyond simply being a designer make-up brand.
But in each category, there is also opportunity for younger brands to graduate into the big leagues. For the first time this year, cult beauty brand, Refy, sponsored the make-up for Labrum alongside fellow newcomer, S’ABLE Labs – a skincare line owned by Sabrina and Idris Elba – designing the looks and using their products backstage. Although both of these brands are growing in popularity, they aren’t mainstream in the same way that other fashion month mainstays are, and partnering with, an albeit smaller designer at London Fashion Week, allowed them to reach a different audience who may not have been part of their cult followings. The impact of this collaboration was clear; S’ABLE reported a 124% uplift in views on its social media sites, with 71% of those coming from non-followers, while sales grew 130% week-on-week following its fashion week debut.
“Fashion month is a welcome stabiliser which twice a year shows the world what some of the industry’s best have to offer.”
Brands like Charlotte Tilbury have done something similar. A successful make-up and skincare brand in its own right, Charlotte Tilbury is named after its eponymous founder who is a celebrity and red-carpet make-up artist. Unlike Pat McGrath and Sam McKnight who are still booked and busy throughout fashion month and are able to use their own brands backstage when they are employed as Key Artists, the Charlotte Tilbury brand needed to set down some roots in order to break into the high fashion space. Instead of Charlotte herself designing the make-up, the mantle was passed onto her niece, Sofia Tilbury, who initially created designs for Temperley’s presentation at London Fashion Week back in 2020. Through years of sponsorships and collaborations, the brand – and Sofia – has now grown to such an extent that, across the last month, it worked with Prada, Valentino and Harris Reed.
Another route beauty companies can take is to sponsor or have a partnership with the Key Artists themselves as those, like hair artist, Guido Palau, are so renowned that their partnered products will be used backstage, whichever show they are working on. This season, Guido’s partnership with Redken saw the brand used at Dior, Schiaparelli and Miu Miu to name just a few. This approach gives breadth, but Redken itself was not a sponsor of any of the shows, meaning other products can and were used alongside the brand.
Having said this, sponsoring fashion shows isn’t for everyone. There is a plethora of luxe beauty brands that don’t collaborate with designers during fashion month because the audience and marketing opportunities don’t fit with the brands needs or values. Take Hourglass for example; a luxury make-up brand – the Veil Mineral Primer Costs £72 – it may feel like an obvious fit for the luxury of fashion month. However, thanks to its commitment to being cruelty-free (still rare among luxury beauty brands) it has an in-built audience who are spending. Over the last three years, Hourglass has had a compounded annual growth rate of 33% and shows no signs of slowing down. Likewise, for celebrity-backed companies like Rare Beauty, Rhode Beauty and Fenty Beauty, who are already hugely successful, there seems little need to collaborate on shows to market themselves at fashion week.
Despite this, the commercial opportunities for beauty brands during fashion weeks don’t seem to be showing signs of slowing down. The power that the allure of backstage and the catwalk has for the consumer still exists, and the opportunity to build authority by simply being advocated for by some of the industry’s most successful Key Artists can boost sales and increase visibility almost instantaneously. If a beauty brand isn’t up to scratch, no Key Artist worth their salt will agree to work with them during fashion month so there’s a level of efficacy that needs to exist in order for the collaborations to happen in the first place. That in itself can lift up smaller players by giving them prestige and authority, while bigger names are able to continue to market themselves as the brand of choice for designers and Key Artists alike.
It’s clear – in a world where there are new trends appearing on social media everyday, fashion month is a welcome stabiliser which twice a year shows the world what some of the industry’s best have to offer. For beauty brands, if values align and the marketing return makes sense, that’s quite the opportunity, and many of them are taking it.
