August 2014 was the moment back-to-school energy collided with the second half of the year’s launch calendar. The drugstore endcaps started reorganizing in the second week of the month for the fall product wave, the early Q4 prestige launches at Sephora ran their first samples through editor inboxes, and the long-rumored Lancôme cushion compact moved from speculation to confirmed-fall-launch territory. By the first Tuesday of August we already had the back-to-school list mentally drafted, two early fall samples on the bathroom counter, and the strange satisfaction of finishing a heat-dome summer with most of our July routine intact. Below, what we kept reaching for.
Marc Jacobs Daisy Dream landed as the year’s breakout fragrance
The August 2014 fragrance launch that captured the most editorial attention was Daisy Dream from Marc Jacobs. The composition was an obvious lighter-airier sister to the original Daisy — a blackberry, jasmine, white woods structure that read romantic without going nostalgic — and the campaign imagery, shot in a hot-air-balloon dream sequence, became one of the most-photographed fragrance ads of the year. The bottle, a four-petal sky-blue Daisy variant, became instantly recognizable.
By the end of August, Daisy Dream had become the late-summer-into-early-fall signature fragrance of an entire demographic of US college students returning to campus. The price was right, the bottle photographed well, and the scent itself was forgiving across most preferences. The launch demonstrated that the celebrity-fashion-designer fragrance category could still produce real moments at retail.
The back-to-school drugstore wave was strong
The back-to-school endcaps reorganized in mid-August and the 2014 drugstore lineup was meaningfully better than the year before. Maybelline’s Master Strobing Stick — a creamy highlighter stick that landed in widespread distribution late summer — was the breakout product of the moment, and it became the under-ten-dollar answer to the prestige strobing-and-highlighting conversation that Becca’s Shimmering Skin Perfector had been quietly defining at the higher tier.
L’Oréal Paris’s Infallible Pro-Matte foundation expanded its shade range; Revlon’s ColorBurst Matte Balm line, which had been the workhorse of the previous year, picked up new shades for fall. The drugstore conversation in August 2014 was the most competitive it had been in several years, and the prestige tier was paying attention.
Strobing replaced contour as the late-summer technique
The strobing-versus-contouring conversation was the year’s peak technique pivot, and August 2014 was when strobing — the highlighter-forward, contour-light approach to building dimension on the face — won out over the deep-contour Kim Kardashian-coded look that had dominated the early year. The technique was explained, copied, and practiced in every makeup column running in the second half of August. Becca’s Shimmering Skin Perfector in Opal — the warm-pink champagne shade that was the most-Pinterested highlight of the year — sold out at every Sephora restock cycle.
What made strobing succeed was the technique tolerance. The contour look had required precise placement, the right shade match, and a level of blending discipline that most home users genuinely could not deliver. Strobing was forgiving — apply highlighter to the high points, blend with a fingertip, accept that the result was glowing rather than sculpted — and the results photographed well in a way that contour did not.
The Glossier tease quietly began
The other launch story of August 2014 — quieter, slower-burning, the one that would matter more in retrospect — was the buildup to the Glossier launch coming in October. Emily Weiss’s Into the Gloss had been one of the most-read beauty blogs since 2010; her cosmetics line was being teased in the editorial coverage of the most-read beauty publications in late August, and the early product samples — the Balm Dotcom multipurpose balm, the Milky Jelly Cleanser — were being reviewed in private by the influential editors who had access. The mass-public launch was still six weeks out.
What was new about Glossier’s pre-launch positioning was the direct-to-consumer model. The brand was not going through Sephora or department stores — it was selling through its own website, with millennial-pink packaging, customer-as-marketer Instagram strategy, and a commitment to shipping in a small recyclable pouch. The model would be widely copied by every digital-native beauty brand that launched in the next six years.
The end-of-summer skincare reset began earlier
The post-summer skincare conversation had been a September event for years; in 2014 it pulled forward into August. The advice in every late-August column ran the same direction: introduce a low-strength retinol now, before the sun exposure of summer fully fades; layer in a vitamin-C serum if you have not been; book an in-office facial for early September. Dermalogica’s growing consumer-direct distribution made the post-summer routine recommendation easier than the year before, and RoC’s Retinol Correxion held the drugstore tier reference position.
What we’re watching for September
September 2014 brings the September issues, NYFW Spring 2015 in the second week, and the actual Lancôme cushion launch that has been one of the most teased prestige releases of the year. We were also watching the Charlotte Tilbury US arrival that publishing was again insisting was imminent, and we were tracking the cushion-compact category more broadly because every major Western brand seemed about to take a swing at it. We will see you on the first Tuesday of September.