This month, temperatures from Delhi to Athens to New York hit deadly highs: the latest grim reminder that the world is galloping towards climate catastrophe. Meanwhile, fashion’s efforts to curb its environmental impact, a major contributor to global emissions, are moving at a glacial pace.

The reasons for this are myriad, but a big one is money. A flood of funding is needed to cut the industry’s planet-warming emissions in line with global goals to stave off the worst effects of global warming. But conflicting interests and structural challenges have kept investment at a trickle.

While big brands have made bold commitments to slash their carbon output, the bulk of that pollution takes place in factories the brands don’t actually own.

Meanwhile, most manufacturers aren’t exactly in a position to be making big investments with long payback times, largely because their customers (the brands) have rigged the system so that they can access production as cheaply and flexibly as possible while taking on almost no financial risk themselves.

It’s a model in which brands take most of the profits, while suppliers are subjected to relentless pricing pressure and unpredictable, trend-dependent cash flows that make for crummy credit ratings. Fragmented supply chains populated by small and medium-sized businesses already struggle with access to affordable capital, let alone the financing for long-term climate projects with dubious payback potential.

The upshot: an impasse where the biggest opportunities to drive decarbonisation have the least access to funds.

That’s why it was interesting last week when two of the industry’s most prominent sustainability initiatives and four of its biggest brands announced they had a plan to try and help solve the problem.

The Future Supplier Initiative aims to bring down the cost of financing decarbonisation by having brands help underwrite the debt their suppliers take on. It was formed with the support of climate-focused trade groups The Fashion Pact and Apparel Impact Institute and its initial roll out in Bangladesh will include participation from H&M Group, Bestseller, Gap Inc. and Mango.

“It’s the first time the brands are coming together to risk share,” said Christopher Chiam, head of consumer products for the institutional banking group at Singaporean bank DBS, which has committed to provide loans as part of the initiative. “[They] are not in the business of lending money to suppliers.”

How will it work?

The scheme’s announcement was big on ambition and short on detail — one fellow industry watcher described trying to figure out how it actually works as like “trying to crack the Da Vinci code” — but the idea is to create a collective financing mechanism that helps suppliers access low-interest loans for decarbonisation projects.

The brands’ role is to help derisk the debt, allowing banks like DBS to offer more “competitive” rates to small and medium-sized suppliers that aren’t normally considered particularly credit-worthy. This will work in two ways:

1. The brands can put up the cash to fully collateralise the debt, which means if a supplier goes bankrupt the brands are on the hook to pay back the loan.
2. The brands can extend a guarantee representing a proportion of the loan as a kind of insurance to offset the risk of any default.

The collective aspect is also important because it’s rare for one brand to be a supplier’s only customer. Getting a bigger group on board splits the risk and addresses the free-rider problem; brands are reluctant to go out on a limb to help finance projects that will benefit their competitors, especially when they’ll only be able to take credit for the sliver of emissions reductions that relates to the volumes they source. Working together reduces this friction and individual risks.

For instance, if all four brands are present in a factory where a $2 million project to install solar panels has been identified, each would be asked if they’d like to underwrite $500,000.

The goal is to get more brands and banks involved and to expand the programme into more countries, including Vietnam, India, China, Italy and Türkiye.

Is it going to get money moving?

The hope is that this financial innovation will help unlock much more climate action. But there are big challenges and a lot of unanswered questions.

The initiative’s aim is to give smaller players (who might otherwise face astronomical interest rates or not even get access to debt in the first place) loans at significant discounts.

But exactly what rates suppliers will be offered — a critical issue — is fuzzy, set to vary from project to project. Likewise the manufacturers that stand to benefit from the scheme are yet to be determined. Consultancy Guidehouse has been contracted to identify the top 10 suppliers with big-ticket decarbonisation opportunities and links to participating brands’ supply chains in Bangladesh. Whether those will also be manufacturers who struggle to gain access to finance on their own remains to be seen.

Even how much money the brands are going to stump up is an open question. Each project is expected to cost in the realm of $100,000 to $1 million per brand, according to H&M’s head of sustainability, Leyla Ertur. “It’s going to be up to brands’ own budgets how much money they want to risk or de-risk… there is no minimum or maximum limit, but everyone knows, it will not be $50,000,” she said.

There’s also the question of what’s missing: any kind of mechanism to help smooth out the business volatility that makes taking on debt so risky for many suppliers who also question why they should be left to bear the costs of a problem the most profitable players in the industry have effectively outsourced.

Clear sourcing commitments that offer longer-term business certainty would likely be more effective at juicing investment in decarbonisation than access to cheaper finance, acknowledged Guidehouse’s manager of environmental stewardship Betsy Blaisdell. But the loans still give brands financial exposure to a factory’s fortunes they never had before.

“The whole apparel supply chain has been set up to… [allow brands] to lean out as much as possible from a risk standpoint, and this programme says you have to lean right back in,” said Blaisdell. “[The brands will have] skin in the game in the factory for a chunk of time and it will be crucial for them to meet their climate goals, so to walk away is a real hard walk away.”

Welcome back to Haul of Fame, the weekly beauty roundup of new products, new ideas and another summer smoothie launch.

Included in today’s issue: Elizabeth Arden, Em Beauty, Fig. 1, Garnier, Glossier, Goop, Moon Juice, Nature Spell, Peter Thomas Roth, Prequel, Rituel de Fille, Topicals, Victoria Beckham Beauty, Viktor + Rolf, YSE Beauty and a Missouri rapper’s skincare coup.

But first: Six months ago, creative-director-turned-newsletter-author Jess Graves started a group chat with a bunch of strangers. It was the Love List Chat, an outgrowth of her Substack newsletter, The Love List. One of the platform’s most popular shopping gurus, Graves is the rare Substack-er that gets a front-row seat to the Khaite fashion show. Retail guru Mickey Drexler recently hired her to curate a room full of cool girls for his line Alex Mills.

But the Love List Chat — lovingly called LLC by some fans — often boasts more chatter about face creams than clothes. Scroll through the space, and you’ll see hundreds of questions about the effectiveness of Augustinus Bader, the pain threshold of Botox and the colour payoff of Huda Beauty. “The chat function really pushed us to include more beauty content,” said Graves, who tested the waters with a review of Westman Atelier’s $300 vitamin c serum in March, after dozens of readers asked about it. “But most of the time, I don’t even have to say anything. The readers just talk to each other, and it lets us see what people’s needs are, and what they want to shop for, and what kinds of products they haven’t found yet,” she said.

In that way, Substack’s chat function echoes the 2010 comments section for Into the Gloss, which founder Emily Weiss culled into a starter pack of Glossier’s most-wanted products. Man Repeller and Julie Schott’s beauty reviews for XO Jane (yes, that Julie Schott) had a similar galvanising effect on the internet’s beauty community.

“People do miss the OG vibe of Into the Gloss, and other spaces where they could trade beauty tips and almost ‘spy’ on each others’ beauty routines,” said Graves. “Substack Chat is really giving it back to them.”

In April, the Love List announced a permanent beauty vertical. Today, Graves estimates that 40 percent of her paid partnerships, which most recently include Inn Beauty Project, are from beauty alone. “We have another one coming up with Ami Colé that I’m so excited about,” she said. “We have readers of all different skin tones, and they’ll talk about their favourite foundations in the chat. I can’t tell you how many people with melanated skin have said, ‘Yes, Ami Colé. This is the one.’ People are confirming the quality is there.”

Helping to steer chats into cash is Sophie Krakoff, a former Shiseido executive (and yes, daughter of fashion designer Reed) who now helms the consulting firm and digital agency Friends of the House. Since January, Krakoff has advised Graves and several other Substack moguls on their revenue streams.

“Sophie said to me, ‘Quite frankly, beauty brands have bigger budgets than fashion labels. Add a beauty vertical.’ We did. And now I have a focus group anytime a reader, or even a friend, has questions about a beauty product. It’s become a real driving force.”

Skincare

YSE Beauty, the brand by Molly Sims, introduced a line of eye patches on June 13. Called The Overachievers, the patches claim to brighten the under-eye area with peptides and allantoin.

Meanwhile at the Roots Picnic in Philly, the St. Louis rapper Smino wore Topicals’ bright pink Faded patches on stage. It looked like a subversion of a football player’s under-eye paint, but one focused on Black-owned beauty, rest and renewal instead. It’s fun to see how under-eye patches continue to turn into status accessories.

On June 13, Fig.1 introduced its Mineral Sunscreen SPF 50, which promises no white streaks and a rush of hyaluronic acid. We haven’t had a pond scum moment in a while, but this formula by Dr. Courtney Rubin does have “enzymes derived from sea algae to help accelerate the repair of UV damage.”

Elizabeth Arden has a new skincare launch, and its PR email put it more brilliantly — and more strangely — than I ever could: “June 17th will be the 169th day of 2024. It’s also the 30th anniversary of OJ Simpson’s infamous slow-speed chase, Take Your Cat to Work Day and the launch of the newest skincare innovation from Elizabeth Arden’s award-winning cosmeceutical collection — Prevage.”

Peter Thomas Roth has cast Kyle Richards and her daughter, 28-year-old Alexia Umansky, as models. Starting June 20, they’re fronting the brand’s Water Drench Hyaluronic Cloud Cream. It’s actually a very sweet campaign, and echoes Lisa Rinna and Amelia Gray’s recent Marc Jacobs ads.

Prequel’s Multi-Quench Plumping Hydration Serum hit shelves on June 20. It has dual weight polyglutamic acid, glycerin, osmolytes and ectoin, which is also the amino acid in Grown Alchemist’s new stuff.

Oak Essentials’ new Renew Face Polish debuted on June 20. The brand expanded to Nordstrom at the beginning of this month, so you can buy the complexion scrub alongside your Skims bras.

Makeup

Goop introduced its new “clean” mascara on June 17. The formula is reportedly great, but there’s something unintentionally lol about launching mascara during a heat wave, when it’s likely to melt off. Of course, if you own the kind of ocean-adjacent real estate portfolio that the average Goop customer claims to, this won’t be your problem.

KVD Beauty launched Tattoo Liner 2.0 on June 16. It promises smoother lines and zero smudging. I haven’t tried it yet, but I recently switched my allegiance from Glossier’s liquid liner, which is excellent, to Em Cosmetics’ version, which is beyond. The “flick” has never been easier, at least for me.

Nu Skin’s Colour Peptide Pout gloss unrolled on June 17. It’s a super-shiny formula, and its before-and-after pictures actually do show a visibly plumper lip, which is… a little shocking? Will test and report back.

Charlotte Tilbury keeps adding to her empire. On June 20, she unveiled her first foundation stick, called Unreal Skin Sheer Glow Tint, along with a lip and cheek set called Beautiful Skin Island Glow.

Glossier’s limited-edition Ultralip shades, Apricot and Deco, made their retail debut on June 18. The brand still hasn’t responded to social media claims that the product’s caps keep falling off, but it did release a very cute claw clip and comb for post-pool hair maintenance.

Rituel de Fille’s Creature of Light, an illuminating serum, launched exclusively at Credo on June 18.. It’s like a moisturiser-highlighter hybrid, and comes in four shades of shimmer.

Victoria Beckham Beauty’s new FeatherFix Brow Gel hit shelves on June 18. It comes in six shades (including clear) and promises a gentle colour deposit, plus 24-hour hold. The brand says Victoria “personally tested [it] during frenetic fashion week fittings,” and while some marketing is BS, I can confirm that Beckham is indeed her own guinea pig. Several years ago, I witnessed her applying a prototype eyeliner backstage in London. The new product is $34, which is expensive, and probably the point.

Hair Care

More evidence that the next skincare is “scalp care”: On June 21, Nature Spell dropped two new formulas — an oily scalp tonic and a flaky, dry scalp one — loaded with botanicals we’d normally see in a facial product, including witch hazel, tiger grass and hyaluronic acid.

Garnier has added Dimitris Giannetos to its stable of celebrity hairstylists. He’s best known for working with Megan Fox, and for his cheekbones, which could probably cut the hair he’s working on.

Fragrance

Viktor + Rolf’s Flowerbomb Tiger Lily exploded on June 17. It has top notes of coconut milk and mango, which makes it sound like the most blissful breakfast bowl ever.

AND FINALLY

More smoothie news! Moon Juice has made a lush Matcha Colada with Mister Preda called The Bratty Shake. It has “naked mini dew and rhodiola for hydration, energy and mood” and retails for $16.50 ($3 per sale goes to the Los Angeles LGBT Center). If you can get the smoothie, amazing. If you can’t and would like to directly donate $16.50 to the Center, click here.

Another week, another makeup line has put itself up for sale.

On Tuesday, news broke that Mario Dedivanovic’s Makeup by Mario had hired the investment bank J.P.Morgan to explore its exit options. That line, which was founded in 2020, joins a crowded group of colour cosmetics brands hoping to find buyers this year.

There’s Kosas (North Point is running that sale process), Merit (which hired Goldman Sachs as an advisor), Jane Iredale (Jefferies has been tapped), Glossier (Morgan Stanley is its financial advisor) and Rare Beauty (which has both Goldman Sachs and Raymond James). And that’s not even including lines like Westman Atelier, which is on a 2025 timeline, or skincare brands that play significantly in colour like Summer Fridays, which is also working with Raymond James.

I’ve been saying since the start of the year that buyers are considering these assets in the same pool. Even if you started a sale process in late 2023, it doesn’t appear that any one label has benefitted from a first mover’s advantage over the rest. Interest rates are still high, limiting the amount of capital available for deals, and buyers are reportedly spooked by high valuations many of these lines are seeking.

Makeup by Mario is a prime example of how even a brand that’s struck a chord with consumers might have an uphill battle with buyers. It has built a strong business in just four years, leading with its artistry-first credo and product innovation, relying much less on its celebrity clientele, i.e. Kim Kardashian. After securing a $40 million minority funding round in Jan. 2023, revenue crossed the $100 million mark the same year. Forecasted retail sales are said to reach $300 million in 2024.

But betting on the brand means betting on Dedivanovic the person. While he might be a safer bet than a celebrity founder for any buyer, it’s unclear if a strategic versus a private equity firm will take that risk first. Betting on personalities is never a guarantee; just look at Bobbi Brown Cosmetics after founder Bobbi Brown left.

My sources tell me that although Kosas, which is slated to cross $150 million in retail sales or roughly $75 million in revenue this year, is one of the most scalable lines, it will likely end up with a private equity shop. There were rumours that The Estée Lauder Companies had made a bid, but we all know that ELC is strapped for cash. L Catterton, which owns a stake of Merit (more on that in a bit) via its Growth Fund, was said to be a first-round contender.

Merit is expected to cross the $100 million annual revenue mark this year. It has a strong wholesale to e-commerce split and high average order value of $100-plus on its DTC site, but some say the business has a way to go with brand-building. Furthermore, it only started focussing on its team, hiring an outside beauty verteran, Philippe Pinatel as CEO from MAC Cosmetics, in February.

Over to Glossier, the Millennial label has made major inroads on product (bringing back its original Balm Dotcom formula, and launching lip liners and its new French Riviera-inspired summer capsule collection just this month) and expanding distribution via Space NK and Mecca. But profitability is said to be in the single digits. Also, with its strong and differentiated experiential footprint, there are only few players to consider: LVMH and Manzanita Capital can operate stores well.

Rare, the other sizeable contender, is more profitable, with adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation over 35 percent of sales. It’s the sector’s most attractive — and expensive — asset, but it continues to take its time with a potential exit. Of the lot, it has the most runway to run a traditional sale process.

With the exception of Selena Gomez’s line, none of these makeup brands automatically signal that they will end up at a big beauty conglomerate, the preferable outcome – versus ending up in a private equity owner’s hands – for most brands.

With its plethora of SKUs and reliance on trend, the colour cosmetics category is complicated, and strategics and financial sponsors can afford to be picky.

Here are my top picks from our insight and analysis on beauty and wellness this week:

1. Beauty Brands Tread Lightly With ‘Tradwives’

A new crop of influencers that post homemade recipes and homemaking advice in combination with beauty tips are gaining ground online. But engaging with their large audiences requires nimbly sidestepping some uncomfortable themes.

2. Inside Sephora’s Niche Fragrance Strategy

By betting early on indie brands, the retailer has been able to tap into trends and capitalise on a fast-growing market.

3. Why Milani Cosmetics Is Playing Sports

The cosmetics label is rolling out a campaign starring WNBA star Sabrina Ionescu, gymnast Jordan Chiles, volleyball player Chiaka Ogbogu and weightlifter Mattie Rogers, becoming the latest beauty label to bet on the cultural power and reach of athletes.

Sign up to The Business of Beauty newsletter, your complimentary, must-read source for the day’s most important beauty and wellness news and analysis.

PARIS — LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault has long defended the notion that, within the luxury group’s portfolio of 75-plus names, there are no bad brands — only badly managed ones. Some, however, have proven particularly tricky to steer despite hefty budgets and A-list teams. There’s Marc Jacobs — which shuttered dozens of stores and discontinued its diffusion line before launching the popular “Heaven” range — and Givenchy, the French couture house which has been hamstrung by a revolving door of designer changes, leaving it presently without a designer at all.

Then there’s Kenzo, the Parisian designer label with Japanese roots, which staged its sixth show by creative director Nigo Wednesday night in Paris. The outing aimed to celebrate the brand’s unique France-meets-Japan, pop culture-meets-heritage identity: models wore camouflage workwear ensembles with a bamboo-leaf motif and jackets embroidered with Eiffel Towers rendered in a Japonesque style. Pharrell Williams sat front-row, flanked by fellow pop phenomena French Montana and Seventeen’s Vernon, who sent fans outside the venue into a frenzy.

Founded by Kenzo Takada in 1970, Kenzo was originally known for its colourful prints and extravagant post-hippie silhouettes before evolving into a highly successful wardrobe brand, selling well-cut staples of everyday dress from the 1980s into the 2000s.

In the 2010s, Carol Lim and Humberto Leon (founders of concept store Opening Ceremony) were brought on as its creative directors, giving the business a second wind with a successful line of tiger-emblazoned merch that positioned the brand ahead of the curve in luxury’s fusion streetwear.

But customers eventually moved on and three years under designer Felipe Oliveira Baptista failed to turn things around: his pricey runway collections were a tough sell at a brand that had become indistinguishable from logo tees and sweatshirts, which were sold through increasingly dodgy wholesalers as the brand struggled to wean itself from easy grey-market revenue.

Then, in 2021, came Nigo. As a Japanese designer with long-established, international ‘cred’ among the streetwear set (he founded early streetwear staple A Bathing Ape and co-founded Billionaire Boys Club with Pharrell Williams), it was hoped that Nigo could simultaneously reaffirm the brand’s Japanese links while reinvigorating the streetwear lines that powered its present-day business.

“The theme since I started has been ‘how to make Kenzo more Kenzo’; figuring out what Kenzo without Kenzo Takada should be,” Nigo told BoF at the brand’s Rue Vivienne headquarters Tuesday, speaking through his interpreter and longtime collaborator Toby Feltwell.

That meant reestablishing Kenzo as a wardrobe brand with a Japanese eye on everyday dress, rather than as a creative runway concept. Nigo says he’s more often inspired by the designs from Kenzo’s commercial boom in the 1980s, when he first encountered it in Japan, than by the more “shocking” aesthetic of Takada’s early years.

Nigo also sought to reconnect the brand with “genuine Japaneseness” — through aesthetic signatures such as bamboo-leaf prints or the vivid origami-paper pastels seen on the runway at Wednesday’s show and “a Japanese way of editing influences from the outside.” The best example of that process would likely be the notes of Americana that run through Nigo’s collections, like varsity jackets, utility vests and double denim ensembles, which the designer says are informed by the “American casual” movement in Japan, which provided his “original frame of reference in fashion.”

In January 2022, Nigo made a strong debut, showing an explosion of exuberant prints, cute hats, Western shirts and wool peacoats that successfully animated Kenzo’s “East meets West” identity. Pharrell Williams, Tyler the Creator, Kanye West and his then-girlfriend Julia Fox, Shygirl and Pusha T all showed up for the show held in the 19th-century shopping gallery where Kenzo Takada had opened his original store. Nigo seemed to be on track, marrying the brand’s heritage to his own enduring — if not particularly current — pop-culture clout.

But the brand has since struggled to build on the promise of Nigo’s debut. Products arrived in stores just in time for a steep slowdown in luxury demand, which was particularly pronounced for more accessible luxury brands and logo-fied, streetwear-inflected concepts.

Meanwhile, recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic has hardly been a straight line, with a 2022 resurgence of the virus leading to strict lockdowns and travel restrictions in the key Asian markets that drive two-thirds of Kenzo’s business.

For Nigo, that also made travelling between Kenzo in Paris, where he spends one week per month, and his homebase in Japan even more of a strain. “It was a difficult way of working, difficult to adapt to the structure here,” he admitted. “It’s not been easy joining in the middle of Covid.”

The designer also found himself short on allies within LVMH, where Kenzo’s diminutive size and less luxurious positioning have long made it an outlier and something of an afterthought for top managers. Nigo’s candidacy was initially championed by the transformational Louis Vuitton men’s designer Virgil Abloh, who unexpectedly died just months after Nigo’s arrival at the group. In January 2023, Louis Vuitton’s former CEO Michael Burke, another supporter with whom Nigo had worked on a hit menswear capsule, also took a hiatus from the group. Meanwhile, LVMH has appointed advisors to explore a potential sale of stablemate Marc Jacobs, Reuters reported last month, in a further sign of increased scrutiny on the group’s smaller and less luxurious units.

At Kenzo, sales kept falling as demand for the brand’s core streetwear offer continued to fade, and new CEO Sylvain Blanc clawed back Kenzo’s exposure to low-quality wholesale and grey market resellers in a bid to reduce markdowns and reinforce the brand’s prestige.

“The customer has moved on from tiger sweatshirts, but with Nigo they haven’t managed to recruit a new customer yet,” Alice Feillard, Galeries Lafayette’s menswear buying director said. “They’re in a tricky position. It’s not taking off. But when you change directions too often it damages the brand.”

In the lead-up to Nigo’s Wednesday show, however, LVMH’s top brass backed Kenzo’s current direction. Nearly three years into Nigo’s tenure (a standard length for first-time designer contracts), executives have become increasingly favourable to continuing the partnership, sources say.

That could be, in part, because the group has more urgent issues to tackle: It’s been over six months since Givenchy has been designer-less, and tricky contract negotiations with creative directors are said to be underway at houses bigger and more profitable than Kenzo. With so little bandwidth for steering another designer relaunch, why not give Nigo more time? (Representatives for LVMH declined to comment on plans for Nigo’s contract).

There are also green shoots for the brand’s business. Retail sources say the business remains at a nadir in European department stores, but uptake for Nigo’s vision has been stronger in Asia, and sales in the brand’s retail stores are now “growing strongly,” according to company sources.

Nigo’s close association with Pharrell Williams, Louis Vuitton’s new menswear designer whose spectacular events have remained a highlight as the group struggles to navigate a sluggish market for luxury goods, surely also raised hopes that the project could find stronger footing. Influential stylist (and Off-White creative director) Ib Kamara agreed to style Kenzo’s latest show and consult on the collection, another move that could boost the brand.

“There’s a harmony being created between Nigo and the brand, and which we could build on,” LVMH Fashion Group’s general manager Pierre-Emmanuel Angeloglou said Wednesday following Kenzo’s show. Nigo is tapping into “what’s special and unique about Kenzo. The work to do now is about making that clearer, and about taking that identity and communicating it to customers.”

As Nigo joined models for their encore Wednesday, the designer struck a rather glum figure trudging through the gold sand the brand had poured around Palais-Royal’s central fountain — even as friend and collaborator Williams rose for a lengthy standing ovation. What was wrong?

The designer had a fever, having come down with something during his flight from Japan Monday, his team assured. “It’s been difficult, but I’m rather enjoying it at the moment,” Nigo said. Asked whether the show might be his last, he responded: “That’s not what I’m thinking.”

Disclosure: LVMH is part of a group of investors who, together, hold a minority interest in The Business of Fashion. All investors have signed shareholder’s documentation guaranteeing BoF’s complete editorial independence.