NY NOW show opens, revealing this year’s holiday beauty shopping trends to watch

Cosmetics Design dropped by the NY NOW show on Sunday to take a quick inventory of the brands and trends. The naturals trend is well represented and showing signs that consumer preferences for natural beauty and personal care are getting more nuanced.

There are DIY beauty brands, kid-friendly products, socially conscious brand initiatives, clever gadgets, and probiotics on exhibit too.

Organic growth​

All things natural are so popular these days, in part, because of consumers’ concern for their health and for the health of the planet.

“Ingredients matter,”​ Kamela Hurley, founder of Madison & White, tells Cosmetics Design, even for brands that make beauty products that aren’t formulated in a lab. Hurley’s brand makes “the pillowcase that’s a beauty tool”​ from satin and bamboo rather than silk for just that reason. 

Organic natural ingredients are prominent at NY NOW from brands like ODE Natural Beauty which formulates prestige skin care with organic olive oil from the McEvoy ranch in California. That brand is launching a new Ecocert skin care line in spring of 2018 and adding more scents to its existing collection of product as early as January, according to Lisa Finch, director of sales at ODE, who spoke with Cosmetics Design at the show.

Oh So Good Organics, founded 3 years ago by Jennifer Naqvi, is also dedicated to formulating and crafting organic personal care. Her brand sources ingredients locally and illustrates that “traditional farming and gardening can still operate small to medium businesses,” ​as Naqvi tells Cosmetics Design.

Belief systems​

Probiotics are showing up in more and more personal care products as consumers and brands learn more about the so-called good bacteria that helps the skin and body function. rinse bath + body, a naturals brand based in Monroe, Georgia, is showing its deOdor Stick in four scents at the NY NOW show; it's a deodorant formulated with probiotics.

And Ayurveda Apothecary, a wildcrafted brand from Trade Yoke, is showing a comprehensive line of personal care and fragrance products developed around the Dosha system of wellness. Tamara Jones, who founded the brand first in Australia and brought it to the US just 2 years ago, tells Cosmetics Design that like Ayurveda her brand helps consumers “create the space to find wellness.”​ 

Miscellanity​

Blend it yourself beauty made an appearance at the show. Mixify Polish, a brand that sells DIY kits to make personalized nail and lip colors was also showing its newly launched DIY fragrance kit. That brand's owner Amy Schofield tells Cosmetics Design that Mixify products are best suited to teens and tweens, but her real customers are the parents, aunts, and uncles buying the kits for the young people they know.

nailmatic, run by Marine Crouzet, is also at NY NOW, showing not only the company’s nail polish vending machines but also a full range of water-based nail color for kids as well as ‘mommy and me’ style parings of matching kids polish and adult nail lacquers.  

Several fragrance brands are at the show, including West Third Rail out of Austin, Texas, and Sfumato Fragrances out of Detroit, Michigan.

Brands like ur bath & body as well as Bitchstix are highlighting their social betterment initiatives. While some brands are focused on gadgets, like the color cosmetics brand Summer Royce which is showing lip color tubes equipped with a slim mirror and an optional click-button light.