February 2024 was packed with consequential fashion-and-beauty news. Phoebe Philo’s Edit A2 landed on February 22, four months after her A1 launch and with the same scarce-release strategy. The next day, Sabato De Sarno showed his second Gucci collection at Milan — the show that would either validate or call into question the brand’s hard reset. NYFW Fall 2024 ran February 9-14 and produced the year’s first proper read on where fashion was heading. Around it, the beauty calendar continued: Valentine’s Day red-lip discourse, mob-wife continuing to dominate, and the “strawberry girl” trend maturing. These are the launches and ideas that defined February.
Phoebe Philo Edit A2 lands
Phoebe Philo‘s Edit A2 launched on February 22, four months after the October 30 A1 release. The collection delivered the same controlled-quiet-luxury vocabulary as A1 with extended size runs, an expanded knitwear range, and a small accessories drop that included the brand’s first proper bag. The release strategy was unchanged — direct-to-consumer only, zero traditional advertising, deliberately scarce inventory. The hero pieces sold through within hours.
The Edit A2 confirmed what Edit A1 had suggested: Philo was building a sustainable indie-luxury business, not a one-time launch. The cadence (four months between editions, no rushed expansion, the same quiet visual language) was deliberately matched to the brand’s positioning. We expected Edit A3 in roughly June 2024, with a small summer-positioned drop. For the wider luxury industry, Philo’s playbook had now been proven across two releases — and copycat brands would inevitably start to emerge through 2024.
Sabato De Sarno’s second Gucci show
Sabato De Sarno’s second collection as creative director of Gucci showed in Milan on February 23, and the verdict was more positive than his polarising debut. The Fall 2024 collection took the restrained vocabulary of the first show and added back some of the personality that the debut had stripped away: a wider color palette, more textural variation, a few standout statement pieces alongside the daily-wear core. The fashion press was warmer; the commercial collection felt tighter; the brand’s reset was clearly settling into a real direction.
For Gucci Beauty (run via Coty), De Sarno’s second show gave the brand a clearer signal to align around. Where Michele’s maximalist visual language had paired with bold lip color and graphic-eye drama, De Sarno’s quieter direction called for a more pared-back beauty vocabulary. The first product-launch signals from Gucci Beauty through Q1 had pointed in that direction — quieter packaging, more focus on the brand’s heritage perfumes, fewer statement-makeup launches. We expected the alignment to continue through 2024.
NYFW Fall 2024 backstage
The New York Fashion Week Fall 2024 shows ran February 9-14 and produced the year’s first proper beauty signals. The dominant backstage looks: a continuation of the slick-back hair from Spring 2024, a return to a deliberately glossy lip (less matte, more wet-look), and a softer, more diffused approach to under-eye makeup that read as “no concealer, just a peptide cream.” Pat McGrath Labs continued to lead the backstage work. Charlotte Tilbury‘s Pillow Talk lipsticks were on every red carpet around the shows.
The bigger NYFW story was that the “mob wife” maximalism that had defined January’s mass-culture conversation hadn’t quite translated to the runway. The runway preferred a quieter, more-refined version of assertive — defined brows and considered lip without the full Carmela Soprano styling. The two aesthetics co-existed: mass culture wanted big maximalism, the runway wanted controlled assertion. Both would feed into different parts of the 2024 fashion-and-beauty conversation.
Valentine’s Day red lip 2024
The Valentine’s Day red-lip conversation in 2024 was tighter than previous years. The canonical picks remained the same — Charlotte Tilbury‘s Matte Revolution in Walk of Shame and Hot Lips 2 in Patsy Red, MAC‘s Ruby Woo and Russian Red, Yves Saint Laurent’s Rouge Pur Couture — but the editorial conversation focused on hybrid lip-oil-and-stain products rather than full matte lipsticks. Dior‘s Addict Lip Tint in cherry red was a Valentine’s Day editor’s pick for the third consecutive year.
The styling logic underneath the V-Day lip in 2024 was that a defined-but-soft lip color worked better than a sharp matte for the romantic-and-photographed context the day demanded. Lip oils continued to be the year’s defining lip-product format; the red-lip moment had absorbed that shift. The full-matte velvet red was still being worn, but it was clearly being styled for evening rather than as the daily Valentine’s Day go-to.
Mob wife continues, strawberry girl matures
February gave us a clearer read on the two competing aesthetics that had emerged in January. “Mob wife” continued to dominate the under-30 TikTok conversation, with fur coats, gold jewellery stacks, and dark lips remaining the dominant visual language. “Strawberry girl” had matured into the over-30 alternative — softer, less commitment-required, pink-cheek-focused. The two looks were going to co-exist through Q1 2024 as the dominant cultural beauty conversations.
The brands that played both sides won. Rare Beauty‘s Soft Pinch Liquid Blush did “strawberry girl”; the brand’s lip products did “mob wife”-adjacent. Charlotte Tilbury‘s Pillow Talk range covered both. The brands that committed too hard to one (the indie-makeup brands that went all-in on coquette or all-in on glam) struggled with February sell-through as the mass aesthetic kept oscillating.
February 2024 closed with the year’s first major signals. Phoebe Philo had proven her launch model could sustain. Sabato De Sarno had quietly recovered from his polarising debut. NYFW had set the runway-beauty tone for the year. The Valentine’s red-lip discourse had shifted toward hybrid lip products. And the mob-wife and strawberry-girl aesthetics had settled into a stable two-way cultural conversation. We will see you on the first Tuesday of March.
Shop the edit
- Maybelline Color Sensational Lipstick — a classic Valentine red.
- Milani Cheek Kiss Cream Blush — the soft flush for the lip-and-blush cycle.
- Maybelline Fit Me Foundation — an everyday base for awards season.
- CeraVe Moisturizing Cream — winter-skin rescue under it all.
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