Why Insidery Beauty Events Are So Back

When Alison Brod, founder of her eponymous marketing and communications firm, begins to plan an event, she often lets the famed ethos of Elsa Maxwell guide her. “Down with boredom. It has to go,” the late gossip columnist and longtime café society staple once said. For Brod, whose ABMC clients include L’Oréal Paris , Neutrogena, Charlotte Tilbury and more beauty and lifestyle brands, this means a few things in practice. “No more long, boring tables,” she said. “Yes, I understand people have to sit...I literally look at the internet, especially in beauty, and it is a sea of long tables with pastel flower arrangements and menus whose ingredients and cocktails match the product. It is so boring.” Breaking through this boredom — especially when hosting influencers and journalists who have so often been there and done that — is perhaps easier said than done. But it’s become table stakes (pun intended) for brands as the number of events proliferate — in beauty and beyond. Across industries, live events have boomed coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, with Allied Market Research projecting the global events industry will be worth $2.5 trillion by 2035, or roughly 3.4 times its $736.8 billion valuation in 2021. “A lot of [this momentum] comes from this digital world that we live in, where everything we do is so digital-first...physical has become the new luxury,” said Nathan Simpson, cofounder and managing director of experiential marketing agency Foam Creative, which works with Sephora , Burberry and Marc Jacobs. “Analog has had such a resurgence, and that is kind of how I imagine events — they are like the analog of marketing.” Indeed, offline-ness as a status symbol has become a growing cultural conversation in recent months, with people increasingly flexing reduced iPhone screen times and sharing myriad ways to disengage from the day-to-day noise of social media in favor of in-person interactions. In some ways, beauty is particularly poised to benefit from this shift. Marquee events have always had a place in the category. Yves Saint Laurent’s legendary fete on a four-masted schooner in New York City to mark the launch of Opium is still talked about by industry veterans today. “A beauty event is organically sensorial, [because] beauty is intrinsically analog — if you want to smell a fragrance, you need to spray and smell the fragrance,” said Simpson, adding of the strategic significance of an event well done: “It creates those ‘you-had-to-be-there’ moments. There’s just something that looking at an ad, no matter how beautiful or well designed it is, is never going to give you.” In September 2025, Valentino Beauty created one such moment with its one-night-only Studio 54 revival, which brought out stars from Cher to Sophie Thatcher to ambassador Colman Domingo to fete the brand’s limited-edition Born in Roma Rendez-Vous Ivory Collection. Alexander Edwards and Cher at Valentino Beauty’s Studio 54 revival. Getty Images for Valentino Beaut One year later, a packed lineup of fashion week-adjacent beauty parties this September indicated brands not only took note, they had high hopes of creating a similar kind of magic. YSL Beauty brought out stars including Lauryn Hill, Teyana Taylor, Karl-Anthony Towns and Jordyn Woods for an end-of-summer block party ; Calvin Klein took over the West Village bar People’s to celebrate its new Euphoria fragrance with ambassador Rosalía, while Kiko Milano, Kilian Hennessy, Marc Jacobs Beauty, Dolce & Gabbana Beauty, Saie, Chanel, Tom Ford, Carolina Herrera and more hosted back-to-back parties and experiences of their own during the five-day stretch. As for how to measure the success of these events? “A lot of my clients focus on earned media value and check metrics the days following an event,” said David Ko, owner at design and events firm Maison Ko. “That, and if the event was Instagram grid-worthy.” Sometimes, measuring success is a bit more of an intangible. “You can tell by how long people stay; who’s talking to each other — if you have to push people out at the end, then you know people had a good time,” said Sarah Raimo, founder and chief executive officer of Break Point Brand Group. “During the event, you can absolutely read the room,” said Simpson. According to CreatorIQ, Calvin Klein’s Euphoria party was the buzziest beauty event during New York Fashion Week, generating $10.4 million EMV and 154.7 million engagements across 1,105 posts. Chanel’s Coco Mademoiselle Café and YSL Beauty’s block party were other top-grossers with $7 million and $5.8 million EMV, respectively. Though they varied in format, all of the events were highly attended by celebrities (in the case of Calvin Klein, Rosalía was the only A-lister, so to speak, but influencer attendees included Ashtin Earle, Jake Shane, Owen Thiele and more). Rosalía at the Calvin Klein Euphoria Signature Elixir party on Sept. 11. Lexie Moreland/WWD While CreatorIQ reports that the presence of high-profile attendees does correlate with EMV, there are other contributing factors, including whether a party ushers in a new, buzzworthy product; whether high-profile guests are cross-posting and tagging each other versus posting in isolation, and whether the event has an overall distinct visual hook or theme. “When I first started, just having a celebrity at a lunch was a big deal; now, it’s not enough — a lot of brands today have celebrities, and half of these influencers have become celebrities in their own right,” said Brod. But influencers are celebrities born of the iPhone era — and that changes the dynamics of the room. “When you think about old-school celebrities, when they would show up to an event, they knew what their role was, right? They were there to schmooze, to put on a show, to be a big star,” said Simpson. “I think we’re missing a little bit of that with influencer culture; [influencers] show up and they’re thinking phone-first. So, how can you bring that energy of performance art, and a little bit of disruption and things that can organically make people drop their guard?” Having a yin-and-yang mix of influencers, celebrities, press and miscellaneous creatives and friends of brands is often the answer. “A beautiful room that has no aura or vibe doesn’t move the needle. It really does come down to who’s there,” said Simpson. “For me it’s always like, who are those tentpole people that will bring the crowd with them, or have people excited just because they’re there. “Who is the DJ organically linked to on the guest list where there’s going to be that natural rapport where they’re jumping across the room to be with each other? With photographers, if there’s a celebrity on the list, who is somebody they’ve chosen to be shot by in the past? Because when you are shot by somebody that you’re comfortable with, it changes the dynamic of how many photos you want to take and how much fun you want to have.” A recent dinner hosted by Kiehl’s Culture Club, which was established in 2025 to bring tastemakers together at intimate events, of which there have been more than 15 so far. Courtesy of Kiehl’s Brod, meanwhile, makes sure her team act as facilitators helps get attendees out of their silos and start cross-mingling. “Looking at our guest list and saying, ‘Well, who just moved to California? Let’s get them together.’ It makes a big difference. I tell my team, if you don’t know anybody, go look at their LinkedIn or their Facebook and have something to talk about to engage them,” she said. And when in doubt? “Aestheticians, makeup artists, hair stylists — they bring a party,” Brod said. “If you are in the beauty business, pack your party with hairstylists and makeup artists because they are in people’s faces all day long; they are drinking, they’re having fun and they know how to make people feel good.” In terms of how much it costs to throw a good party, budgets range: Ko said most beauty events start at $30,000 to $50,000, with highly customized events landing in the $150,000 to $200,000 range, while Simpson said that for a luxury experience, it’s a good rule of thumb to assign $1,000 per attendee when accounting for factors like staffing, transportation, hospitality, gifting and more. “Our medium-range budgets these days are $350,000 to $400,000...but someone could come to me with $75,000 and a solid brief and we could pull that off as well, because maybe they don’t need smoke and mirrors; they just need a spotlight.” Sometimes, when it comes to food, too, simpler is better. “One thing en masse can create magic,” said Brod. “If you don’t have a budget, look for those new trends and what people are waiting in lines for. Call the Myka frozen yogurt people and have a Myka cart — create that one cool thing that people might not be able to [normally] get.” And sometimes, successful press and influencer events can be a pipeline for consumer events that look to replicate what worked for a broader audience, as was the case with Garnier’s Casita de Curls event hosted by ABMC. Ultra small-scale events, on the other hand, are also carving out a lane for themselves in the ecosystem. For instance 4am Skin founders Jade Beguelin and Sabrina Sade hosted a seven-person dinner at Zero Bond in New York just before fashion week, inviting five micro- and midtier creators who had previously posted about 4am including Alexis Barber, Katie Romero and Hana Elson. “Every single person I invited said ‘yes,’” said Beguelin, adding that she and Sade are making the dinners a monthly, intimate affair with rotating attendees. “We like events to be photogenic, but that has never been the main purpose. The purpose of events is to get creators and tastemakers to meet the people behind the brand, and that doesn’t necessarily have to be some humongous, branded thing.”