In the few weeks since 2025 began, the makeup category has been gripped in an apparent identity crisis.
For one, none of the year’s biggest makeup launches so far have been branded as makeup products, but instead, skincare. Hailey Bieber’s Rhode Skin dropped its Peptide Lip Shape on Jan. 30; the brand is adamant that the product is not a lip liner but a precision moisturizing stick dosed with plumping bean extracts that comes in 11 shades to flawlessly contour lips. Also in January, the K-beauty brand Glow Recipe announced its first makeup product — a “tinted cheek serum” made with 3 percent niacinamide and “jojoba oil-coated pigments.” (“It’s a flush, not a blush,” co-founder Sarah Lee told The Business of Beauty.) And today, the Target brand Versed unveiled a collection of 60 SKUs, including a creamy Cashmere Color “Lip Blush” and “Multi Serum” Skin Tint.
Are they makeup, or skincare? The answer is simply yes.
This wordplay allows brands to play the makeup field while maintaining their skincare credentials, It’s a formula that’s already shown it can work: Rhode’s “Peptide Lip Treatment” is really just a lip gloss by another name.
Viewed in cultural context, the move toward skincare-based makeup — and skincare brands launching makeup products — reflects changing attitudes about beauty — namely, that skin health is paramount, and general beauty tends to follow.
“Brands and developers are looking to provide multiple benefit products to consumers,” said Ron Robinson, the cosmetic chemist behind Rhode Skin’s early hits, and the founder of his own skincare line, BeautyStat. “Blending skincare with color is one way to provide it.”
It also puts broader industry shifts on display. As both skincare and makeup sales categorically soften, combining the two seems, at first jojoba-oiled blush, like a bankable strategy.
New Frontiers
Not so long ago, the shared territory between skincare and makeup was uncharted, though demand existed. When the German dermatologist-fronted brand Dr. Perricone’s “No-Makeup” Makeup collection launched in 2012, Versed’s creative director Lola Gonzalez, then a graphic designer, waited in line to try it.
Due to their high price-point and limited shade range, the products never quite made it to cult status — perhaps they were too ahead of their time. Gonzalez thinks that moment is now here; the brand’s new makeup collection is meant to be an extension of its “skin-first” proposition.
“We wanted it to feel like skincare, but to also perform like makeup,” said Justine Wu, who heads up product development for Versed. “We didn’t want to compromise.” The line’s hero product, a Multi-Serum Skin Tint, is made with an SPF 40 mineral UV filter, as well as Australian Kakadu plum (for brightening) and hyaluronic acid (for hydration).
The growing skincare obsession has helped open the door for skincare-infused makeup, said Wu, citing a growing focus on “skin prep” prior to applying makeup as well as the greater availability of sophisticated ingredients. “Labs are just doing so much more, and you’re able to incorporate really great ingredients into color formulas a lot better,” Wu said.
Alexis Page, the cosmetic chemist who helped launch Glossier (and its “skin-first” Phase 1 kit) said the seeds for the skincare-makeup craze were planted with the arrival of “Beauty Balms,” or BB creams, which entered the US market from Korea when the brand Dr. Jart landed in Sephora in the 2010s.
“They were tinted and functioned like an SPF,” Page recalled, “and everybody got on board.”
Page sees these hybrid products as “another way to differentiate yourself in a saturated marketplace,” but isn’t easily impressed by them. “The one that has always taken the cake for me is the Supergoop,” Page laughed, of the brand’s Shimmershade eyeshadow with SPF 30 that launched in 2019. “Do eyelids need sunscreen? Certainly. Are you going to use this paint pot as opposed to MAC? I don’t know.” She did, however, just order the Rhode Lip Shape in a muddy shade called Twist.
Nailing the 2-in-1
The difficult part of selling skincare as makeup isn’t the formulation itself, but how it’s marketed. Brands hope that creating skincare-makeup will expose it to both categories, but run the risk of falling short — and failing to qualify as either.
To shore up its skincare claims, Glow Recipe invested in expensive clinical trials with before and after photos that demonstrated how daily wear of their blush could produce brighter, clearer cheeks.
“What’s most innovative is that even the pigments care for your skin,” said co-founder Christine Chang, casting slight side-eye at other hybrids: “This is not a makeup product with a hint of hyaluronic acid.”
Language is also an important part of the skincare-to-makeup marketing playbook, evidenced in Rhode Skin’s frequent deployment of the word “peptide” in its product naming. New mutant launches rely on the lexicon of skincare — words like serum or treatment, or well-known ingredients like niacinamide — to convince potential buyers of their worth.
But perhaps the most important marketing tool in makeup sales is excitement. It’s almost as if the decisions to purchase skincare versus makeup are made in different areas of the brain — the former appealing to wisdom, the latter to whimsy. It’s hard to create the thrill of discovering a new favorite eyeshadow in the experience of shopping for eye creams.
For its part, Versed is going to try. The one slice of its new collection that lacks a significant skincare story is a warm palette of shimmering liquid eyeshadows, including a metallic shade of neither champagne nor gold, but a patina closer to fatigue-green.
“We wanted a fashion shade,” said Wu. “The rest are beautiful basics, but this one is a moment.”
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