Last week’s beauty cycle was really about who we trust—retailers, labels, and voices. Lawsuits are testing “clean/conscious” promises; a holiday ad showed how fast sentiment can swing; and ingredient-rating apps are shaping carts even when the science is… nuanced.

Beauty, to celebrity makeup artist Bernicia Boateng, is practiced self-trust, rooted in ritual, alive with creativity, and carried with integrity. Grounded in Ghanaian ingenuity and her mother’s unapologetic example, Bernicia treats beauty as a living practice: skin first, intentional self-care, and grace when life bends the rules. Most importantly, beauty is how you make people feel.

Cure Nailhouse offers a return to intention. Founded in Detroit by Cyndia Robinson and opened in July 2025, the studio treats beauty as architecture with rooms paced like ritual, built to preserve craft, culture, and community.

The Black Beauty Club returned to London to celebrate UK Black History Month with our community—one headline across them all: Black Beauty as Cultural Power.

Atiya Walcott’s beauty philosophy is as fluid as it is grounded: moisture as ritual, bare skin as freedom, and natural hair as revelation. On stage, in the mirror, and even in the streets of New York, she finds beauty in what is lived-in and true.

For Yara Shahidi, beauty is less about rules and routines but more about clarity, care, and the freedom to simply be herself.

Yara Shahidi has grown up in the spotlight, navigating both Hollywood and beauty culture with a rare mix of curiosity and intention. In this candid conversation, she shares how her approach to beauty has shifted—from experimenting with every ointment under the sun to learning the power of restraint, from stressing over body hair to embracing what makes her unique. For Yara, beauty isn’t about perfection; it’s about tending to her health, listening to her community, and finding clarity in who she is, inside and out.

The truth is, every time a Black man paints his nails, it rattles the cage of a society that still believes “real men” don’t do decoration. But those rules? They weren’t ours. They were handed down, imposed, and policed. Our ancestors were already painting, staining, and flexing long before colonization told us what masculinity “should” look like.

Longevity is trending because money, measurement, and media finally linked up. Investors poured billions into aging science, Bezos-backed Altos Labs launched with a reported $3B war chest; Retro Biosciences (backed by Sam Altman) is now raising $1B to add ~10 healthy years. That same mentality jumped into our nightstands: smart rings went mainstream, Oura has sold 2.5M+ rings, and Samsung Galaxy Ring made “how ready are you today?” a daily score you actually check.

You’ll see it from the pitch room to the afters, waterlines tightlined, a soft blur hugging the lower lashes, lashes pulled into tidy spikes, and a near-black cherry lip that looks rich without swallowing the face.

We took The Black Beauty Club on the road! Three cities, Chicago, D.C., Atlanta, packed rooms, 30+ creators, and nearly a hundred guests at every stop. IRL is the engine; online is the loudspeaker. The room makes the love, the feed carries the echo.

The plaintiff’s lawyer tried to use Cardi’s nails as proof of assault, her wigs as symbols of duplicity. This is the same logic that has long sought to transform adornment into liability.

The underlying logic is as old as patriarchy: if a woman adorns herself, she is frivolous; if she maintains herself, she is vain; if she asserts herself, she is aggressive. For Black women, each layer is sharpened. Nails become claws. Wigs become masks. Tone becomes “sass.”

It’s misogynoir in real time, where beauty itself is turned into evidence and weaponized against credibility.

On August 24th, Juvia’s Place pulled off what no one saw coming: the party of the year in New York City. The Reign of Blushed & Bronzed Radiance wasn’t sponsored. It wasn’t co-signed by a global celebrity. It wasn’t a victory lap after a billion-dollar valuation. It was a brand, its community, and a city lit up in peach, gold, and joy.

What is beauty in Chicago? This was the opening question of the night addressed to the crowd. My immediate thought was “bold & natural”. As a non-native to Chicago, having lived here for 5 years now, I’ve had more than enough time to observe. And that’s what I’ve observed about beauty in Chicago - there’s a boldness to the beauty trends and fashion of the city while still holding onto authenticity and naturalness - especially in Black people. The feedback from the crowd echoed this same answer with slight variations that emphasized trendsetting. Shoutout to y'all fr. <3

In the NBA, players are guaranteed about 50% of Basketball Related Income, which includes sponsorships. A league deal means bigger salaries for everyone.

In most women’s leagues, there’s no such guarantee. A brand can sign a multi-million-dollar partnership, and none of that money is required to go to player salaries. At most, an athlete might get a small appearance fee for a photoshoot or activation.

American Eagle’s Y2K-throwback gamble looked cute for about 48 hours. On July 24 the company splashed “SYDNEY SWEENEY HAS GREAT JEANS” across Times Square, the Vegas Sphere, and half of TikTok; traders promptly treated the slogan like a meme stock, sending AEO up as much as 23 percent after hours and closing the week above $12 for the first time all summer.

She is a CEO, yes. But she is also her marketing team, spokesperson, and part‑time TikTok performer, because somewhere along the way, we decided that to believe in her product, we had to watch her perform.

Now flip over to the feed of a buzzy male‑founded wellness or beverage company.

No dancing. No GRWM. No late‑night “pack orders with me” live stream.

The Nine-Billion-Dollar Blind Spot

Black consumers already account for 11 percent of all U.S. beauty spend, about $9.4 billion a year, and they scroll mobile feeds 32 hours a week. They’re also the earliest adopters of AR try-ons and GPT-powered routine builders. Yet shade-match engines still ghost on melanin, and hair-analysis apps prescribe flat-irons to coils. The lost upside is staggering when you realise the global beauty-tech market already sits at $66 billion today and is barreling toward $173 billion by 2030.

The beauty boom of 2020-24 isn’t over, but it has changed character. Prestige sales just scraped along at zero growth in Q1 2025, while the mass channel inched ahead by +3 percent, its first lead in half a decade. Fragrance is still the sector’s life-of-the-party, propping up revenues even as price-sensitive shoppers trade down in basics.

We all squeezed the last drop out of that Lip Treatment Oil. We all chased that skin tint glow. Ami Colé wasn’t “for Black people only”; a Black founder built it to solve shade reality, and the results looked good on everybody. Yet the brand will close in September 2025 because the money, margins, and post‑DEI market didn’t match the love. One brand’s wind‑down cannot be used as shorthand to underfund an entire category.