September is when the beauty industry resets every year — backstage tests at New York Fashion Week, the early Spring 2025 makeup direction emerging, fall product launches landing in stores. 2024’s version had two extra anchors. Charlotte Tilbury celebrated her brand’s ten-year anniversary with a heavy press campaign and an anniversary capsule. e.l.f. made its NYFW debut at a serious tier — sponsoring shows, dressing models, expanding from “drugstore favorite” into “fashion-week beauty player.” The cumulative effect was a September that felt more like the September of the 2010s than recent years: optimistic, product-rich, with real creative direction rather than another wave of TikTok virality. We took it in two doses, one at the shows and one back home with the new launches.
NYFW Spring 2025 went undone-glamour
The backstage beauty direction at New York shows trended toward what backstage editors called “undone glamour” — radiant skin, statement brows, a soft-focus eye, and a lip that was either fully naked or a stained brick red, with nothing in between. Pat McGrath continued anchoring her core shows. Diane Kendal worked the Calvin Klein presentations. The shade family of the season was clearly going to be earthy-pink — terracotta, dusty rose, brick. Charlotte Tilbury‘s anniversary capsule with reissued Matte Revolutions in archived shades landed alongside. The takeaway: New York’s beauty direction for Spring 2025 was about quality of finish rather than novelty of color — the smartest creative direction Fashion Week had pulled in years.
Charlotte Tilbury marked ten years with credibility intact
Charlotte Tilbury opened her eponymous brand in September 2013; September 2024 marked ten years. The anniversary capsule reissued some of the brand’s most successful colors — Pillow Talk Original, Bond Girl, Walk of No Shame — alongside a new “Pillow Talk Diamonds” highlighter. The campaign starred a roster of celebrity ambassadors the brand had built up over the decade. The cultural moment was the right one to celebrate: Pillow Talk had become probably the most-photographed beauty product of the 2020s. The takeaway: founder-led beauty brands that survive a decade tend to do so because the founder still has clear creative direction, and Tilbury’s ten-year mark felt sincere rather than corporate.
e.l.f. crashed Fashion Week at full size
e.l.f.‘s NYFW presence in 2024 was a different scale than the brand had played at before: makeup-artist partnerships at three shows, a presenting sponsorship for a fourth, the Halo Glow Filter as the official primer of half the runway looks. The brand had spent five years climbing from drugstore staple into a real player at every price tier; Fashion Week 2024 was when the climb became unambiguous. Westman Atelier, ILIA, and the higher-end clean players didn’t lose ground, but e.l.f. expanded the addressable market under them rather than competing for it directly. The takeaway: the mass tier is no longer where the beauty conversation ends — it can now lead it.
Pat McGrath Mothership XII landed
Pat McGrath Labs‘s Mothership XII palette — the brand’s twelfth core palette launch — dropped in early September and immediately moved through its first wave of stock. The palette continued the “Huetopian Dream” tonal language of the prior year but pulled deeper, with a richer brown-pink-burgundy spine. Reviews from artists were uniformly positive. The takeaway: Pat McGrath’s palette franchise had reached a maturity where each release was a known product story — heavy pigment, satin-to-shimmer finishes, packaging that doubled as set dressing — and the brand had earned enough trust that customers preordered on credit.
The US Open made tennis-beauty real
The US Open ran into early September; the women’s final was September 7. The tennis-beauty story this year — Coco Gauff’s locs, Iga ÅšwiÄ…tek’s glossy sun-protective base, Aryna Sabalenka’s heavy lash and bright cheek — finally pulled real brand attention. Patrick Ta Beauty had been quietly working with several women’s-tour players. Bondi Sands ran a heavy SPF push during the tournament. The takeaway: tennis was finally the beauty-sponsorship vector golf had been for menswear — high-net-worth, photogenic, and televised at length.
What we are watching in October
Paris Fashion Week wraps in early October and we’ll be watching for the Sabato De Sarno Gucci show and the second post-Phoebe-Philo collection from her namesake brand. Halloween — for the under-25 customer, Halloween has become a real beauty event in itself, with full-character looks, special-FX products, and a kind of cosplay-meets-makeup hybrid that pushes through the back half of October. We’re also watching the holiday gift-set release cycle, which always starts in earnest in mid-October. We will see you on the first Tuesday of October.
Shop the edit
- The Ordinary Hyaluronic Acid 2% + B5 — a hydration step for the fall reset.
- L’Oréal Paris True Match Foundation — a fall-ready everyday foundation.
- Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick — a classic fall lip.
- K18 Leave-In Molecular Repair Mask — post-summer hair repair.
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