This story begins in the ’90s behind rival makeup counters, Estée Lauder and Chanel, where Jerrod Blandino and Jeremy Johnson met, fell in love and realised they both wanted more from beauty. Back then, the industry felt all too serious, too exclusive and far too bound by tradition. In 1998, the pair broke the mould with Too Faced, a brand that shook things up with the world’s first glitter eyeshadow, a lip plumper that became a global obsession and a mascara so famous it needs no introduction.

Decades on, they realised the industry was shifting. People were paying closer attention to what people put on their faces, demanding formulas that performed but were also responsible. “I wanted to create a makeup brand where ‘clean’ doesn’t have to mean boring, and where you don’t have to trade glamour, innovation or trend-setting colour for clean, vegan, good-for-you formulas,” Blandino says. If anyone could make sustainable beauty appealing, it was them. “When someone tells us no or it can’t be done, it’s like, okay, let’s figure out a way to do it!” The answer was Polite Society – next-generation, artistry-level makeup with vegan and cruelty-free innovation, skin-loving ingredients and that same cheeky attitude the world fell in love with in the first place.

The very first time you smell a Maison Crivelli fragrance, it takes you somewhere else entirely. Waves lapping over pink-hued waters. The icy bite of absinthe under the Northern Lights. Flourishing iris fields at the edge of a desert. And that was exactly the intention of founder Thibaud Crivelli. “I don’t just want to create a nice smell,” he explains. “I want to create a story, an experience that engages all the senses.” And that he did, building an ever-expanding collection of scents you can almost hear, taste and feel, perfumes that build anticipation, that make you crave the moment you get to wear them again. What began as an experiment in synaesthesia – a perceptual phenomenon in which a person associates one sense with another – has opened a whole new way to wear and to experience perfume.

Ask any beauty editor about their first Mario Badescu product and they’ll probably say the little pink bottle. The Drying Lotion was one of skincare’s first true cult products and has remained the brand’s bestseller for over half a century. The origin story of that now iconic lotion can be traced back to a small salon on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where Romanian-born facialist and cosmetic chemist Mario Badescu brought the traditional methods of Eastern European skincare to the US. His facials drew a loyal following of models, celebrities and locals in the know, and when clients wanted his results at home, he began bottling (by hand) the same plant-derived formulas he used in his clinical treatments.

Packaged in pharmacy-style bottles and priced to be accessible, Badescu’s simple and effective remedies spread quickly, first passed from friend to friend, before finding their way onto the bathroom shelves of names like Jennifer Aniston, Bella Hadid, Gwyneth Paltrow and Martha Stewart.

It turns out that one of the biggest brands in the universe began with a blog (remember those?!). In 2010, Emily Weiss, a former fashion intern at Condé Nast, launched Into The Gloss, a beauty blog that opened bathroom cabinets and asked celebrities and fashion insiders to share the products they actually used. That transparency, not seen at the time, built a very devoted community, and in 2014 Weiss had the idea to turn it into a brand, Glossier. Launching with just four staples, she championed ‘skin first, makeup second’ and turned no-makeup makeup into the look of an era.

What really set Glossier apart was the way Weiss invited people in. It was the only brand to speak directly to its audience online, co-creating products with them, then bringing the conversations that were happening online to life in retail stores that felt more like a place you would go to hang out with friends.

You’ll spy Augustinus Bader’s deep blue bottles in almost every beauty shelfie on the internet, but what makes them remarkable is how they got there. With no PR, no marketing campaigns and just two products, The Cream and The Rich Cream, Augustinus Bader became one of the most talked-about skincare brands in the world.

Co-founded in 2018 by globally recognised biomedical scientist Professor Augustinus Bader and entrepreneur Charles Rosier, the brand was born from Professor Bader’s 30-year career in stem-cell biology and wound healing. His patented TFC8® technology first helped his patients heal from skin trauma without surgery and, as he discovered, also worked remarkably well in kickstarting the skin’s self-healing process. Rosier bet everything (his savings, his home, his reputation) on the launch, and the gamble paid off. Augustinus Bader disrupted the skincare industry with formulas so effective, they didn’t even need marketing to go viral. Today, if you say The Cream, everyone knows exactly which one you mean.

Australian-born creative and tastemaker Richard Christiansen is the reason we now view the smallest rituals (a bath, a breath, a moment with scent) as indulgences worth savouring. From his lush, hillside garden in Los Angeles came a brand that reframed body care as something different – a ritual of pleasure rooted in the earth rather than a routine.

Before it was a beloved name in body care, Flamingo Estate was Christiansen’s pink-walled home, once a notorious party enclave, later transformed into a sanctuary overflowing with herbs, bees and fruit trees. When the pandemic hit and local farms were struggling, he began working with growers and creative friends to turn harvests into products people could bring into their homes. “As Flamingo Estate grew, I approached my life and work with a different intention,” he recalls. “I was learning to shift my focus to essential things – the garden, good food, a smaller circle of friends, my dogs, my partner, privacy, building a home.”

On a mission to make pleasure a priority, Flamingo Estate creates intent-filled products designed to reinvigorate daily life with joyful rituals. Or, as Christiansen puts it, “In a world that profits off our numbness, it is a radical act to wake up one’s senses.”

Fashion lovers know his name for bold clashing prints, unexpected fabrics and runway moments that feel more like theatre than clothes. But when Dries Van Noten moved into beauty in 2022, he saw it not as others did. For the legendary Belgian fashion designer, it was an entirely new canvas for his artful visions. He debuted with 10 eau de parfums and 30 lipsticks, every one of which reflects Van Noten’s DNA. He draws scent notes from his garden in Antwerp (imagine patchouli, rose and green mandarin), experiments with textures and insists craftsmanship and sustainability always remain central to the brand. The result is beauty that doubles as art, housed in refillable cases and bottles wrapped in his signature prints and, perhaps most importantly, designed to be displayed as much as worn.