December closed a year that had quietly reshaped beauty. Phoebe Philo’s six-week-old fashion launch was still selling through. The Drunk Elephant teen-Sephora conversation had matured into industry-wide age-appropriate guidance. E.l.f.’s acquisition of Naturium had set the consolidation playbook for the indie-prestige cohort. And the wider category had settled into a quieter, more-disciplined buying mood than the over-stimulated launch frenzy of the previous two years. We spent December putting together our year-end thesis while also figuring out the makeup we wanted to wear on New Year’s Eve, and these are the launches and ideas that defined the close of 2023.
The five launches that defined 2023
If we had to compress a year of beauty into five products, this is what we would pick. The Rhode Phone Case (June) — the cultural status-object of the year, accessory-as-distribution at its most refined. The Pat McGrath Mothership X Ego Trip palette (March) — the year’s defining prestige-makeup launch. Drunk Elephant’s Bouncy Brightfacial (March) — the at-home peel category’s prestige consolidation. Haus Labs’ Triclone Skin Tech Foundation (April) — celebrity beauty’s most-successful relaunch of the year. And the K18 Leave-In Molecular Repair Hair Mask — not a new launch but the year’s most-consistent winner on every “best of” list.
The pattern across the five was that 2023 was a year of category consolidation rather than disruption. The brands that won didn’t break new ground; they delivered the best version of an established format. The era of the totally-new category-creating launch (Rhode in 2022, Olaplex No. 9 in 2022) appeared to have given way to refinement-over-disruption — and the rest of the industry had read the room.
Phoebe Philo’s first six weeks
Phoebe Philo‘s Edit A1, launched October 30, was still selling through at every restock by mid-December. The brand had stayed completely silent on social media, run zero traditional advertising, and let the product do all the work — and the strategy was working. Resale prices on Vestiaire and 1stDibs were 1.5-3x retail on the hero pieces. The Edit A2 was expected in Q1 2024, and the fashion press was already starting to position it as the year’s most-anticipated launch.
The bigger picture for the wider industry was that Philo’s launch had legitimised the indie-luxury-brand-with-no-marketing playbook for an entire category of founders. The Row, Khaite, Loro Piana, and the new wave of founder-led prestige brands had all watched the Philo rollout for tactical lessons. We expected to see at least two or three founder-led brand launches in 2024 that explicitly modelled the Philo playbook — direct-to-consumer only, scarce releases, silent rollout, product-as-marketing.
NYE makeup: gold, glitter, gloss
The end-of-year makeup conversation in 2023 pulled in three directions. The first was glitter — a proper return after several years of restraint. Pat McGrath Labs‘s Skin Fetish Highlighter in gold variants and the brand’s Mothership X palette did the heavy lifting. The second was the dewy-gloss face, still anchored by the Rhode Glazing Fluid plus a high-shine lip oil. The third was the proper red lip — MAC Ruby Woo and Charlotte Tilbury‘s Pillow Talk Intense as the year’s most-photographed NYE lipsticks.
The styling logic settled into a three-way choice: full-glam old-Hollywood (red lip + glitter eye + dewy skin), modern-minimal (clean skin + a single statement — either glitter or lip, never both), or coquette-inflected (pink-and-bow continuing from October, with NYE-appropriate champagne glitter). For us, the modern-minimal approach kept winning — the year had asked for restraint everywhere else, and the NYE look that landed best was a single, considered statement.
The year-end skincare reset
Every December we run the year-end skincare protocol: stop everything new, reassess, rebuild for January. 2023’s reset was the cleanest in years. The products that earned their permanent slot — Rhode Peptide Glazing Fluid, SkinCeuticals C E Ferulic, K18 mask, Shani Darden Retinol Reform, Supergoop Unseen Sunscreen, Augustinus Bader Rich Cream — were the same products that had defined our rotation since March. The Drunk Elephant launches we had been testing through fall hadn’t displaced any of them.
What we left behind: the over-promised launches that hadn’t justified themselves, the duplicate actives that the routine didn’t need, the indie-brand single-active serums that the better-formulated prestige products had quietly replaced. Going into 2024 with a leaner stack and a clearer sense of which products were doing the work felt like the right way to close out a year of refinement-over-disruption.
What we’re watching for 2024
The 2024 launches we were tracking at year-end: Phoebe Philo Edit A2 (Q1, expected). Hailey Bieber’s Rhode rumoured to be expanding into a proper makeup category. Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty Find Comfort body care expanding internationally. Naturium under E.l.f. delivering its first post-acquisition new-product launches. Sabato De Sarno’s second Gucci show in February — the make-or-break moment for the brand reset.
The bigger questions for 2024 were structural. Would the indie-prestige consolidation continue (more $200-500 million skincare acquisitions)? Would Drunk Elephant’s teen-Sephora-response model become industry standard or fade? Would the “mob wife” aesthetic that was bubbling on TikTok actually displace the coquette moment? Would Phoebe Philo grow her brand fast or keep the scarcity model? We didn’t know the answers, but those were the questions that would define the first half of 2024.
2023 was a year of category consolidation, refinement-over-disruption, and the indie-prestige-acquisition moment. The five products we kept reaching for proved that the bar for staying in the rotation is the same as it has ever been: it has to actually work. We will see you on the first Tuesday of January, ready to argue about what 2024 has in store.
Shop the edit
- Maybelline SuperStay Vinyl Ink — a high-shine NYE lip.
- La Roche-Posay 10% Pure Vitamin C Serum — a year-end brightening hero.
- Tree Hut Shea Sugar Scrub — a gift-ready body scrub.
- e.l.f. Bite-Size Eyeshadow Palette — a mini palette for NYE eyes.
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