Beauty’s latest crop of influencers are just likely to be adept with a pestle and mortar as they are with liquid eyeliner.

The likes of Nara Smith and Hannah Neeleman, known as Ballerina Farm, have soared to the height of TikTok fame, partly for their model-esque good looks, but also for their domestic prowess. Neeleman starts many of her videos in front of her stove with one of her eight children wandering around; Smith has been known to make cereal and Oreo cookies from scratch.

While these creators are unlikely to use the term themselves, they’ve both been labelled as “tradwives” online. A portmanteau of “traditional” and “wife,” the term refers to women who undertake traditionally gendered roles, such as cooking, cleaning and child-rearing, as their primary duties. Online, their lives have a lofty, idyllic veneer, as they often sport full makeup, coiffed hair and glamorous outfits for their daily grind.

Some beauty and lifestyle brands have been quick to move in. Smith has promoted the K-Beauty brand Laneige and filmed a beauty tutorial for Vogue. Neeleman, meanwhile, is a literal beauty queen – she was crowned 2023′s “Miss American”.

For many viewers, their bucolic content provides a welcome sense of escapism, said Rachel Lee, global insights strategist at trends agency The Digital Fairy.

“There’s this desire for simplicity that kind of makes the tradwife aesthetic and narrative seem quite attractive to people who feel really overwhelmed with the algorithm, the trend cycle or just the state of the world,” she said.

However, the tradwife trend has a dark underbelly. Creators such as Gwen The Milkmaid mix extreme right-wing views and conspiracy theories alongside otherwise innocuous videos of pasta making or tending to their gardens. “Vaccines are a scam” and “Modern feminism leads to misery” are stamped over one of Gwen’s videos.

Brands are still trying to figure out how to navigate these tricky waters. Though Gwen the Milkmaid’s roughly 65,000 TikTok following is dwarfed by Smith’s 7.6 million, in some viewers’ eyes, they’re all part of the same content stream, or they’re at least on a slippery slope to becoming more radicalised.

Many tradwife creators focus on homesteading, cooking or beauty content without any explicit mentions of politics, and rack up millions of views in the process. In some ways, they’re also a safer pair of hands than it-girl style influencers, said Casey Lewis, who writes the youth culture Substack newsletter After School.

“They’re not going to be going out and getting wasted…they’re very uncontroversial in terms of their content,” she said.

If brands want to tap into the movement, they need to carefully weigh up the sociopolitical risks against the potential to reach new audiences, and discern who’s simply a homemaker, and who’s an agitator.

The Tradwife Roots

For many, the popularity of tradwives is less about politics, and more about polish. Milkmaid-style dresses, light makeup, heatless curls and skincare routines that feature natural ingredients are popular.

“It’s just very editorialised and fashionable … there’s no flyaways on their hair, no ribbons out of place,” said Lee.

That’s especially true for Smith. In one recent clip, she makes condiments from scratch while wearing a strapless polka dot sundress, long polished nails, dangling earrings and a full face of makeup. Through her representatives, Smith declined to comment for this article.

Despite its projections of perfection, some viewers find this content comforting in a sea of “cool girl” influencers who cycle between buzzy nightclubs and exclusive parties.

“I feel like I’m escaping when I watch her content,” said Sophia Aziza, a 28-year old brow technician from London, saying that Smith’s videos have made her want to try her hand at baking and even DIY beauty products.

To that end, some creators are likely just playing dress-up – they’re enhancing and editorialising their everyday lives for their content. A spotless kitchen, and two hours spare to make a home-cooked meal and pristine bathroom filled with premium skincare products is just as much a fantasy to some as a fast-paced, cosmopolitan city life is to others.

Brands should be careful to parse trending content carefully, and examine the truly resonant parts of the creator’s output.

“On a macro level, why are these things appealing? What are the larger trends here?” said Lewis, adding that brands should consider how tradwife content is enmeshed or overlapping with other trends like cottagecore or clean girl, as it might simply be those aesthetic elements rather than the entire lifestyle that’s appealing to viewers.

The Personal is Political

That hasn’t stopped even the most apolitical tradwives from getting swept up in the discourse around the trend.

On dedicated Reddit forums, in articles in The New York Times and Rolling Stone, and in their own comment sections, viewers try to surmise creators’ political leanings, their message to the world, and even the authenticity of their content.

“If they were more transparent about the privilege behind the lifestyle, I’d say cool, live your life,” one Reddit commentator wrote of Neeleman, who is married to JetBlue scion Daniel Neeleman. “She’s not a homestead wife … they have nannies and tutors.”

Judah Abraham, whose firm Slate Brands regularly partners with influencers to co-create brands, the line in the sand comes down to the creators’ own output. As long as they aren’t harming others or doing something the firm determines to be inappropriate, they are safe for brands to partner with, he said.

“While people disagree on a lot of issues, at its core, [most people] are not that far apart…[the US] as a country stands behind different opinions,” he said, adding that most issues are not as much of a “blowout” as they feel online.

Cooking Up a Partnership

By Lewis’ estimations, the trend is nowhere near at its peak, and is still gaining steam – she points out that as the US moves closer to another hotly contested election, how some of these creators choose to respond to the political agenda will be indicative of their own beliefs.

Social media algorithms are powered by engagement, good or bad, said Lee. Creators who post homemaking content aren’t inherently risky – some would argue Smith’s content is far more luxury than domestic, given her unboxing videos of designer purses and large, spotless home – but finding the right match is key.

“It’s easy for brands to get swept up in that momentum, but keep your brand’s values [in mind],” she said.

What’s more, the work of great marketing is often closing the gap between what consumers find aspirational and the way they really live their lives.

“Yeti are selling the outdoor lifestyle with those big coolers, right?” said Abraham. “But they’re selling it to finance guys …they’re selling that lifestyle.”

Milan men’s fashion week is where all the big Italian names converge. It’s where Prada dictates what trouser shape everyone will one day be wearing and where Gucci drops the next it-bag. But as the shows got under way at the weekend an unexpected new trend was emerging: the great fashion Brexit.

Just four months after making his debut as creative director of Dunhill at London fashion week, Simon Holloway instead chose the Italian capital for the brand’s Spring/Summer 2025 show. On Sunday he aimed to recreate “the sense of a beautiful spring day in England” by showing in a garden in Milan.

Martine Rose, the cult London designer whose clothing riffs on traditional codes of masculinity such as football and club culture, and is loved by celebrities including Kendrick Lamar, has also defected this time. Showing directly after Prada on Sunday, Rose took a prime spot on the schedule, which has more than 80 events and runs until 18 June.

David Koma has been showing womenswear in London since 2009 – his glamorous designs have been worn by Rihanna and Beyoncé – but for his menswear debut he decamped to Milan, while this month Paul Smith headed to Florence as a guest designer at Pitti Uomo.

Gianluca Borghi, chief executive of 10 Corso Como, a luxury concept store in Milan, says the Italian city’s fashion week is gaining more power. Borghi says different fashion cities dominate at different times, but “Milan offers a rather peculiar and almost unique scenario, thanks to the combination of a preferred location for both the creative world and its business counterpart.”

The exodus of British talent is a blow for the fashion scene in London already hit by Brexit, the abolition of tax-free shopping for tourists and the cost of living crisis.

Rose has spoken about feeling “very disheartened and sad about the landscape of London fashion, really demoralised”. Half of her team is now based in Milan. Holloway says that while London is “the epicentre of creativity”, commercially it makes sense to focus on Milan.

It is a marked contrast to the 2010s, when Rose showed in London alongside a host of pioneering designers. Victoria Beckham, once a key London draw, moved her show to Paris in 2022 and since then Grace Wales Bonner and Bianca Saunders have followed suit.

While Paris has earned its moniker as the fashion capital of Europe, more recently it is Milan – once regarded as a slightly dull and industrial city – that has creatives flocking to it.

Brexit has played a key role in increasing its allure. A generous tax incentive introduced in 2015 to entice Italians back to their homeland – and later expanded to include foreigners – has also proved fruitful. And you can add to the mix the country’s recent introduction of a digital nomad visa, which allows non-EU nationals earning more than €28,000 (£24,000) to relocate and work remotely, and the fact that fashion is taken seriously as an industry.

Lisa Bridgett, a fashion tech entrepreneur who recently relocated to Milan after stints in London and Paris, describes fashion as “the lifeblood of the city”.

“Here, la bella figura, which means to put your best face forward, is a way of life,” she says, explaining how typical it is to hear “not just fashion people” discussing the length of a shirt sleeve or type of collar.

Koma says the city’s reverence for fashion was a key factor in his decision to make his menswear debut in Milan. “I wanted to bring in new voices and a fresh audience,” he says. “The men really do love fashion here so I think it will be more interesting to get their reaction.”

Olya Kuryshchuk, the founder and editor-in-chief of 1 Granary, a fashion education platform and creative network, believes that the logistical challenges, including higher venue costs, posed by the upcoming Olympic Games in Paris is also benefiting Milan.

But she is doubtful that the city can steal Paris’s crown. “With London rapidly loosing its advantages primarily due to Brexit, Paris will stay the most important hub for independent brands as that is where the majority of the buying is happening,” she says.

While Holloway’s commercial and sales teams have recently relocated to Milan, he is keen to keep as much of Dunhill’s manufacturing in the UK as possible. More than 60 percent of its fabrics are woven in the UK and he says working with heritage mills and specialists in Scotland and the north-west of England is “core to the brand’s identity”.

“We exist in a marketplace that is dominated by Italian menswear,” he says. “We are able to offer something rarefied. The hand of Scottish knitwear is very different to what they do in Italy. So using British manufacturers is of paramount importance to us.”

By Chloe Mac Donnell

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‘Hyper Beauty’: Inside Alessandro Michele’s Surprise Valentino Collection

Over 260 images dropped during Milan Fashion Week provided a look at the star designer’s plans for the Roman couture house. ‘It’s a continuous orgasm,’ he said.

MILAN — When Alessandro Michele unveiled his debut collection for Gucci in 2015, his evident mastery of the brand’s codes was the fruit of a dozen years’ labour designing behind the scenes under Tom Ford and Frida Giannini.

At Valentino, Michele took just two months: the Roman brand, which named the designer its creative director on March 28, surprised the fashion world Monday by dropping an unscheduled lookbook on the last day of Milan menswear week. The mixed-gender collection slated for pre-spring 2025 features more than 260 images including propositions across categories, from ready-to-wear to handbags, shoes and silk scarves.

More than a teaser, the collection provided a comprehensive overview of how Michele is approaching the Roman couture house’s codes: Belted ivory peacoats with V-motifs on pockets, or cropped jackets styled over matching tailored dresses paid homage to Valentino Garavani’s breakout white collection from 1968. The ladylike looks were styled with turban hats and looping strands of pearls that added a whiff of Michele’s cinematic kitsch. Elsewhere, gender-fluid styling gave a jolt of modernity to throwback silhouettes as male-presenting models wore bell-shaped capes and ruffled turtleneck blouses, while many of the most sartorial looks (including bell-bottom suits Garavani himself might have worn in the 70s) went to the girls.

“Something magical happened, a chemical reaction, and we started to work as if in an orchestra — with love, and without looking at the time. We lost ourselves in Valentino’s archive,” Michele told reporters from The Business of Fashion, Vogue and WWD about he and his team’s process of immersing themselves in the legacy of Garavani, who founded the brand in 1958.

“It’s something coming from our heart and our guts,” he added.

Where Michele’s tenure at Gucci was marked by an embrace of over-the-top, twisted glamour, at Valentino he is making an effort to connect with the intense prettiness of its founder’s couture.

“There’s a sort of obsession with what I would call hyper beauty. As if this life was not enough for him, so that it had to be amplified,” Michele said.

The debut collection is titled “Avant les debuts”, or “before the beginnings.” Michele insists that he and the “orchestra” of his studio are still “tuning [their] instruments” ahead of their first runway show scheduled for this autumn’s Paris Fashion Week, which is certainly the most hotly anticipated designer debut of the year.

The mention of beginnings, plural, was surely no accident, but rather signature Michele: During eight years as creative director of Gucci, Michele attracted a new generation of customers to the luxury fashion industry by deploying multifaceted collections that celebrated fluid self-expression and a broad range of identities. Collections blended mens and womenswear, archival shapes and maximalist embellishments, sportswear and demi-couture. Watching Michele juggling those plot lines, while testing the limits of how far the brand could be extended via collaborations was central to the thrill.

Michele’s first outing for Valentino, as such, might be seen as a collection of first steps in the designer’s latest round of simultaneous journeys.

“The process is not going to end. I still have the same gaze … It’s still me remixing things,” Michele said.

In his initial outing for Valentino, Michele interspersed hallmarks of the brand’s intensely pretty, ladylike identity — like pleated, tea-length skirts and ultra-classic pocketbook — with decadent touches associated with his own aesthetic: cascading shiny ruffles, (faux) fur trim, retro sunglasses and metallic or jewel-tone details. Other Michele-isms included contrast piping on ivory blazers, or looks that simultaneously featured plaid, paisley and monogram.

By releasing the collection on the morning of Gucci’s second menswear show by creative director Sabato De Sarno, Michele might be seen as announcing to partisans of the old Gucci that there’s a new place to shop — all while invoking Valentino’s codes just enough to not alienate existing fans.

But Michele insists that his reverence for the house Garavani built goes deep.

“I’m really in love with the place I have decided to inhabit, which is becoming my home,” he said.

“I’m touching extraordinary relics worn by extraordinary women who were his friends … His creations talk about him, about his very sophisticated fixations. About how a dress is a vehicle for extraordinary lives,” Michele said. “This world is very, very complex — and much less banal than we might think”

Meanwhile, as Michele gears up for his first foray into couture — set for early next year — the designer says he finds himself in ecstasy over the capabilities of Valentino’s ateliers and suppliers.

“There’s a level of workmanship that I see for the first time in a company. I can ask for the impossible, you know?,” Michele said. “For someone like me, it’s a continuous orgasm. It’s a climax.”

All the Looks From Alessandro Michele’s Valentino Debut

Valentino Spring 2025 Details

Last month, many of fashion’s biggest players descended on Copenhagen for the industry’s flagship sustainability summit.

In the 15 years since the event first launched, sustainability has moved from the fringes to the core of fashion executives’ agendas. Every sizeable apparel and fashion player on the planet has formulated some form of sustainability strategy and every serious CEO has committed to climate targets. The industry has embarked on the journey.

But that’s the extent of the good news. Despite many well-intended efforts and small successes, apparel consumption has nearly doubled since 2009; the industry’s emissions, resource consumption and pollution has grown alongside it. Worse, time is running out. The year 2030 — which most companies have pegged as a magical deadline by which point change should start to materialise — is only 11 seasons away.

But at a moment when efforts need to be accelerating, one global crisis after another has sapped executive focus, drained corporate budgets and eroded the prospect that consumers might drive change. With even the luxury boom seemingly on pause, securing the next quarter has taken precedence over strategic long-term decisions for many companies.

Suppliers, start-ups and activists increasingly fear the current unclear economic climate could lead to a “hibernation of efforts,” where budgets are frozen and projects continue but do not accelerate. In effect, the industry is on track to throw over its values to secure more immediate returns.

Small wonder then that many presenters and panelists in Copenhagen pinned their hopes on the mighty arm of regulation to move the needle where companies on their own have not — a fundamental shift in narrative compared to even five years ago, when the industry insisted that self-regulation would be the preferable, more efficient and faster way of achieving results.

I agree that we need regulators to act, but have my doubts that regulation on its own will be effective enough.

While there are many bills forthcoming from the European Union to the US, the legislative process is slow and the planet doesn’t have time to waste. Elections in Europe have just delivered a more right-leaning parliament, less friendly to ambitious climate policies. Earlier this month, New York’s state legislature ended its session for the year without passing a landmark fashion-focused bill. Even as new policies are enacted, there remain questions over how effectively they will be enforced and concerns that compliance costs and complexity could distract from broader progress.

In short, the wait for regulation risks becoming just another smokescreen to disguise, delay and excuse industry inaction at a time when it needs to rapidly accelerate.

Treating it as such would be a mistake that ignores the substantial business threats presented by future climate-change induced shocks. Indeed, change at this stage will require some brand frontrunners to push the industry faster and further than even policymakers are demanding.

In the current economic climate especially, that will require visionary leadership. But fashion’s biggest brands at least have the means to make a difference. These “super winners” accrued billions of dollars in profits through the pandemic that should allow them to invest in leaner times. Many of them are majority owned by individuals and families with enough wealth and power to free them from the short-term tyranny of quarterly results and enable longer-term thinking.

These dominant players should not only feel responsibility for the industry and the planet, but should also see the strategic opportunity in being first and fast movers; they could determine standards, educate and engage consumers, and set the bar for competition.

By contrast, maintaining the status quo will undoubtedly bring fashion drama it isn’t prepared for. Dangerous may be too delicate a word for the fallout from postponing action in hopes that technical solutions will appear and scale with lightning speed to massively reduce impact and emissions. Hockey stick plans hardly ever work, as top managers should know.

If the industry’s biggest players continue on this short-sighted path, they are likely in for a nasty shock. Not only because regulators will ultimately force them to act anyway, but also because fierce competition will arrive, as it has in other markets, from disruptive players that outgun incumbents on both their appeal to consumers and sustainability. The automotive industry, which deals with significantly more complex products and operations, should be a warning. There, Chinese competitors have taken a significant share of the electric vehicle market because European laggards thought that they could stretch timelines.

Indeed, it is past due for fashion to start “walking the talk” on sustainability. At this point, it had better start to run.

Dr. Achim Berg is a fashion and luxury industry expert who has advised top executives for more than 24 years. He was co-editor of the State of Fashion report series from 2016 until 2023. He is working on a book about the future of fashion.

The views expressed in Op-Ed pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Business of Fashion.

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At The Business of Beauty Global Forum 2024, the second edition of the annual event held at Stanly Ranch in Napa Valley, California, industry leaders, founders, retailers and investors were brought together to discuss how marketplaces are an increasingly dominant channel in the retail mix.

“A major concern with direct-to-consumer brands from the jump was that you were going to cannibalise the demographic you were selling to if you consider a marketplace,” said Front Row’s marketplace partnership VP of brand strategy, Alex Carmody, in her opening remarks on stage in conversation with BoF’s associate director of content strategy, Alice Gividen. “But, post-Covid we know that Walmart, Amazon and other major marketplaces are where customers are spending time, making marketplaces a key stepping stone.”

Indeed, more than 35 percent of all online purchases are made on a marketplace, according to Wunderman Thompson research — a figure that could reach 60 percent by 2027. This shift forms part of an increasingly complex e-commerce landscape. How customers engage with brands in 2024 has been transformed by multitasking across channels, creating a 32-hour day for the average American — with 13 hours spent using tech and media, according to Activate Consulting’s Technology and Media Outlook 2024 report.

While the marketplaces that are designed to benefit from this consumer behaviour are growing, digital marketing costs, economic uncertainties and logistical pressures have driven up the cost of doing business— impacting the effectiveness and profitability of wholly DTC business models. Meanwhile, TikTok has experienced rapid ascension as both a key social platform and a search engine in its own right.

As a global commerce accelerator, Front Row supports its partners in areas such as brand strategy, digital marketing, content creation, business intelligence and end-to-end retail management across major marketplaces. Its clients include Rare Beauty, Sephora, Ouai, Kosas, Glow Recipe, Summer Fridays, Youth to the People, and Dr. Dennis Gross Skincare.

Below, BoF shares Carmody’s key insights on how marketplaces can be utilised as a route to core consumer cohorts.

Create feedback loops from marketplace data

AC: Customer behaviour on marketplaces is completely different to what we see and track in a brick-and-mortar beauty retail space. One reason is because customers are coming on to marketplaces and not just purchasing beauty products. They are purchasing apparel, items for their home — anything you could think of in addition to beauty products. So when we look at shopping habits on these marketplaces, we have a holistic view of consumers which can help beauty brands really get to grips with their audience demographics and test new cohorts too.

Within Amazon, Walmart and other major marketplaces, the insights we can pull from review data is hugely unique and valuable. It’s where brands can discover, for instance, if consumers are using your product in a different way to its intended use and can act accordingly. This kind of insight is another example of the stepping stones towards growth — Amazon makes a bit more sense if you consider it as a supplement to your existing D2C presence rather than something that will cannibalise that channel.

Leverage AI offerings to create commercial shortcuts

AC: What we’re starting to see within marketplaces is the chance to apply artificial intelligence — there are many different avenues you can go down in order to utilise it. For beauty, where seeing and testing products in-store has always been so key, there is a lot of opportunity to help customers learn more about products remotely.

Gen-Z and Gen Alpha are bypassing Google and going straight to Amazon to directly search for brands.

What excites me are the shortcuts that AI can create. AI-generated models, for instance, which could personalise the shopping experience to ensure products are [accurately] shown, which marketplaces are testing right now. Another example is, if a brand is looking to build up their Amazon or Walmart businesses, they can use AI to create optimised listings from scratch to generate more cut-through and build their brands. Beauty businesses should be asking, “how can I scale my business more quickly by utilising this technology? And what can work for my customer base?”

Consider marketplaces as search engines

AC: TikTok is an interesting example of how social content is directly connected to those major marketplaces. Gen-Z and Gen Alpha will encounter a product on TikTok and while they will do some research on DTC websites, they are bypassing Google and going straight to Amazon to directly search for the brand. As a result of that shift, we’ve seen an increase in branded searches within Amazon as well as Walmart of more than 86 percent.

This is a marked shift away from the height of the pandemic, where customers were looking more broadly at skincare and beauty concerns, rather than leading with brand search.

Amazon makes a bit more sense if you consider it as a supplement to your existing DTC presence.

This shopping behaviour should also be considered within the early stages of brand [marketing]. Take influencer marketing, for instance. Beauty brands have to play in that space — but, even then, we should be thinking about who is the perfect fit for driving customers where we need them to go? If we know consumers are bypassing Google and heading to Amazon — how does that impact influencer marketing? What kind of ads are going to resonate with that customer?

Embrace evolving partnership models across marketplaces

AC: There are significant innovations happening within partnership models being offered across marketplaces. The biggest platforms out there have done significant research to understand why they struggle to onboard premium brands onto their platforms. The result of that research has been offerings like Amazon first-party versus Amazon third-party relationships, which give brands more flexibility over how product is sold. There are also now developed subcategories for pretty much every area of beauty to entice brands to play in these spaces.

One area of growth is leveraging marketplaces to engage a cold audience from another retail channel. If people are adding beauty products to cart and not checking out, we can look at customer data to understand why that might be happening and work to actively re-engage them as they spend time across marketplaces. When brands segment out their demographics, we see less resistance to marketplaces — it becomes a much more controlled experience. And marketplaces today are increasingly asking how to put their brands first because so much education is being done off-channel.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

This is a sponsored feature paid for by Front Row as part of a BoF partnership.