United States
Janna Mandell is a San Francisco Bay Area-based journalist covering the innovations and evils of the beauty industry. Her recent writing for the Washington Post reflects her mastery of debunking beauty myths and calling out the beauty industry for fear-mongering and false marketing claims.
Early in her career, she was called a trend-spotter by industry peers for her early coverage of trends like the Korean beauty craze and the natural beauty boom — years before hitting the mainstream. In her reporting, she has interviewed the spectrum of experts from top dermatologists, toxicologists and cosmetic chemists to financial analysts and CEOs. Previously, she was an executive on Wall Street running strategy, business development and sales for Tradeweb, an electronic trading firm's retail arm.
If sunscreen manufacturers, environmentalists, dermatologists and consumers were expecting the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to take a position on the safety of chemical filters in sunscreen products by yesterday, they were likely disappointed.
An estimated 16 million Americans have rosacea, according to the National Rosacea Society, and this long, hot pandemic summer is probably adding to their discomfort. Ultraviolet rays and high temperatures are common triggers for rosacea, a chronic inflammatory disorder that causes the skin to flush and become hypersensitive.
Charlotte Cho first came face to face with pimple patches while working in Seoul more than a decade ago. The Korean American entrepreneur, who was an international corporate communications manager for Samsung at the time, was fascinated to see co-workers dressed in suits and heels arrive at work and attend important meetings with little round stickers on their faces.
Johnson & Johnson announced Wednesday that five of its aerosol sunscreen products are being recalled after some samples were found to contain low levels of benzene, a chemical linked to blood cancers such as leukemia.
Donna Gould, a 43-year-old aesthetics student in Cocoa Beach, Fla., can't remember a time when bug bites and scrapes didn't leave her with dark spots on her skin. "I just assumed I was a slow healer." Ten years ago, Gould finally asked a doctor about the spots, thinking they were from a vitamin deficiency.
When independent laboratory Valisure announced it had found the known carcinogen benzene - a compound linked to blood cancers such as leukemia - in 78 sunscreens and after-sun products, the news prompted a flurry of alarming headlines and articles.
Although they've been around for decades, the vitamin A derivatives known as retinoids remain the gold standard for treating acne and wrinkles, with the skin-care and pharmaceutical industries continuing to develop and manufacture new products featuring them. Retinoids - including the most commonly known, retinol - are found in both prescription medications and over-the-counter formulations in a variety of strengths and product types.
If you follow the advice of magazines such as Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, social media "skinfluencers," or your favorite skin-care brands, you may have read that exfoliating - the process of detaching dead skin cells - is a vital step in achieving healthy skin.
Based on the advice of wellness and clean beauty influencers, Rust said she threw away all her plastic, dryer sheets and conventional beauty products; she believed that toxic chemicals could be found throughout her home. "Everything had to be natural," she said. "I fully overreacted out of fear."
Estee Laundry and beauty reporter Jessica DeFino break the silence on companies who need to be held accountable.
This story, as told to Janna Mandell, is from the perspective of Trinity Mouzon Wofford, the co-founder of Golde , a Brooklyn-based superfood-fueled beauty and wellness brand, which she co-founded with partner Issey Kobori in 2017.
The first thing you notice when you open the door to luxury botanical skincare brand In Fiore's studio and showroom in San Francisco is the scent - otherworldly yet grounded, like Big Sur after the rain. The showroom itself looks like an old-world apothecary: wood and glass cabinets filled with etched bottles and jars housing potent balms, oils, and other skincare and fragrance potions.
When Kristina Holey and Marie Veronique Nadeau launched their skincare line, they found themselves in a vortex of negative attention around natural beauty. Find out how the discussion around natural vs. synthetic beauty is quickly becoming the most polarizing debate in the personal care industry.
Lord Jones co-founder Cindy Capobianco describes her luxury cannabis-infused product business in much the same manner as any maker of a prestige natural skincare brand: it's made in small batches, organic ingredients, medicinal value of said ingredients. With a body lotion and face products slated for release later this year, Lord Jones is trying to be a prestige natural skincare brand.
Zoe Holland is a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Southern California, where she is surrounded by possibly unintentional VSCO girls (pronounced "visco"). With her jet-black hair, blunt Bettie Page bangs, black-winged eyeliner, heart cheek stamp and pink-blushed nose and cheeks, Holland is the quintessential e-girl, lost in a sea of Malibu Barbies taking selfies.
Waiting for my Botox appointment in a posh medical spa in San Francisco, I started chatting up the 20-something woman sitting next to me. With her flawless skin and apparently amazing genetics (sky-high cheekbones and full lips), I couldn't figure out what she could possibly need done at a medical spa.
How did EO Products come to be? We were working in fashion/retail in San Francisco, making oil blends for our friends and family when Bloomingdale's asked us to create 360 sets of four custom oil blends for their holiday catalog. We had to think of a name-and quick.
Before the days of Instagram's #Instastories and r/MakeupAddiction on Reddit, young women got their makeup inspiration from glossy magazines and the local beauty counter. The trajectory usually involved starting one's teen years with Clinique and MAC, and eventually graduating to Chanel and Dior.
When Botnia skin-care founder Justine Kahn and her husband bought their home in Sausalito in 2010, it was a "contractor's special" to say the least. The house was leaning to one side like the famous tower in Pisa and was accessible only via a ladder.
It takes a second for your eyes to adjust when you enter Earthbody, a day spa in Hayes Valley. Once you've settled on the dimly lit pillowed banquette, a spa employee brings you paperwork along with a tray of goodies to begin your cannabis ritual.
Talk to any beauty-product enthusiast and she probably has an early memory of her first visit to the beauty floor at her local department store. Stepping in from the drab parking lot into a magical world where heavily made-up women offered perfume spritzes, vivid signage showed pouting models in glossy bright makeup, and glass cabinets filled with tubes, bottles and jars sang their siren songs of glamour and smooth skin.
Victoria Tsai, founder and CEO of San Francisco beauty brand Tatcha, wants you to forget everything you learned from the best-selling book "Memoirs of a Geisha." The Harvard Business School-educated Tsai would know; she based her entire brand on the beauty rituals of the geisha.
Los Angeles-based vegan skincare company Youth to the People (YTTP) announced today they received a minority investment from private equity firm Strand Equity, also based in Los Angeles, to further expand the brand and fuel growth. Details of the transaction were not disclosed.
French cosmetics giant L'Oreal SA announced today it will acquire Toronto-based ModiFace, a creator of augmented reality and artificial intelligence for beauty brands like MAC Cosmetics, LVMH-owned Sephora and Benefit Cosmetics.
Millennial-favorite beauty brand Glossier is about to make a whole lot more "meaningful connections." The New York-based startup announced today that the direct-to-consumer beauty brand received $52 million in a Series C round.
Reading through recent headlines about Amazon disrupting the beauty industry, one would think that it's time for Sephora and Ulta to panic and rethink their strategies. Yes, I know the power of Amazon and how it's eating almost every retail sector's lunch.
Julie Lynge's facial massage targets jaw pain and adds a rejuvenating lift
Looking through the windows of the Bite Beauty Lip Lab on Fillmore, you might mistake the lip boutique for a candy store. The shelves are lined with jars full of brightly hued pellets, and there are stools set up around high tables. The glass case at checkout looks to be stocked with candy-colored truffles.
On a recent Saturday morning at Neve & Hawk in San Anselmo, the boutique's namesakes are making themselves at home. The owners' 9-year-old daughter, Neve, is working the register - and getting a lecture from her mother, Kris Galmarini, on giving the correct change.
More than 4,000 years later, locals and visitors still come to Calistoga to take advantage of the restorative geothermal mineral waters and volcanic ash mud baths.
Indie brand credits success to loyal fanbase, social media, and "girlfriend-to-girlfriend" effect
Reporter experiences how makeup artist interprets runway trends for the every day woman.
NEW YORK - Skin was the star again this season with models' faces that looked scrubbed clean until they caught the bright lights on the New York Fashion Week runways, revealing soft palettes of iridescent pinks and nudes.
The first thing you'll notice about Tata Harper is her ethereal, glowing complexion. Harper's eponymous skin-care line, adored by celebrities and beauty editors, is known for its natural ingredients and high degree of efficacy. [...] Harper is opening her first-ever spa room for facials and other skin treatments inside Credo, where we spoke to her while she was in town putting on its finishing touches.
When Shashi Batra, founder of new beauty boutique Credo in Pacific Heights, talks about Credo's featured brands his face lights up and he transforms into a proud parent. A longtime veteran of the beauty industry (Batra brought a little shop called Sephora to the U.S.
You don’t need to travel far for a relaxing, rejevenating spa day
Not all members of the media and attendees and of New York Fashion Week strut from their trendy apartments in recently gentrified neighborhoods on Day 1 rearing to go. Some of us who cover fashion week actually come from far away lands like, in my case, the hippy hills of Fairfax, CA.
You really did it this time... It doesn't matter if it was going away for a boys' weekend on her birthday or drunkenly flirting with her friend at a party, you're going to need to plan one hell of a Valentine's Day weekend to make up for your errant ways.
From manis to massages, brows to braids, stylish insiders share their top recommendations of transformative services and top practitioners: Jeannie Jarnot is founder and CEO of Beauty Heroes, a curated beauty subscription-box service featuring luxury nontoxic brands like True Nature Botanicals, Vintner's Daughter and In Fiore.
Damon Schechter emerges from the dressing room at Denim & Soul on Union wearing olive green cords, plaid shirt, cashmere hoodie and a denim shirt as a jacket and exclaims, "I would have never thought of putting this outfit together!" His style consultant Victoria Hitchcock quickly goes to work cuffing his sleeves and fixing his collars.
Sure, he may have put a signed basketball from Steph Curry and a Beer of the Month Club on his wish list, but really, does he "need" those things? Is he actually going to admire that ball every day or is it just going to sit in a tacky plastic case on your mantle?
Kristina Holey brings pioneering French massage technique to S.F.
2-year-old Foreo launched itself with a sonic facial brush, and now offers a line of cleansers
Michele Holmes brings an expert eye, gentle products to tame, tease or transform eyebrows
Getting a facial can be a bit intimidating. It's like using an online dating site - you know people who swear by it and others who have been burned. Or perhaps you've actually been scarred by overly aggressive extractions or too-harsh exfoliations in the past.
Youthful nation obsessed with perfect skin pioneers innovative products with a playful touch
At Marc by Marc Jacobs, noted makeup artist Diane Kendal used Marc Jacobs Beauty Lip Lock Moisture Balm as a highlighter to accentuate models' cheekbones and eye contours. $24, www.sephora.com. The Nars Matte Multiple in Cappadoce earned its namesake at shows like Alexander Wang and Naeem Khan, where makeup artists applied the traditional blush and lipstick on eyelids.
Talk to any employee at Benefit Cosmetics' Bush Street headquarters or Bay Area boutiques and you can expect to hear about the "DNA of the brand" as well as its motto, "Laughter is the best cosmetic." Today, on the heels of the 25th anniversary of its San Francisco boutique openings, Benefit is poised to become a billion-dollar company, "exporting" its quintessentially S.F.