These are the top trends that have defined the beauty industry (so far) in 2023

While a lot of beauty trends this year may have seemed like year-old trends repackaged with new names (aren’t “blueberry milk nails” just…light blue?), there have been a number of actually noteworthy trends that either emerged or continued to hold strong in the beauty industry this year. We’re unboxing some of the stand-outs.

The skin you’re in: Just as Clare Hennigan, Mintel’s senior global analyst of beauty and personal care, predicted in January, so far in 2023, brands have been zeroing on specific skin and body care needs and shifting away from a one-size-fits-all mentality.

Hennigan told Retail Brew there’s been a “surge” of brands working to address consumers’ hormonal life stage needs, particularly with products marketed to people experiencing menopause.

Stripes, (speaking of celeb brands, this one is owned by actress Naomi Watts) has hopped on this trend, selling beauty and personal care products for menopausal people, and grew distribution online with Sephora in May. Other brands have, too: No7 introduced a menopause skin care line at the end of last year, while brands like Pause and Womaness are among many skin care brands centered around menopause that have been gaining traction.

Hennigan said this space is something she expects to see grow as more technology becomes available “to really create better, more personalized, more targeted products.”

The last six months have also seen a focus on targeting specific skin conditions, she noted. Whether it be body scrubs or serums that address keratosis pilaris, treatments for eczema (like the Eczema Control line from Murad), or moisturizers for sensitive skin, like Tower 28’s latest addition to its SOS (Save Your Skin) line. Hennigan predicts there will be “a lot more conversation around skin conditions” throughout the remainder of 2023.

Full package: While beauty brands over the years have been focused on making their ingredients more clean and sustainably sourced, this year brands have been putting more focus on their product packaging as well, Anna Mayo, VP of Nielsen IQ’s beauty vertical, noted.

Brands have been “thinking about making things that are plastic-free or recyclable, biodegradable, refillable, really trying to manage the impact of the packaging having on our planet,” she shared.

Olay in April rolled out the brand’s first recyclable jars in partnership with Walmart, and Garnier debuted a Micellar Cleansing Water packaging in a 100% upcycled bottle, sold exclusively at Ulta. Retailers, too, are thinking about sustainable packaging: MAC upgraded its Back-To-MAC recycling program to collect empty product packaging in March, while in April, Sephora introduced a takeback program called Beauty (Re)Purposed to recycle beauty empties.

Claim to fame: Celebrity beauty brands continue to grow steadily, bringing in $356.9 million in sales in 2023 so far, per NielsenIQ, which tracks nearly 50 celebrity beauty brands from Halsey’s About-Face to Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty. Several new celeb beauty brands, including John Legend’s skin care brand Loved01 and Molly Sims’s YSE Beauty, have debuted this year. And the proliferation of such brands has been making it even harder for non-celeb brands to stand out, Mayo said.

So how long will the celeb beauty boom continue? “My gut would tell me that a lot of these celebrity brands will not make it, but it remains to be seen which ones that will be and how long it will take,” Mayo said.

The next wave of celeb brands may be dermatologist-founded brands, Mayo noted in a recent NIQ report, especially as dermatologist influencers have established a lot of credibility among consumers.