Beauty Business News September 2025 | British Beauty Blogger

The pool is smaller than you think in beauty – Trinny London has scooped up Michelle Marks from Charlotte Tilbury where she was the Global Director of Digital Brands. She takes the role of Chief Marketing Officer at Trinny with reported plans to speak louder and stronger to a 30+ consumer, particularly in the US where they’re hosting another pop up in Boston. New(ish) brands like Trinny London have to find their place between older, heritage based brands and new digital first brands and it’s smart thinking – there is a huge proportion of customers who have no bond with either so it’s an opportunity to speak them in a way that’s missing at the moment.

Sunscreens are in trouble. Not the first to withdraw their product, Ultra Violette has withdrawn, with immediate effect, their SPF50 Lean Screen after tests at several independent laboratories showed ‘significant’ variability in performance. The brand says, ‘We had multiple, independent labs conduct new tests of Lean Screen. This week, we received results from those tests that demonstrated significant and, candidly, atypical variability. Across eight different tests, Lean Screen has now returned SPF data of 4, 10, 21, 26, 33, 60, 61, and 64.’ They’ve offered full refunds and vouchers. This follows a recent recall of Naked Sundays Collagen Glow Mineral Sunscreen. They’re both made in Australia – it’s impossible to tell if they’re made by the same manufacturer but we have to wonder. Not made in Australia but also recalled this year is Ultrasun Family SPF30. Neutrogena and Aveeno aerosols have also been pulled – not for unreliability but for possible carcinogens.

The busy ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) has banned a Sanex (Colgate-Palmolive) ad showing black models with dry and itchy skin followed by a white model with smooth problem-free skin. I’m sure I don’t need to explain how problematic that is – and how it ever made it on-air I have no idea – but it can so easily be construed as comparing ethnicities. There was a way to do this inclusive campaign, in fact, many ways to do it, without being so clunky and insensitive.

Martha Stewart is launching a beauty brand this month – Elm Biosciences – alongside dermatologist Dr Dhaval Bhanusali. You can expect serums and supplements as the first items to launch. Far more interesting (in my view) is Billy Porter’s cosmetic line, Black Mona Lisa Beauty featuring strong pigments, powerful shades and inclusivity messaging.

Over on BeautyTok, UK make up brand, Made By Mitchell, has caused drama by apparently not honouring a collaboration as a competition prize won by make-up influencer, Malachi. Promising commission from a 10+ piece strong collab designed by Malachi (which, incidentally, is worth a fortune), the promises seem to have been diluted and diluted until the range becomes a (less affordable) box set and the commission becomes TikTok Shop only. This happened in 2023. Time passed with no contract and eventually a re-negotiated contract turned out to be only marginally better than the TikTok Shop offer so Malachi walked away in 2024. Because it’s the internets, all the details have finally come to light with a long-winded explanation by Mitchell – and more than one apology – but no life changing and game changing collaboration, although he does say he is still ‘open’ to a collaboration with Malachi. Bearing in mind that Made By Mitchell has previously shared that he earned $1 million in one day, the (Companies House) numbers don’t support this as being anything other than a one-off. It feels as though this is one for the competition regulators to look at.

Milk Make Up is apparently undergoing a strategic review by brand accelerator Waldencast who now own the brand (they also own Obagi Medical). Milk reportedly does well in the US but can’t quite make the numbers in international regions. Waldencast CEO is Michel Brousset who has long experience in building global brands for L’Oreal and P&G. Waldencast is talking a good game – ‘building a global best-in-class beauty and wellness multi-brand platform by creating, acquiring, accelerating, and scaling the next generation of high-growth’, yet have only two brands. Milk and Obagi. Eggs and baskets come to mind.

Huda Kattan is making it very difficult to be featured by anyone who keeps an eye on global events. With 11 million followers on TikTok, she posted a video claiming that Israel was behind WW One and WW Two.  She then accused Israel of hiding paedophiles and her commentary was considered anti-semitic. While Huda did post an sort-of apology two days later, the damage was done with retailers running for the hills. Her brand was due to be a major part of a Sephora push called Experts and it’s been withdrawn from that by Sephora who may consider booting the brand altogether. I’m carefully not bringing my views on world events to this site – it’s not appropriate here at all.

Very sadly, Sharon Chuter, founder of Uoma, has died at the age of 38. The Uoma story is quite something and it’s all the more terrible because it was a black woman owned brand that was absolutely punching with bigger brands – and winning – until it all started to go wrong. Uoma went silent on social media and stopped operations for over a year (it’s suggested that it was due to a heath crisis) and announced a relaunch in 2024 – but, under new ownership with Sharon retaining controlling interest. In February 2025, Sharon Chuter filed a lawsuit against the new owners, MacArthur Beauty, alleging that company assets were sold without her consent (and undervalued) and that she was improperly pushed from her role by investor, BrainTrust. Uoma’s legal assets are now being disputed.

Interesting that post take over (last week) by private equity firm Sycamore Partners (bought for 7.4 billion of your pounds), Boots has been spun off from US parent group, Walgreens Boots Alliance. International parts of the aforementioned WBA will now operate as The Boots Group and will include Boots UK and IE, Boots Opticians, No.7 and pharmacies in other territories.

Any beauty lover of a certain age will know Make Up Alley – the beauty forum and review site. It used to be that I’d rarely post anything about a product until I’d taken into account the views of real users via Make Up Alley. After 26 years, Make Up Alley is hanging up its mascara wands and calling it a day. While the site hasn’t been active for a couple of years, its final day will be 27^th September this year.

In a move that nobody saw coming, former founders Adam Minto and Tom Allsworth are back at Revolution Beauty to help turn the brand around to its former profitable self. Revolution has secured £15 million in fundraising from Debenhams and an agreement to produce Debenhams own brand make up. As a reminder, Frasers (as owners of Boohoo) were weighing up whether to offer on Revolution but changed their minds despite being a significant shareholder (Boohoo) in the brand. From this side, it was very clear that the interims who were brought in were never, ever up to the job – just suits in seats with no acumen in the beauty industry. I’m guessing they’re back to shape the brand up for sale and then Frasers might buy it.

ELC (Estee Lauder Companies) can’t go five minutes without making waves of some sort. Despite the fact that under Stephane de La Faverie’s role as CEO, the ELC workforce is down by almost 7000 people, the shock that nobody saw coming is that Matthew Parr, Global Creative Director, would be one of them. He was, according to Line Sheet, let go on Monday last week. However, it appears that the business is actually beginning to show signs progress despite net sales being down by 12% – company stock is up 20% – with their integration onto Amazon playing its part as well as China showing sales recovery signs. Tariffs are going to hit all USA brands (and beyond – good example is metal prices = packaging costs) very hard so let’s wait and see.