Article published: 12/12/25
Beauty Beyond the Vanity
Now a serum can sit next to your kombucha and still feel premium.
Beauty has pushed past the bathroom shelf and into wellness, nutrition, lifestyle, and daily ritual.
Where most people see “skincare,” we see an ecosystem: retail behaviors evolving in real time, wellness merging with aesthetics, and ingestibles taking a front-row seat in routines once defined by topicals alone.
Below, we unpack how culture is changing beauty rituals and where the category is heading next.
Redrawing Its Borders
Your beauty routine lives in your medicine cabinet, your gym bag, and increasingly… your grocery cart.
Beauty is now shaped by a consumer who expects products to work everywhere they already are. Serums next to smoothies. Supplements next to sunscreen. Beauty is absorbing the logic of food-as-medicine and the accessibility of everyday retail. The categories are blending.
Trend 1: Ingestibles Move From Fringe to Front Row
Ingestibles have officially crossed into the mainstream. Younger consumers in particular see beauty and wellness as a single pursuit, and retailers are codifying that shift. Ulta’s recent additions (ARMRA, Nutrafol, Ritual) show that beauty-from-within is now a commercial pillar.
And ingestibles aren’t just collagen anymore. Consumers are increasingly open to the idea that beauty isn’t just skin-deep. Brands are building full “beauty stacks” targeting gut health, hormonal balance, stress, immunity, scalp health, sleep, and skin clarity:
Biotin-forward gummy that treats glow like a daily habit.
ELM Biosciences (dual-pathway skin system)
A biotech-driven ingestible duo promising to tackle skin health from the inside out.
Looks like a nighttime cream, filled with ingestibles “the missing step to your skincare routine”
Agent Nateur (hair + scalp systems)
Luxury ingestibles rebranded as a full hair-and-scalp longevity routine.
A hydration serum in capsule form, positioned as the newest step in your skincare stack.
These products are marketed and purchased not as supplements but as beauty.
The tension: proof. Ingredient literacy is rising, but cultural hype still drives discovery. Brands that win will bridge both.
Trend 2: Beauty Is Entering the Grocery Store
If you’re thinking about what you put in your body, why not what goes on it?
Beauty is becoming a grocery-aisle category: in 2025, 37% of U.S. consumers purchased skincare in supermarkets or mass-merchandising retailers.
Natural grocery retailers like Whole Foods, Sprouts, and Erewhon grew more than 6% in 2024, generating $32B in sales, and have become holistic wellness destinations.
For beauty brands, this creates:
- Higher frequency of exposure
- A value-aligned shopper
- New storytelling angles (food-as-medicine → skin-as-health)
Retail-channel convergence is here: Food × Beauty × Wellness are collapsing into the same aisle and the same consumer mindset. So where you shop for dinner might also be where you discover your next moisturizer.
The question for brands: Can prestige maintain its positioning in a mass environment, or does “premium wellness” simply replace “premium beauty”?
Trend 3: The Cultural Integration of Beauty
Aesop has evolved into a cultural shorthand for taste, basically the centerpiece of modern bathroom décor.
The next stage of beauty’s growth is less about adding SKUs and more about expanding context.
Beauty is becoming:
- A design object (quiet-luxury packaging as home decor)
- A restorative ritual (less transformation, more recovery)
- A healthcare-adjacent space (clinicals, derm-backing, ingestibles)
Consumer beauty routines are a lifestyle curated with the same intentionality as fitness, nutrition, or home design.
This is beauty behaving like culture, not cosmetics.
Consumers want their beauty products to feel like an aesthetic extension of their home. That means packaging, textures, and the way the product looks on the shelf all matter. People want things that are practical but also beautiful.
Julie Counts
Where Beauty Goes Next
Beauty is dissolving old boundaries and making it easier for the consumer to live and purchase holistically. Grocery aisles are becoming discovery channels. Wellness is becoming the organizing principle of routines everywhere.
By 2026, beauty will feel less like a category and more like an ecosystem, one that lives across culture, health, nutrition, and daily ritual.
Find deeper insights, the full interview with Julie Counts & more in our 2025 Beauty Report.
