July 2023 was the month Barbie ate the cultural conversation. Greta Gerwig’s film opened on July 21 alongside Oppenheimer, the now-infamous “Barbenheimer” double-feature weekend rewrote box-office expectations, and the beauty industry pivoted immediately. Pink-everything campaigns, hot-pink lipsticks, and bows on everything became the dominant visual mood of mid-summer. Around the Barbiecore moment, the wider summer-beauty calendar continued — cherry-cola hair color hit its peak, latte makeup matured, the Rhode phone case kept selling out, and body skincare entered its peak summer routine. These are the launches and ideas that defined July.
Barbiecore takes over beauty
The beauty-industry response to Barbie was unusually fast. Within forty-eight hours of the film’s opening weekend, every major brand had pushed pink-themed campaigns. Charlotte Tilbury‘s Walk of No Shame Matte Revolution lipstick was repositioned as a Barbie shade. MAC‘s Candy Yum-Yum lipstick (a long-running cult hot pink) had its biggest sales week in five years. NYX Professional Makeup launched an official Barbie collaboration line that sold through at every CVS and Ulta we checked.
The bigger cultural shift was that “Barbiecore” gave permission for grown women to wear hot pink in a way that hadn’t been quite culturally sanctioned since the mid-2000s. The mood was performative-feminine without being childish; the styling rules were loose enough to absorb a wide range of personal-style variations. We expected the moment to last through the back half of summer and to feed directly into a softer pink-toned fall once the cultural reference faded.
Cherry-cola hair hits its peak
The “cherry cola” hair-color trend that had built through spring reached its peak in July. The look was a deep, slightly-violet brunette with cherry-red undertones — best on naturally dark hair, easier to maintain than a full red dye job, and an alternative to the balayage exhaustion that had been setting in since late 2022. Matrix‘s SoColor Mahogany Cherry was still the most-requested in-salon formula. Madison Reed‘s Sicilian Burgundy was the DIY answer. Color Wow‘s color-safe products kept their pole position in the post-color care category.
What made cherry cola last was the maintenance-economy argument. Single-process color grows out cleanly without obvious roots, fades into a flattering chestnut rather than into brassiness, and works at any price point from drugstore to in-salon. The same logic that drove the move away from elaborate balayage was driving the move toward this. We expected cherry-cola variants to dominate fall hair conversations.
The Rhode phone case keeps selling out
Rhode‘s phone case launched in late June and was still selling out in late July, with each restock clearing within hours. The resale market on Depop and StockX had cases listed at two and three times retail. The brand’s response was to stay quiet on restock timing and let scarcity do the marketing — a textbook approach for a celebrity beauty brand looking to build cult momentum rather than maximise short-term revenue.
The cultural significance kept compounding. By mid-July, the Rhode lip case was on the wrist of every fashion-week-adjacent stylist, every TikTok-creator-of-the-moment, and a meaningful percentage of Hailey Bieber’s celebrity friends. The product had crossed from “phone accessory” into “status object” territory — the same arc as the Bottega Pouch in 2019. We expected the case to keep selling through fall and to inform at least three copycat launches by year-end.
Latte makeup matures
The “latte makeup” aesthetic — warm-brown bronzers, caramel-toned blushes, soft-bronze eyes, glossy nude lips — peaked in July. The look was the warm-toned cousin of the spring “soft girl” / “balletcore” vocabulary, calibrated for summer tan and outdoor lighting. Makeup by Mario‘s Master Mattes The Neutrals palette became the warmer-eye reference. Charlotte Tilbury‘s Beautiful Skin Sun-Kissed Glow Bronzer continued its multi-year dominance in the bronzer category. Merit‘s Bronze Balm sat as the prestige no-makeup-makeup pick.
The styling logic underneath latte makeup was that the year’s wider warm-glam vocabulary needed a summer expression that worked outdoors. The cool-toned “clean girl” aesthetic of 2022 didn’t translate cleanly to outdoor lighting and skin warmth. Latte makeup did. We expected the look to settle into a daily-summer-uniform position through August and to evolve into a warmer-tone equivalent for fall.
Summer body care peaks
The body-care category reached its summer peak in July. The mineral SPF conversation that had matured through April had now expanded into a full-routine vocabulary: pre-sun (a moisturizing body oil for the morning), during-sun (mineral or chemical SPF reapplied every two hours), post-sun (a barrier-repair body lotion at night). Necessaire covered the prestige body-care brief end-to-end. SALT & STONE‘s natural deodorant was the summer-specific pit-care hero. Tan-Towel‘s self-tan towelettes covered the pre-event tanning brief.
What had matured by summer 2023 was the consumer understanding that summer asked for a body-skincare routine, not a body-skincare product. The same way a face routine layered cleanser, treatment, moisturizer, and SPF, body care now asked for oil, treatment, lotion, SPF, and self-tan in a coherent stack. The category was responding with multi-product systems rather than one-product solutions, and the brands that had built end-to-end routines were the ones winning.
July put a frame around what summer 2023 was actually about: a cultural-pink moment driven by Barbie, a single-process hair-color answer in cherry cola, the Rhode phone case as the summer’s defining status object, a latte-makeup vocabulary that worked outdoors, and a body-care routine that had matured into a real category. We will see you on the first Tuesday of August.
Shop the edit
- Sun Bum Cool Down Aloe Gel — after-sun relief for peak summer.
- L’Oréal Paris Skin Paradise Tinted Serum — a lightweight tinted base for the heat.
- NYX Fat Oil Lip Drip — a glossy nourishing lip oil.
- Maybelline Lash Sensational Waterproof — pool-proof lashes.
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