September 2017 will be remembered, in the history of beauty, as the month the foundation conversation reset overnight. Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty launched on September 8 with forty shades of Pro Filt’r Soft Matte Foundation, and within forty-eight hours every prestige beauty brand was answering questions about its own shade range. The reset was not subtle, it was not accidental, and the long-overdue overhaul of who foundation is meant to fit had finally arrived. Outside the launch the month continued in its usual pattern — New York Fashion Week ran the spring 2018 shows from September 7, the long fall fragrance launches landed, the holiday gift sets started showing up at Sephora — but the conversation had a new center of gravity. We bought the Fenty foundation, the Killawatt highlighter, the Match Stix, and tried not to admit that we had pre-cleared a whole afternoon to hit the website at the right minute. The site held up. So did the product.
Fenty Beauty arrived and changed the room
The launch of Fenty Beauty on September 8 will be a case study in beauty marketing for years. The Pro Filt’r Soft Matte Longwear Foundation launched with forty shades — a number that explicitly pushed past the prestige industry standard, which had hovered around twenty to thirty for years. The product was good — long-wearing, demonstrably matte without going chalky, and the range covered tones that the rest of the industry had been ignoring or under-representing. The shade range was the headline, but the rest of the launch — the Killawatt Freestyle Highlighter in metallic finishes, the Match Stix cream contour and highlight sticks, the Gloss Bomb in universal pinky-nude — was just as competently executed. We bought the foundation in the shade we matched on the website, which was correct on the first try, and spent the rest of September wearing only this. The cultural moment was the shade range. The technical achievement was the product behind it.
The rest of the prestige industry, scrambling
Within two weeks of the Fenty launch, every prestige foundation brand was either announcing a shade-range expansion or quietly briefing press on one. MAC Studio Fix, which had historically been one of the better-pigmented prestige foundations and one of the wider-shaded, looked suddenly less bold. Dior Forever and Lancôme Teint Idole had to publicly explain their shade development plans. The brands that had been most aggressive about shade range — Make Up For Ever, NARS Sheer Glow — already had a head start, but the bar had moved. Sephora’s foundation wall through the rest of September felt different. The conversation among consumers had shifted from “which shade matches me” to “which brands have shades that match me at all” — a different kind of question, and one the industry had not been asked in twenty years.
NYFW Spring 2018 and the makeup that came out of it
New York Fashion Week opened on September 7, the day before Fenty, and the shows ran through the 13th. The spring 2018 collections leaned into a quieter beauty look than the previous two seasons — minimal eye, glassy lid, slightly flushed cheek, almost-bare lip. Backstage at Calvin Klein 205W39NYC the makeup was effectively no makeup at all — moisturizer, a touch of concealer, a brushed-up brow. Backstage at Marc Jacobs the look was theatrical in its restraint — pulled-back hair, a single graphic eye-line in a saturated color. The MAC and Maybelline backstage teams, the artists who actually paint these shows, dominated press coverage for the week. The wearable takeaway, distilled, was: invest in the canvas (skin), pick one feature to articulate, leave the rest.
The fall fragrance launches that survived our test
The September fragrance launches landed in the second and third week of the month, and the formulas we tested broke into clear winners and losers. Diptyque‘s Eau Capitale — a black-rose composition with a soft pink-pepper opening — earned a permanent slot in the rotation. Jo Malone‘s English Oak series rounded out a fall composition that we layered with Wood Sage & Sea Salt for the days we wanted to feel like we were anywhere but on the subway. Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle had quietly pushed a new portrait fragrance into US distribution that was technically extraordinary and a little too theatrical for daily use; it has gone in the keep-for-special-events drawer. The fall fragrance shift was the right kind of pleasure.
The September skincare conversation, post-summer
By the second week of September the skincare routine had fully rebuilt for fall — heavier moisturizer, retinol three nights a week, a vitamin C serum every morning under SPF, a weekly clay mask. The product that did the most work this month was Drunk Elephant‘s C-Firma Day Serum — a cult-favorite vitamin C that had finally reached our routine after a year of editor recommendations. Ole Henriksen‘s Truth Serum was the cheaper alternative we had used through the summer and now retired. The other product that earned a permanent spot was The Ordinary‘s Niacinamide 10% + Zinc 1%, which had quietly become the best-selling beauty product on the planet in the last twelve months for what amounts to chemistry-class reasons. We are deep in the active-ingredient era, and not mad about it.
Closing
By the last week of September the bathroom counter had three new permanent residents — the Fenty foundation pump, the C-Firma serum bottle, the Diptyque rollerball. The fall makeup palette was confirmed, the fragrance was settled, and the skincare was finally honest about being an active-ingredient routine. October will bring the Halloween makeup conversation (still peaking at peak elaboration), the Allure Best of Beauty list (always a useful annual gut check), and the early holiday gift sets, which Sephora has been quietly stocking since the second week of September. We will see you on the first Tuesday of October.