The Changing Face of Influence, Part 3
This month, we’re diving deep into how the rules of influence have flipped from the age-old model of campaign first to a bottom-up, community-driven model. We’ve discussed how this is ever-present in fashion, lifestyle and entertainment, but one of the biggest drivers of interactive brand worlds is beauty. In fact, beauty is an area where we’re seeing some of the biggest shifts. To break it all down, we’ve tapped beauty industry expert Gwen Flamberg as our beauty editor-at-large. Each month, she’ll decode how the media revolution is taking shape through the lens of beauty.
MEET OUR EDITOR-AT-LARGE
Hello, dear readers! I couldn’t be more excited to share my take on the ever-evolving face of beauty, including an exclusive interview with a brand founder who’s changing the beauty game each month. But first, a bit about me: I’ve been a beauty editor for 20 years but my love for the influence of beauty started at age 14 — as a roller-skating hair model on Austin Street in Forest Hills, New York. The industry and the way we see, learn about and shop for beauty has changed immensely in that time, but that experience taught me early that beauty is community based — very much what we are seeing explode now in terms of influence.
Community First and the New Role for Celebrity
The outdated spokesmodel era is a thing of the past. And celebrities have flipped the model, here. Why be paid a seven-to-eight-figure deal when one can create their own line and eventually flip it for much more? Case-in-point: Hailey Bieber’s Rhode was acquired by e.l.f. Beauty in May, 2025. That pretty sum made sense because of the influence that Bieber has via her community — a whopping 55.7 million followers on Instagram, alone. The importance of the content creator — and their built-in consumer — is not lost here.
But the most interesting brands have spun off from celebs and creators who stand for something more than just flawless skin. Take for example, Saltair by Iskra Lawrence, the body-positivity model with over 5 million followers. “I see Saltair as both a brand and a vehicle for a larger conversation around self-care, body acceptance and inclusive beauty,” she tells me of. Sure, the bath and body line smells great and deeply moisturizes, but it’s meant to make users feel good in their own skin. The company is projected to do $150 million in sales this year, according to Business of Fashion.
It’s Not About Selling a Product; It’s About a Lifestyle and That Lifestyle Becomes a Safe Space
Then there are brands that go a step further and become an actual vibe — their brand ethos and creative direction is so tight that everything in their orbit, be it a digital advertisement, a store location or even a piece of merch is unmistakable within the world they’ve created. Think Alice + Olivia and their world of whimsy, and, of course, LoveShackFancy, where founder and designer Rebecca Hessel Cohen dreamed up a hyper-feminine pink paradise.
Cohen cut her teeth on fashion (she was a fashion editor at Cosmopolitan before launching LoveShackFancy, after all) but the brand has recently entered beauty with fragrances that effortlessly fit. “LoveShackFancy has always been more than a fashion brand to me,” Cohen shares. “It’s a feeling, a state of mind. Fragrance felt like the most natural extension of that emotional universe.” And with scent, LSF is just getting started. Along with ribbons and one-of-a-kind pieces of jewelry at the stores and collabs galore (another new model), expect more to come to help followers connect in new ways.
In a World That’s Increasingly Automated, Touch Means Everything
And then there’s the world of The Maker. The brand that started with a hotel in Hudson, New York founded by Fresh alums Lev Glazman and Alina Roytberg, has grown into a universe that includes coveted glassware and bedding — one can even buy the artisan beds at the hotel — and of course, a full fragrance line that’s a Sephora top seller. For our main event this month, I sat down with Lev and Alina to get their thoughts on why connection, community and real world touch are winning right now.
Gwen: When you decided to create The Maker, was it important for the hotel to come first? And how did the fragrances come out of that?
Lev: So obviously the hotel for us was about having a platform where we can bring our favorite things, and of course fragrance being number one, that can express the story of The Maker, a celebration of bohemian sensibility. It's a very eclectic mixture of things and how they live and work in harmony, something that's sensual, very sultry, not standardized at all, but surprising, satisfying and inspiring. And we wanted to give people the opportunity to take a piece of The Maker with them and bring it into their life, either through fragrance,, but also other things, beddings and dishes, maybe furniture. And in the world that we're living in today where AI doing a lot of things for us, I mean that's really separates us because we truly believe in the power of human hands.
Gwen: Exactly. But speaking of AI, how do you think AI will influence how we see and experience something like fragrance?
Alina: There are already AI-created fragrances, by the way. They already exist. AI just takes information, what's sold, what is liked by a consumer and then it formulates. But at the end of the day, that's not necessarily enough. I feel like as we learn more about it, you use AI to make certain things more efficient and faster, so you can apply yourself to truly enjoy the creative process. You can’t recreate a memory with AI. One of our very first fragrances, Fire, was a very specific reference to a leather chair we found in a flea market in France. It was from the 19th century and we had it restored but Lev remembers the scent of what it smelled like when we first saw it. And that’s what he was imagining as Fire was created. It’s a real reference, that ultimately, yes, may only be known to us, but isn’t it an incredible place to start building on rather than taking somebody else’s reference? I think that’s what storytelling is all about — it comes from a somewhere that’s important to you.
Lev: It’s part of our memories. It’s part of our experiences that bring it to life. It’s the emotion that a machine can’t recreate.
Gwen: Right. But what is it about that emotion that connects us?
Lev: We all have hidden talents. I mean, we are all makers. It’s not only people who tinker with things. We're all living, hopefully very meaningful lives. It’s how you make your life and things around you that you surround yourself with. It's all about making something in some ways, and I think that's what connects us all, and that's what the community of The Maker is about. I find it to be quite big if you really think about it.
