October 2014 was the loudest launch month US beauty had run in years. The Charlotte Tilbury US debut at Bergdorf Goodman, the Glossier mass-public launch on October 14, the Lancôme Miracle Cushion still in its first restock cycle, and the Halloween-makeup conversation that had been building since September all happened inside a four-week window. By the first Tuesday of the month the bathroom counter had four new products on it that had not been there in September, the editorial inboxes were unmanageable, and we were tracking the Allure Best of Beauty list as a holiday-buying guide for the first time in years. Below, what we kept reaching for.
Glossier launched and changed the DTC beauty conversation
The October 14 launch of Glossier was the year’s most-discussed beauty event. The Phase 1 set — Balm Dotcom, the Milky Jelly Cleanser, the Soothing Face Mist, the Priming Moisturizer — was clean, photogenic, well-priced, and crucially distributed only through the brand’s own website rather than through any traditional retailer. The launch sold out twice in its first week. By the end of October the pink-bubble-wrap shipping pouch was an Instagram status item, and the brand had been featured in every major US beauty publication.
What was new about the launch was not the products themselves — most of them were genuinely good but not unprecedented in the category — it was the customer-as-marketer model and the digital-native distribution. The brand was not bidding for shelf space at Sephora or Ulta. It was selling directly to a community Emily Weiss had been cultivating for years through Into the Gloss, and the launch demonstrated that a beauty brand could reach scale without traditional retail. The next five years of DTC beauty launches would copy major parts of the playbook.
Charlotte Tilbury landed at Bergdorf Goodman
Charlotte Tilbury’s US arrival in October 2014 was the prestige launch of the year. The line opened at Bergdorf Goodman first, with Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue distribution rolling out in the following weeks. The packaging — the rose-gold caps, the Old-Hollywood logo, the cocoa-brown lipstick boxes — translated as cleanly to the US prestige conversation as it had to the UK’s.
The breakout product was the K.I.S.S.I.N.G. lipstick in Pillow Talk, a soft warm-pink nude that had been the most-photographed lipstick in UK beauty editorial since launch. Within two weeks of US distribution it sold out at every Bergdorf restock cycle. Pillow Talk would become one of the most-photographed beauty products of the decade and the prestige nude-lip reference for years.
The other launch product that built immediate cult status was the Magic Cream — a thirty-five-dollar moisturizer that promised the “backstage glow” finish Tilbury had been doing on models for two decades. It became the most-restocked single moisturizer at the brand’s US counters through the rest of 2014.
The cushion-compact category fully entered US conversation
The Lancôme Miracle Cushion that had launched late September was on its second restock cycle by mid-October, and the early-adopter coverage had matured. The verdict from beauty editors who had committed to it for two weeks: the format genuinely delivered a sheer dewy daytime finish, the refillable cushion was a real long-term cost case, the shade range was the only meaningful weakness. Lancôme was promising an expanded shade range for early 2015.
The other Western brands publicly working on cushion launches by mid-October included Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, and Sulwhasoo (the AmorePacific prestige line that was beginning Western distribution). The category had crossed.
Halloween makeup got its most editorial year yet
The Halloween-makeup conversation in October 2014 was the most editorial it had ever been. The Pinterest mood-boards leaned into elaborate prosthetic-and-pigment work; the YouTube tutorials were running fifteen-minute step-by-step galaxy-eye and sugar-skull walkthroughs; and the prestige tier was actually selling Halloween-coded products for the first time. M·A·C’s annual Pro Longwear Concealer and the Chromaline gel paints were the editor reference for any Halloween costume that involved actual color work; Urban Decay’s Electric Pressed Pigment Palette had a long tail through October as the most-used Halloween color tool of the year.
The holiday gift-set landings ran two weeks earlier than 2013
The 2014 holiday gift-set rollout at Sephora and at department-store beauty counters started the second week of October — even earlier than the already-early 2013 launch. Benefit’s Sexy Box of Tricks and Real Cheeky Party kits sat at the under-thirty-five-dollar workhorse position; Kiehl’s Limited Edition Holiday Collection (illustrated by Eric Haze that year) held its annual position. The drugstore-tier lipstick trios and nail-polish minis kept the under-twenty-five-dollar gift-aisle layer.
What we’re watching for November
November 2014 brings the Black Friday weekend that had become a real beauty event in 2013, the in-house holiday party season opening, and the year-end best-of conversation starting in earnest. We were watching how Glossier handled the first holiday gift-buying season as a brand barely a month old, and we were tracking the Charlotte Tilbury restock cycles to see whether the Pillow Talk demand would normalize or stay at launch-week intensity. We will see you on the first Tuesday of November.