My 17-year-old niece would put it perfectly. Right now, beauty at Boots is ‘leaving no crumbs’. Which, translated for the rest of us, means it’s doing very, very well indeed.
That baby blue colour-changing Prada lip balm, created by the famously exacting runway makeup artist Lynsey Alexander and spotted in the Sabrina Carpenter video that went viral last summer? It’s at Boots. The Korean collagen masks all over TikTok? Boots has them. And the peel-off Sacheu lip stain loved by Billie Eilish? Boots got there first. If this all sounds too Gen Z for words, it’s not; I have and love all of the above, along with the many niche and luxury beauty buys I can now buy on the high street, thanks to Boots. Ouai, Maison Margiela Replica, Self Glow by self-tan maverick James Read… gang’s all here, or (when it comes to a host of K-beauty brands we haven’t even heard of yet, along with multiple other names I’m sworn to secrecy over) soon will be.
It wasn’t always this way. ‘A few years ago, I felt a bit embarrassed to say I was head of trends at Boots,’ recalls Global Cultural Insight & Trend Lead, Grace Vernon. ‘I remember thinking, do I really want to be known as the person doing trends at Boots when we’re not very… trendy?’
‘That’s funny,’ interjects Made by Mitchell founder Mitchell Halliday (more in a moment), ‘because I’m not joking but when we went into Boots, within two weeks we had every single American retailer on the table wanting to stock us. So I think you’re pretty cool.’
To be fair, Vernon (described by one of her colleagues in the luxury division as ‘the coolest person at Boots’) knows the tide has turned, as does every editor at the launch of Boots’ annual Beauty Trends Report, held this year at handsome Hampshire bolthole Heckfield Place. We’re here to find out how consumers really shop on the high street (it’s all about the high-low mix, says Boots), along with what No7 will do next and what’s booming in the global beauty market.
How does Boots spot the next big thing?
How does Boots know? It’s a combination of ‘art and science’, says Vernon, explaining that while a buyer’s intuition still matters (as do the field trips to emerging markets such as Korea, to unearth brands such as Anua, Haruharu Wonder, SKIN 1004, Mixsoon and Round Lab) it’s predictive analytics, social-media-scaping tools and AI-enhanced data sources that now help Vernon and her team spot the next big thing.
‘The market is moving faster than ever so we need to think differently about where we find the brands of tomorrow and how quickly we can get them into the store,’ continues Vernon. To help with the latter, she’s now part of an accelerator programme that fast-tracks emerging brands onto a select number of shop floors then rolls them out nationwide. ‘It’s about taking the normal Boots process and speeding it up, so we can be more agile,’ she explains. ‘We’re a heritage business but now we have start-up energy, too.’
LA-based Chinese-American lip brand Sacheu is one example, offers Vernon. ‘When we were approached by one of our distributors with this great new brand, we hadn’t seen it coming through on any of our platforms. I remember saying, has anyone heard of this brand, and no one had. So we ran the data and it was like, woah, this is booming in the US right now; let’s do it. That’s what I’m finding so exciting at the minute. The business is so up for newness and we’re like, cool… let’s try it.’
Biodance is another fledgling brand – this time from South Korea – that went ‘from nothing to incredible’ almost overnight but couldn’t have done it without Boots’ help. ‘We wanted to partner with them before there were quite ready for the UK market, so we guided them through the regulation process, and as soon as they were registered we launched them. Before, we would have waited for them to get here. But with the help of AI, we can pitch to brands before they’re even thinking about coming to the UK.’ It paid off; one Biodance collagen mask was sold one every three seconds at launch and had store managers (who’d never seen the brand before) clamouring for new stock.
Counter culture: from URL to IRL
And yes, store managers are a key part of the story, because beauty IRL (not just URL) is a huge part of the Boots mission. ‘Content creators and digitally native brands might be creating a lot of the trends we see coming through but that doesn’t mean people only want to shop via online channels,’ says Vernon. ‘We know that 88% of TikTok users discover new beauty brands on that platform but we also know that 94% of beauty consumers prefer shopping in store for makeup, where they can try the textures and see colour up close. So all of those worlds come together in an omnichannel experience, with physical retail being a huge positive we want to play into.’
‘We’ll take a digitally native brand like Made By Mitchell,’ she continues, ‘and we’re not only going to bring that brand in-store, we’ll give it a pop-up in our premium beauty hall in Battersea; we’ll let the founder decide how they want their space to look and we’ll create physical moments across the UK that everyone’s going to photograph.’
Leaning into luxury
High-end is also booming at Boots, points out Alice Rafferty, Director of Luxury Beauty and Cosmetics, explaining that the Prada effect has opened up the door for other brands keen to find a new home at Boots. ‘We want to be the unrivalled home of beauty, and that means having everything from £50 to £500 pounds’.
So alongside that baby blue bullet you’ll also find Guerlain’s iconic bronzers and – as Director of Fragrance Chelsey Saunders promises – an epic fragrance moment this summer. Until then, here are some of the things I’m adding to my Boots basket…
The best viral buys and luxury beauty brands to shop now at Boots
Universal Lip Balm
Was Prada Beauty the new-to-Boots brand that made all other luxury brands sit up and take notice? Whatever, this pistachio-tinted lip balm (along with the colour-adaptive baby blue iteration that appeared in a Sabrina Carpenter video) is probably the most luxurious buy you can pick up in a lunch break. Fun fact: it took Prada ten rounds of formulation and three years to get the demi-matte finish just so and it was worth it.
Stay-N Lip Liner
Boots didn’t sleep on this viral peel-off lip liner, which I wear as an all-over stain. Apply as a shiny wet-look coat of colour and let it dry to a film for 20 minutes before removing in a wholly satisfying gesture. What you’re left with is a sheer, matte wash that gives lips a very modern-looking definition and stays on for hours. I love it.
Hair Gloss
I rarely wash my hair without running a gloss or rinse through it afterwards for shine and manageability. I have a whole wardrobe of them, but this, from stylist Jen Atkin’s original cool-girl haircare brand, is the fanciest, the best-smelling and one of the glossiest. I’d call it a treat but it has fast become a must-have. A must-have treat?
Super Shower Power Body Cleanser
In the Venn diagram of posh body washes, this sits in the overlap between plush and practical. It feels special but also substantial, doing something very real for my mood (which it instantly lifts) and for my skin (which it never leaves feeling tight or stripped). Promises a good day every day and it looks lovely in the bathroom.
(Re)setting Powder SPF30
Supergoop’s mission is to make excellent sun protection available to all, so it seems fitting that the brand has landed at Boots. There are so many brilliant formulations in the collection, each with its own USP, but this is the one I carry in my bag every summer. It’s a lightweight powder that can be applied over makeup for an additional layer of protection and has a pretty semi-mattte finish that also looks flattering on bare skin.
By The Fireplace Eau De Toilette
Another boon for Boots, this is one of those if-you-know-you-know brands you’re unlikely to smell on many other people around you, featuring evocative perfumes that (once you’ve found the right one) have a direct track to your emotional core. This one, with its grilled chestnut, smokey ember and golden vanilla notes, does that for me, but you have fun finding your own.
Kombucha Antioxidant Facial Treatment Essence
After roundly ignoring skincare essences for years (really, who needs an extra step?) I have done an about-turn and now find they make a great deal of difference to luminosity as well as helping further products absorb better. This one gains extra points for including fermented black tea (a process which makes ingredients more potent and penetrative). As for Fresh itself, it might seem like an indulgent brand but this stuff gets results… or it probably wouldn’t be at Boots.
Hydro Cera-Nol Real Deep Mask x 4
With one sold every three minutes when it first landed, this was another viral win for Boots. It’s also another satisfying product to apply and peel off; this time a super-hydrating version of the Korean collagen masks that are worn overnight or for several hours during the day. If the latter, keep your diary free of Zoom calls: you’ll look like like a glossy plastic mannequin or an LED mask come to life for the duration. When the hydrating goodness has been absorbed the mask goes clear then can be removed and thrown away, leaving you with the dewy, high-shine skin of Gen Z dreams.
Infusion d’Amande Eau de Parfum
Oh Les Infusions, with your pick-and-mix of sugared almond bottles and your sheer, delicious scents.
I once sat next to a colleague who kept a flacon of this on her desk, and every time she misted it on I was enveloped in a blissful cloud of clean, powdery almond. Even looking at the range on the Boots website is a dreamy experience, so I recommend tapping ‘Prada Infusions’ into the search box and seeing what comes up. So pretty.
Duet Blowdry Hair Dryer Brush
I’m not sure what took GHD so long to get itself into Boots but I’m very pleased it has. The driers are reliably brilliant (when people ask ‘is the Dyson worth it’ I usually send them here first); the Platinum straighteners have a perfectly curved back that allows for easy flicking and bending, and this chunky wet-to-dry blow dry brush is my constant companion for ultra-fast grooming. It took me a while to get the knack but I can now take my hair from wet to smoothly and bouncily blow-dried in anything from 20 to 40 minutes, depending on how quickly I need to get out of the door.
Relief Sun Rice + Probiotics
When a top derm raved about this Korean sunscreen during an interview last summer I really didn’t expect to find it at Boots but there it was. Korean sunscreens, she explained, are notable for their excellent UVA protection as well as being a joy to use… and this is hydrating, calming, beautifully light and wears impeccably under makeup. It’s packed with proven skincare ingredients including niacinamide, glycerin, probiotics and vitamin C, and will confound anyone that swears they can’t stand the feel of sun protection on their skin or that it breaks them out. No excuses now.
Healing Oil
I rely on so many products from this innovative brand to tame my frizz-prone and colour-treated hair it’s hard to choose just one, so I’ve chosen the thing I use most often. It’s a nourishing oil that’s so lightweight it’s much harder to over-apply than many other oils and it heals damage as well as hiding the signs of it. For instant polish and meaningful conditioning there’s little better. Use on wet or dry hair, to treat, to style and to add shine.
Aveda Scalp Solutions Overnight Renewal Serum
Aveda is the brand that turned me onto the concept of anti-ageing the scalp for better, stronger hair growth and to fend off potential thinning in midlife. I now treat mine as I would the skin on my face by exfoliating and hydrating the skin to keep it elastic, which improves its ability to keep hairs anchored. This soothing leave-on serum is an easy win as it doesn’t have to be washed out afterwards. Brava, Boots, for getting this one in the bag.
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