Close your eyes and picture someone at the store buying makeup. If you’re not picturing a five-year-old kid or a grown man, you’re living in the past. The beauty industry has gotten a makeover in recent years, thanks to changing social attitudes and glam brands eager to explore untapped markets.

A new foundation

More men are beginning to appreciate the power of concealer. According to Statista data cited by CNBC:

• In 2019, more than 90% of US males said they never wear makeup.
• In 2024, that number dropped to 75%.

The share of Gen Z men who reported using facial skincare products also jumped 68% from 2022 to 2024, per market intelligence firm Mintel. Retailers have responded by bulking up their men’s offerings or dialing back gender distinctions altogether for a more neutral presentation.

Age-defying products: Sorry, Dr Pepper lip gloss, you’re not the only makeup game in town anymore for elementary school kids. Per the Wall Street Journal:

• Klee Naturals has built a multimillion-dollar business selling products like $10 mineral eye shadows and $15 lip glosses to girls ages 5 to 7.
• Evereden had $100 million in global sales in 2024, according to CEO and co-founder Kimberley Ho. The company makes moisturizers and body washes for children ages 3 and up.
• Actress Shay Mitchell’s brand Rini sells sheet masks for children, as well as face crayons.

International appeal: K-beauty (Korean cosmetics) has taken off on social media, exposing swaths of Americans to things like snail-mucin serums and salmon-sperm skincare. For South Korean beauty products, the US is a relatively new market. (Dr Pepper has yet to partner on a snail-mucin serum.)

K-beauty currently only accounts for about 2% of the overall US beauty market, but that’s changing. According to NielsenIQ data, US sales more than doubled from 2023 to 2025, Bloomberg reported.—BC

The influencer popping up in your feed to recommend an anti-aging cream that applies like a dream might actually not have a real face to test it on. Social media is filled with shady AI deepfakes peddling beauty products through affiliate links that tread on the turf of the $32 billion global human influencer industry.

Scammers are exploiting the cachet of influencers with large followings and prominent beauty professionals by using AI versions of their likenesses to promote products they never endorsed. Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Dr. Andrew Cohen—whose AI avatar was used to recommend supplements—told The Business of Fashion he’s worried this undermines his trustworthiness and endangers people’s health by convincing them to put dubious products into their bodies.

Some fraudulent accounts hawk wares by inventing entirely new AI personas with elaborate backstories. For instance, the TikTok account “Holistic Health Finds” features an AI deepfake claiming to be the wife of South Korea’s highest-paid plastic surgeon and a Victoria’s Secret model who swears by a batana oil product for hair growth.

Social media platforms are trying to weed out the hucksters. For instance, YouTube recently launched an experimental tool that allows creators to scan the platform for deepfakes impersonating them.

It’s not always a scam

While a recent survey showed most brands are averse to hiring AI influencers, some brands don’t mind replacing a living ring-light corps with AI avatars that can cheaply promote their products. Aitana Lopez, an AI influencer developed by talent agency The Clueless, has almost 400,000 Instagram followers and collaborations with the haircare brand Olaplex on her résumé. The practice has drawn backlash from beauty gurus worried that their livelihoods are getting automated.

Sometimes, AI brand content has grassroots beginnings. A recent viral trend had users flooding feeds with AI-generated images of themselves copying the distinctive aesthetic of Hailey Bieber’s cosmetics brand Rhode, causing confusion among some of its fans.

In addition to the financial fallout for influencers…some observers are concerned that avatars with bespoke, unblemished faces are exacerbating an age-old beauty industry issue: unrealistic standards. Some plastic surgeons said that their clients are making requests for their faces to resemble AI-altered ones, Vogue reported.—SK

For celebrities, hawking tinted creams and lip plumping oil aren’t just side projects. Celeb beauty brands are helping your favorite singer/actor/nepo baby evolve into a full-on business mogul.

Last year, Elf Beauty bought Hailey Bieber’s Rhode for $1 billion. Founded just four years ago, the brand’s sleekly packaged goos seem to go viral every time a new one drops.

Rare Beauty, the brand Selena Gomez launched during the pandemic, is reportedly hovering around a $2.7 billion valuation, with its blush accounting for over 26% of all category sales at Sephora, per YipItData.

Kylie Jenner, meanwhile, sold a majority stake in Kylie Cosmetics to CoverGirl owner Coty in 2019 for $600 million, but reportedly explored buying back the brand in 2023. (Nothing materialized.)

Rihanna is a businesswoman first. The hardest pivot came when pop superstar Rihanna revolutionized the beauty industry by launching Fenty Beauty in 2017. She released 40 shades of foundation (compared to the industry standard of ~20 to match lighter skintones) and brought in $100 million in global revenue in the first two months. Her 50% stake in Fenty Beauty is now worth around $700 million.—MM

If you’re a man who’s comfortable on extremely long flights and desperate for a life where you don’t have to apply sunblock to the top of your head, then you might be the perfect candidate for a hair transplant in Turkey.

The country has become a haven for follically challenged American men who want to get the full effect of driving with the top down without paying steep US prices. Many clinics in Turkey attract customers with all-inclusive, cost-friendly packages reminiscent of vacation deals to tropical climates:

• A hair graft in the US can run between $18,000 and $24,000; the rates in Turkey are typically between $3,000 and $9,000.
• Clinics in Turkey often include a stay at a luxury hotel (for two to four days, usually), airport transportation, translators, and sightseeing tours. It’s like a trip to the Caribbean where you come back with new hair instead of braided hair.

Hair-raising revenue: According to the Turkish Health Tourism Association, ~1 million people traveled to Turkey for hair transplants in 2022, spending about $2 billion.

Buzz from social media: The same way one influencer can post a video that turns a quiet bar you enjoy into an overcrowded hot spot, people showing off their new ’dos on TikTok is inspiring others to head to Turkey.

Buyer beware: Critics warn that health complications could arise if the transplant is too aggressive and done in one shot, as opposed to most US doctors who restore hair over multiple visits. The International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery warns against going to so-called black-market clinics that do too much, too quickly. It’s also difficult to find follow-up care after returning to the States, as many doctors will balk at treating patients who had procedures performed elsewhere.—DL

Now you can devote your life and death to a CEO: The latest cosmetic trend among business leaders is to fill out their curves between meetings using purified fat from a body that was donated to science. Typically, augmentation surgeries like breast implants and BBLs require general anesthesia, lengthy recoveries, and artificial fillers or liposuction to extract your own fat for transferring. But with this new operation—which takes less than two hours, but can cost tens of thousands of dollars—patients avoid going under and dealing with the potential scarring and skin sag of lipo.

Half a dozen plastic surgeons told Business Insider that they administered these new, macabre fat injections roughly 75 times last year, frequently to wealthy C-suite types who often head straight from the surgical table back to the office. GLP-1 mania is reportedly contributing to the procedure’s popularity with both men and women because of how Ozempic and the like tend to deflate users’ hips, butts, and chests. Those types of patients also tend to have less fat of their own to lipo for conventional cosmetic enhancements.—ML

The case for Sephora. Sephora, in all of its Kohl’s glory, is the go-to makeup store for prestige and indie cosmetic brands like Lady Gaga’s Haus Labs, Glossier, Rare Beauty, Rhode, and Tower 28 Beauty. You won’t find as many drugstore powders and creams, but if a 22-year-old is raving about a product on TikTok, you’ll most likely have to head to Sephora to find it. The chain of 2,700+ locations worldwide has been owned by French luxury conglomerate LVMH since 1997. And it just announced—with the help of megastar Chappell Roan—that the iconic MAC Cosmetics line will finally be at Sephora. So...there’s really no reason to go anywhere else.—MM

The case for Ulta. Actually…affordability, salon care, and superior customer rewards are three reasons to go to Ulta. The beauty retailer, whose locations are roughly twice the size of Sephora’s, has made its mark by selling both drugstore makeup and the types of personal care products you’d find in your bougiest friend’s bathroom. You can get a $15 or $49 highlighter, a $550 Dyson hair dryer, a Kylie Cosmetics Lip Kit (which isn’t sold at US Sephoras), and an in-store professional blowout. Plus, you can rack up more membership points per dollar than Sephora’s rewards program offers, which may be why Ulta has the largest loyalty program in the industry at nearly 46 million members strong.—ML