2025 was a yr of extremes in beauty tradition. The $450 million business felt extra polarized than ever, with a push in direction of “low maintenance” routines that inspired us to ditch our mascaras or go makeup-free completely, Pamela Anderson fashion. The shift got here from the truth that this low-effort look usually required “high maintenance” therapies like lash lifts, enamel whitening, laser hair elimination, and even beauty procedures, to be achieved. While some manufacturers had been telling us to “redefine beauty on your terms,” others had been promoting us compression face shapewear to sculpt our jaws.
The scope of beauty widened, too. In November, the Canadian actress and entrepreneur Shay Mitchell made headlines when she launched Rini, a skincare line that provides hydrogel sheet masks for youngsters as younger as 3. We additionally noticed the rise of canine beauty, with vegan pH-balanced luxurious shampoos infused with nutritional vitamins, coat oils and dry shampoos that double as doggie perfume. No corporeal zone was off-limits both, as beforehand undiscussed physique components had been platformed in new methods. The New York Times described scalps as the brand new “It” space as extra folks spent cash on high-end head spas, whereas earlier this summer time, Vogue Business declared the following wellness craze to be “booty beauty,” as extra manufacturers flock to create all-over-body deodorants, backside care and “hole serums.” Kate Winslet summed it up finest when responding to at the moment’s beauty requirements in a latest interview with The Times of London: “It is f***ing chaos out there.”
To assist make sense of all of it, NCS requested three prolific beauty writers to sound-off, unfiltered, on the moments they imagine outlined the yr that was.
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In 2025, with each inch of the human physique commodified eventually — see: “holecare” — the beauty business set its sights on the nonhuman. Introducing: canine cosmetics, the break-out class of the yr!
Lil Luv Dog, co-founded by the previous COO of Kim Kardashian West Brands and backed by $1 million in enterprise capital, launched in August with $36, EWG-verified dry shampoo (“so your dog doesn’t smell… like dog”). Welltayl adopted in October; its Skin + Coat Care Kit, $98, can “cleanse, hydrate and protect without disrupting the skin barrier.” Ex-beauty editor Alexandra Pauly will debut her “beauty for the beast” line, Biche, subsequent month. The fur oil incorporates a “signature fragrance” for “humans to smell and enjoy,” Pauly tells NCS.
And people do appear to take pleasure in this. Morgan Stanley estimates the pet grooming business will develop over 7% yearly by means of 2030, doubtlessly outpacing the expansion of beauty merchandise for folks (5% yearly by means of 2030, in line with McKinsey & Company). Allure readers even requested for extra “pet beauty content” in a 2025 survey.
But why?
I’d blame anthropomorphization, for starters. As extra folks choose out of parenthood, dogs are the new kids. Consider scented coat conditioner the “baby sheet mask” of fur infants.
Evolutionarily talking, folks additionally see themselves of their pups. Both species talk by means of facial expressions, and canines have developed new facial muscle groups over time — brow-furrowers, primarily — to higher mimic their masters. (I pray Botox for bulldogs isn’t on the horizon.) Maybe this explains why Lil Luv Dog and Biche market their wares as “self-care for dogs,” regardless of the canine doing not one of the care. The “self” is the proprietor; the particular person is sublimated into the pooch; the beauty business has made you its bitch (uh, Biche).
Here’s my private pet concept: The early trendy invention of the pet coincided with the shaping of the fashionable household and ladies’s unequal standing inside it, as professor Juliana Schiesari argues in her 2010 ebook “Beasts and Beauties.” Women and canines had been domesticated collectively, in different phrases — made to be docile, to do as they’re informed. As the nation tightens the leash on ladies, may canine beauty be some kind of unconscious coping mechanism? A technique to make peace with our personal domestication?
At the very least, a “de-caninizing” beauty customary for canines is a bleak parallel to at the moment’s dehumanizing beauty customary for folks (“Instagram Face,” cyborg-like pores and skin, AI models). What’s subsequent? Ozempic for Old English Sheepdogs? Well, sure. That is in the works.
Jessica DeFino writes the anti-beauty Substack publication “Flesh World.”
Cosmetic transparency and appearance inflation — Sable Yong
In 2025, folks had been so much chattier about what aesthetic therapies and procedures they’ve undergone, what they’d wish to have accomplished, and additionally what they speculate sure celebrities have had accomplished — lots of whom have been happier than ever to reveal specifics on social media. Kylie Jenner responded to a TikToker asking for her “boob job recipe” (“445 cc, moderate profile, half under the muscle!!! silicone!!! garth fisher!!! hope this helps lol”) in a stunning angle shift, contemplating Jenner had been evasive about her lip filler previously. Her mom, Kris Jenner, additionally sparked media consideration for her second facelift in 15 years, which was lauded on-line as impressively natural-looking, and spiked curiosity in such medical phrases as “SMAS lift” and “deep plane” — two facelift methods related to Jenner’s outcomes. Perhaps extra stunning was Olympic gymnast Simone Biles, who this yr went public about her breast augmentation, decrease blepharoplasty and earlobe reconstruction. She informed PEOPLE Magazine: “I feel like nowadays with social media, you see everyone and you’re like, ‘Oh, my god, how does she look so good?’ Social media is not real, so that’s why I try to be as transparent as possible.”
The public’s total sentiment was “wow, they look great” — a far cry from lower than a decade in the past, when cosmetic surgery was nonetheless fairly socially stigmatized and misunderstood. Back then, frozen Botox face, cat-like cheek sculpting and exaggerated “duck lips” had been the butt of jokes (till so many individuals adopted amalgamations of those options that they’ve since turn into a part of the beauty customary lexicon). Considering our collective display dependency, voyeuristic relationship with influencers and the elevated accessibility of those procedures, it was solely a matter of time earlier than our distaste for overt self-importance advanced into public curiosity. Now to confess one’s monetary funding of their bodily appearance — whether or not it was impressed by insecurity or ambition — is each weak and relatable (relatability being one of the efficient methods celebrities create a way of authenticity and reference to followers). Today, beauty transparency is framed as empowering, and surgical procedure as self-care.
Ironically, this elevated authenticity has raised the bar, and the stress for everybody to maintain up has by no means been larger. Now, as non-invasive therapies like Botox, fillers, laser facials, and manicures are all normalized within the mainstream, the baseline of acceptable appearances has turn into far more costly — excluding folks at a time of rising financial inequality as properly. It’s made us skeptical of the beauty we see on-line because of medical intervention, paranoid that everybody else is getting injections and lifts, and additional stigmatized what pure getting old truly seems like.
But beauty evolves with humanity — it’s a key type of expression, and a part of how we join with one another. I believe it may also be used as a software of insurrection towards a tech-driven tradition that threatens to make us out of date. Now that AI has us doubting every part we see on-line, I hope we’ll be drawn again to appreciating imperfect, distinctive human qualities. Maybe in 2026, we’ll all be fatigued with picture-perfect faces, and rethink beauty’s actual worth for us individually and collectively.
Sable Yong is a contract author and was previously a beauty editor at Allure. Her ebook “Die Hot With a Vengeance: Essays on Vanity” was printed in 2024.
It first began in direction of the top of final yr, when a debate sprang up on TikTookay over whether or not ladies with bushes had been more trustworthy. In January, movies of customers chanting the phrases “full bush in a bikini” went viral and shortly grew to become a catchphrase for ladies resisting the societal stress of physique hair elimination. By April the dialog had taken over a complete nook of the platform, now devoted to pubic hair. #BushTookay had influencers, memes, “bush aura readings” (predicting the fashion/design of a celeb’s pubic hair based mostly purely on vibes). People had been bonding over shared acceptance and appreciation of their pure physique hair, refusing to be embarrassed over one thing that has so lengthy been thought of taboo.
But it wasn’t simply taking place on-line. After the French luxurious home Maison Margiela despatched merkins down the runway final yr, designers in 2025 introduced collections with seems that referenced pubic hair from the fake fur high-cut bodysuit by the New York-based designer Kim Shui to Swedish label Acne Studio’s fuzzy all-in-ones. In October, for his first assortment because the designer of Jean Paul Gaultier, Duran Lantink put fashions in furry trompe-l’œil-style catsuits, whereas Kim Kardashian — who final yr first teased us with a Skims fake fur bikini — absolutely dedicated with a variety of merkins in numerous shades and hair sorts. Soon headlines had been proclaiming the bush was again, “Saturday Night Live” was centering skits around bushes, they had been showing on the cover of magazines and US rapper Ashnikko was singing about not wanting a “city boy scared of the bush” on her 2025 single “Sticky Fingers.”
In reality, the complete bush dialog has been a welcome little bit of physique positivity in a beauty panorama which has usually felt very bleak, if not downright dystopian. As beauty director at Dazed, my work goals to problem the pressures younger folks really feel to evolve to oppressive, unrealistic requirements, and champion beauty as a joyful software for self-expression. From blepharoplasty to buccal fats elimination, it looks like there’s a brand new surgical remedy trending each week, lots of them more and more undetectable. Meanwhile, the “beauty backslide” has seen a cultural return to conservative values and aesthetics, worryingly skinny our bodies, and weird TikTookay tendencies that border on physiognomy.
In a sea of skincare for toddlers, Botox in your 20s and facelifts for the hardly 30s, it’s no marvel the items I commissioned on pubic hair (from assembly #BushTok influencers and exploring full bush fashion, to advice on rising out your bush) have been a number of the most talked about items on the positioning this yr.
These conversations round full bush positivity have usually been lighthearted and filled with humor, however that by no means took away from their significance. Accepting and embracing the pure points of our our bodies feels more and more onerous to do and due to this fact by no means extra very important. In a time the place our appearances are being consistently modified (digitally and surgically), frozen, smoothed over and shrunk down, being a part of the complete bush agenda seems like an act of self-preservation.
Alex Peters is the beauty director at Dazed journal.