The Aqua-for You Page

Welcome back to Haul of Fame, your must-read beauty roundup for new products, new ideas and ancient eyeliner.

Included in today’s issue: The Chatwal, Credo, Delilah, Eos, Evereden, Fenty Hair, Follain, Fulton & Roark, Godmode, Hume Supernatural, Kylie Cosmetics, Laura Mercier, The Lip Bar, Peter Thomas Roth, Sakara, Tarte, Under Your Skin, Urban Decay and the summer somebody turned pretty.

But first…

It’s 8:30 a.m. in Montauk, and I’m watching a college freshman named Olivia get a piercing while waiting for her matcha latte. But the piercing isn’t for her — it’s for her full-size tube of Aquaphor. She burns the tip of a thumb tack with a lighter, stabs the top ridge of her Aquaphor tube and pop — a tiny hole appears in the plastic. She loops a plastic thread through it and strings it onto her Lululemon belt bag. It hangs next to a fuzzy pink bunny and the key to her mom’s luxury SUV.

Olivia got the idea from one of TikTok’s 114 million Aquaphor videos, which feature the drugstore ointment dangling from popular Gen-Z accessories like the Coach Brooklyn bag, jangling alongside car keys in a Jeep or bedazzled with tiny rhinestones. Other videos show the $7.99 tube of immaculate grease getting squeezed into Rare Beauty packaging. There is an Etsy cottage industry of Aquaphor bag charms and caps. Like Addison Rae on her first big tour, Aquaphor is the unapologetic Every Girl of the summer.

How did we get here, slathered in sanitized goo? It’s not by looking cute on TikTok, although sure, that helps. Instead, Aquaphor hooked Extremely Online shoppers through a riff on the “high-low” model beloved by luxury fashion brands — a tactic that combines ultra-prestigious products with a breezy, common message to assuage the guilt of the wealthy and charm the cynicism of the working class (TL;DR: by making everyone feel seen, regardless of their bank balance). Chanel made supermarket baskets out of plated gold metal and braided leather. Moschino did McDonald’s fry pouches with Italian suede. When Hedi Slimane took over Dior Homme, his first accessory was a neon snap bracelet, the kind you used to get at the Scholastic Book Fair.

Aquaphor did the same high-low punch, but with beauty. On the prestige side, the brand cosied up to dermatologists by making samples easily available to doctors online, sponsoring dermatology conferences and funding prominent peer-reviewed studies. When the 7 percent of US teens that take Accutane for their acne experience the side effect of super-dry skin, many of their doctors hand them Aquaphor. Ditto the Millennials and Gen-X women whose skin is raw from laser treatments and chemical peels. The brand is focused on these official, credible, prestigious links.

They’re also focused on teen chaos. Aquaphor reposts high schoolers using its tubes as ASMR instruments, comments on Aquaphor Prom-posals (yep…) and makes absolutely unhinged “Wicked” tribute videos with 7th-grade graphics. “Girl With a Giant Tub of Aquaphor” is the name of an actual video the brand facilitated. (It has over 2 million views.) It made a terrible AI sweatshirt on Instagram. It replied to TJ Maxx on Threads. This is madness.

This is also lucrative, at least for a drugstore brand that has medical credibility but no real place in luxury culture. In April, Aquaphor’s parent company, Beiersdorf, beat its earnings expectations by $40 million. Its next earnings report is on August 6; analysts expect the growth to continue. Meanwhile, girls like Olivia say Aquaphor is “too classic” to go out of style, though the bag-charm effect may soon wear off. That’s okay for the skincare brand, though. A new trend is rising where the $5 portable tubes are jammed into Rhode phone cases, where they fit well enough.

What else is new…

Skincare

Truly responsible sunscreen? Credo is trying. On June 20, the eco-based brand and retailer debuted Credo Solar Limits, an SPF 43 serum with coconut water, shea butter, recycled plastic and zinc oxide. The formula claims to be water-resistant for 40 minutes, which is a big step forward for a sunscreen that’s mostly plant-based.

Sakara’s Beauty Biome is a $65 supplement with vitamins, probiotics and collagen-protecting “superfoods” to help maintain skin elasticity. It launched on June 23 with its little green capsules packed into a skin-cream jar instead of a pill bottle; this is low-key brilliant.

Evereden’s Fluid Silk Mineral Sunscreen is a $32 formula that claims to be especially gentle on sensitive skin. The campaign features the SPF 50 cream on the cheek of a (very adorable) child, and the ingredients include aloe for extra hydration.

Is the wellness crawl the new bar crawl? On June 25, The Chatwal announced “City to Sanctuary,” a venue-hopping getaway that starts at its midtown Manhattan property and then transfers (via Blade chopper!) to the Chatwal Lounge in the Catskills. That means in record time guests could get a Manhattan massage and facial with kava root “to activate the body’s endo-cannabanoid system,” then hit up a reiki sound bath and a private yoga class in the mountains. The trip starts at $4,300, because immaculate vibes are expensive.

On June 25, Hume Supernatural introduced All Body Deodorant in Vanilla Daze. It’s a $29 tube infused with silica, oat kernel flour and kelp extract, and can double as an anti-chafe balm if you run out of Megababe’s Thigh Rescue, which is still the GOAT.

If Follain’s new sunscreen feels familiar, it’s because the SPF 35 shares the same formula with a certain celebrity’s label. (I won’t tell, but if you’re friends with a cosmetic chemist, she might.) This one retails for $32, has a soft-matte finish and doubles as a makeup primer. It also comes in packaging that’s at least 50% recycled, which isn’t always the case for a boldface brand.

Call it “The Summer I Turned Peter?” On June 27, skincare brand Peter Thomas Roth teamed with the yell-it-out teen drama “The Summer I Turned Pretty” by making co-branded packs of gold and cucumber eye-gel patches available at Sephora and Ulta.

On June 27, Eos made its big play for gourmand fragrance shoppers with Crème de Pistachio body lotion, a $10 bottle that compliments its existing strawberry and vanilla versions. Pro tip: If you use this stuff, you will crave gelato afterwards! Happy summer!

Makeup

Urban Decay understands the horror of runny mascara — even when you’re running in a horror movie. The brand’s All Nighter Setting Spray has partnered with the goofy gore-fest “M3GAN 2.0” on social-media content promoting both the movie and the makeup, which they claim is “guaranteed to slay.”

It seems to be “glow primer” summer. After One/Size and Milk Makeup released their own shimmer-based bases last month, Delilah’s has unveiled its Wake Up Radiant Elixir, a pump serum that oozes iridescence in warm peach or cool pink. It’s $48.50 per tube and works as a highlighter, too.

If you can’t beat ‘em, make ‘em in more formula options. On June 25, Tarte morphed its mega-hit Maracuja lip balm into a chubby Maracuja Multi Stick that can be used as a blush, a lip tint or an eye shadow. It’s $30 and available in three shades.

In the sage words of Hilary Duff, “Let’s go baaack… back to the beginnnning…” That would be 2015, when Kylie Jenner first launched her wildly successful Lip Kits, which led to a Coty acquisition that netted the youngest Kardashian-Jenner daughter a whopping $600 million. (Honestly? Go her.) Ten years later, the brand is releasing Kylie Glossy Lip Kits, which look like the original matte releases, but come with a super-shiny finish and a matching lip pencil. The kits come in six shades for $35 each, and their OG packaging is specific enough to induce pre-pandemic nostalgia. It’s actually kind of wild.

Also in colour kits: The Lip Bar released a collection with R&B star Coco Jones called Why Not More? that bundles a gloss, a liquid lipstick and a lip liner for $46; the packs are available in red, nude, pink and a chocolate-y shade called “Why Not Coco.” Clever! Now bring us the third season of “Bel-Air” please!

Hair Care

Under Your Skin introduced a dry shampoo on June 25 with just three ingredients: oat kernel flour, kaolin clay and cornstarch. The Swedish-made formula is $38 and available at Credo Beauty.

Fenty Hair’s Clear Thinker Clarifying Shampoo hit Sephora and Kohl’s on June 26; it has salicylic acid and an amber-yuzu scent bouquet, and retails for $32.

Fragrance

On June 24, Fulton & Roark introduced Fulton, a fragrance “inspired by Atlanta” with mandarin rind, amber and vanilla. It comes as a perfume, deodorant, bar soap, body oil and solid fragrance.

And finally…

Archeologists have discovered a full tube of ancient eyeliner. Found in northwestern Iran, the capsule has the mineral pyrolusite along with graphite, i.e. the stuff found in pencils today. Scientists think it dates back to the 9th century B.C. so… like… 3,000 years before the founding of Sephora.

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