A Glossier alumni launches hair + body care.
Alison Roman is launching a podcast, Prada brings back beauty.
Hi I missed you. <3 One of my very kind followers (you know who you are) told me how to get un-shadbowbanned and I’m free.
Prada is launching beauty! This is music to my 6am ears. The vision of Prada Beauty will infuse two new product categories — makeup and skin care — starting on Aug. 1. “The idea of ‘care’ was also crucial, as a gesture and as a need, for one’s well-being,” Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons told WWD. This lines up well with the emotional description of their fall fashion week show. “The important results that research has achieved in this field has allowed us to work on real and effective products.” Back in November, I wrote that Prada Beauty had launched an Instagram account, but it was mostly dedicated to their fragrance line (and party photos). I had a brief nostalgic moment for their OG medical-looking packaging:
I went down a deep whole of vintage Cathy Horyn writing in the Times from 2000. Horyn opened the story with “Cold cream packaged in what looks like a condom wrapper? If it's novel, it must be Prada.” Something like this wouldn’t exist today outside of daily contact lenses or pills, because of the amount of plastic waste involved. But I did like the colorful candy daydream of hermeneutically sealed baggies and poppable eye creams. Since I was a child, the idea of doses (free samples of perfume, drinking juice out of a medicine cup, using a tablespoon) made me crazy happy. A reminder that things can always be done differently and not everything is an overflowing cardboard box of bullshit.
The U.S. brick-and-mortar launch is planned for January. I don’t think any of you are ready for how gorgeous I’m going to be this fall when I get my hands on this collection.
Looks like Utibe Mbagwu (who formerly worked at Glossier and Instagram) is launching a hair + body care brand. I was on the train back from Boston yesterday when this brand appeared on my For You page — it’s so funny how all of us are building in public all the time. Douse explains itself as, “A pioneer hair and bodycare brand tackling the final frontier of the beauty routine: the bottom drawer; a space where unsexy products idle in the dark.” The idea is sexier versions of the least sexy product — a gel emulsion that melts away product buildup on scalps and strands, an exfoliating foot mask, and a balancing hair cleanse. The homepage goes directly for Glossier, reading “Brands compete for space on their consumers’ top shelf, but what’s in their bottom drawer?” Curious to see how this one does.