January is the month of well-meaning resolutions and quietly contradictory beauty advice. The industry asks us to start the year with a stripped-down skincare routine while simultaneously launching its biggest restock of new products. The cold, dry weather makes a serious case for richer creams; the post-holiday reset insists on stripping the routine back. We spent the first three weeks of 2023 testing where exactly the line between simplifying and under-treating actually was, and these are the products and conversations that defined the start of the year.
The post-holiday barrier-repair reset
The skincare conversation in January 2023 was almost entirely about barrier repair. After two months of holiday-party stress, alcohol, and the inevitable over-actived stack of acids and retinol, almost everyone we knew was dealing with redness, sensitivity, or a compromised moisture barrier. The category responded. Dermalogica‘s Stress Positive Eye Lift had a quiet renaissance. CeraVe‘s Hydrating Cleanser kept its cult position. La Roche-Posay‘s Toleriane Double Repair Face Moisturizer was the across-the-board recommendation from dermatologists on TikTok.
The framework that finally landed in mainstream skincare was the “two weeks of nothing” reset: drop everything except a gentle cleanser, a barrier-repair moisturizer, and SPF for fourteen days, then reintroduce one active at a time and notice what is doing what. We had been advocating for some version of this approach for years, but January 2023 was the month it crossed into TikTok-creator gospel. The collateral effect was a soft return for fragrance-free, ceramide-heavy, drugstore-priced staples after several years of indie-prestige dominance.
Drugstore takes over TikTok
The biggest skincare conversation of the month was that Vaseline had become a TikTok hero product. The “slugging” technique — applying a layer of an occlusive over your nighttime moisturizer to seal everything in — had been a Korean-skincare staple for years, but January 2023 was when the conversation went fully mainstream, and the product everyone was reaching for was a tub of plain Vaseline. Aquaphor got similar treatment as the prestige sibling. Cetaphil‘s Gentle Skin Cleanser kept its decade-old cult slot.
The cultural meaning underneath the trend was that, after a multi-year run of $80 cleansers and $200 serums, consumers were ready to publicly acknowledge that the unglamorous drugstore product still worked. That admission was good news for a generation of basics that had never gone away — they just hadn’t been on Instagram. We expected a wider drugstore moment to dominate Q1 2023.
Glossier x Sephora: countdown to launch
Glossier‘s February launch at Sephora was the most-discussed retail event of January. The two brands had spent the month teasing the partnership through coordinated social-media drops and pre-launch retailer training, and beauty Twitter spent the back half of January arguing about what the deal meant for both brands. Was Glossier diluting itself by selling at the same shelf as Tarte and Anastasia? Or was Sephora finally getting access to the one direct-to-consumer brand it had been missing?
The actual February in-store launch was scheduled for late month, and the consumer-facing reveal showed that Glossier was rolling out its full beauty lineup (Boy Brow, Cloud Paint, Balm Dotcom, the Generation G lipstick range, Lash Slick) plus its skincare core (Milky Jelly Cleanser, Super Bounce serum, Priming Moisturizer Rich) — a fuller assortment than most observers had expected. The rollout was going to be one of the year’s defining retail stories.
The “soft girl” makeup look
The makeup conversation pivoted in January from the late-2022 dewy-clean-girl aesthetic toward what TikTok was calling “soft girl” — a slightly warmer, blush-heavy, more romantic version of the same minimal-makeup vocabulary. Rare Beauty‘s Soft Pinch Liquid Blush kept its position as the category-defining product. Charlotte Tilbury‘s Beautiful Skin Cream Blush expanded with new shades. Merit‘s Flush Balm — released in late 2022 — had a real moment through January as the prestige answer.
The styling logic underneath the “soft girl” look was that, after the Spring 2023 runways had argued for a return of the bold lip and graphic eyeliner, the everyday Instagram-and-TikTok face was moving in the opposite direction: lighter, blurrier, more-flush, less-graphic. Both could exist; the everyday version was just calibrated for smaller cameras and shorter videos.
Body care tools have a January moment
The body-care tools category — gua sha for body, dry brushes, percussive massagers — caught a January wave. Therabody‘s Theragun was the runaway hardware story; the new MiniDot edition launched late 2022 was at $199, the right price for the gifting-into-personal-use January conversion cycle. Necessaire‘s body brushes and gua sha tools sold through. The Joanna Vargas dry brush — long a niche-luxury favorite — had a wider conversation thanks to several model-favorite roundup features.
The bigger picture was that the wellness-and-beauty overlap had matured into a real category. Where 2018’s body-care conversation had been about lotions, 2023’s was about tools, lymphatic drainage, and the routinization of practices that had been niche-luxury for a decade. The category was going to keep growing through the year.
January gave us a clear thesis for 2023: barrier repair as the default skincare priority, drugstore basics returning to cultural acceptance, Glossier joining mainstream retail, “soft girl” replacing “clean girl” as the everyday-face vocabulary, and body-care tools maturing into a serious category. We will see you on the first Tuesday of February.
Shop the edit
- CeraVe Hydrating Facial Cleanser — the gentle cleanse to start the reset.
- La Roche-Posay Toleriane Double Repair Moisturizer — a no-drama daily moisturizer.
- The Ordinary Granactive Retinoid — an approachable retinoid for the new year.
- TruSkin Vitamin C Serum — a brightening vitamin C step.
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