E.l.f. Beauty's $1 billion acquisition of Rhode, announced in 2025, is paying off. The Hailey Bieber-founded skin care line generated Sephora North America's largest brand launch on record, selling three products per second during opening weekend.

The brand also added 60,000 new customers in a single week around its Coachella activation, and a 700,000-person waitlist formed for its most recent summer collection.

WWD's 2026 Most Powerful Brands in Beauty list, published this month, ranks Rhode atop the disruption narrative. The list — built on Circana, CreatorIQ, Nectar Social, Charm.io, YipitData and Navigo data alongside WWD's editorial reporting — captures 50 brands whose sales velocity, social reach and category expansion define beauty's center of gravity in 2026.

What did the $1 billion Rhode bet buy E.l.f.?

Skeptics questioned the price when E.l.f. closed the deal. Year One metrics suggest the math worked. Rhode now ranks as the number-one skin care brand by Earned Media Value both in the U.S. and globally. The brand's Mecca Australia debut drew more than 1 million store visits over its launch weekend.

How is TikTok Shop rewriting the beauty map?

Social commerce now rivals traditional prestige retail in scale. Medicube led TikTok Shop beauty sales with more than $95 million in the first half of 2026, per Charm.io. Tarte Cosmetics pulled in $54 million on the same platform.

Dossier, the dupe-turned-original-fragrance brand, did roughly $13 million annually on TikTok Shop — up 67 percent year-over-year. Private equity firm American Pacific Group took a stake in Dossier in April.

Amazon tells a similar story of indie ascent. Fourteen of Amazon's top-100 beauty bestsellers during Q1 2026 were Medicube products, according to Navigo. Nutrafol's Women's Hair Loss Supplement held the number-one beauty product slot on Amazon in H1 2026.

Which legacy houses kept their grip?

L'Oréal Paris stayed the world's biggest beauty brand at over 7 billion euros in sales, with U.S. EMV up 65 percent year-over-year. Clarins Groupe crossed $2.26 billion in 2025 (+5.3 percent), with U.S. growth at 10 percent and mainland China at 7 percent.

Vaseline, now 156 years old, logged 29 consecutive quarters of growth and surpassed 1 billion euros annually.

Chanel, Dior, Estée Lauder and YSL Beauty all retained category-leading positions. YSL took the number-one U.S. men's fragrance slot with its Austin Butler-fronted Myslf franchise. Dior Sauvage held the top men's fragrance franchise title for the U.S.

Estée Lauder's reimagined Double Wear Stay-in-Place Foundation became the top makeup launch of 2026 year-to-date, per Circana, with hero Advanced Night Repair up 16 percent versus a 10 percent overall serum market gain.

What are the new fragrance launches worth tracking?

Prada Paradigme, fronted by Tom Holland, surpassed $57 million in sales year-to-date. It ranked as the top men's fragrance stock keeping unit in the U.S. from January through May, per Circana data provided by Prada.

The brand also named Bella Hadid its first global beauty ambassador in March, generating $17 million in EMV. Touch Blush, meanwhile, cracked the top-five blush charts in April and drove the highest brick-and-mortar momentum at Sephora of any launch in Prada's beauty history.

Parfums de Marly posted a 42 percent sales gain to $780 million in 2025. E-commerce alone rose 74 percent year-over-year to 8 percent of total sales. Parent company Artessence has retained Jefferies and Goldman Sachs as advisers for a potential transaction.

Rare Beauty — Soft Pinch now spanning blush, contour and lip — took the biggest Ulta launch in retailer history in January. The brand added fragrance in 2025, winning Fragrance of the Year and Fragrance Innovation of the Year at the 2026 Fragrance Foundation Awards.

Where does clinical and longevity positioning fit?

Tatcha debuted its Longevity Serum last August and added Longevity Memory Cream, both built around an Okinawa cellescence complex. Industry sources estimate the Longevity franchise will clear $20 million by year-end 2026.

InnBeauty Project invested more than $100,000 in clinical testing for its March-launched Pro C Serum — a 15 percent blend of three vitamin C forms. The brand retains up to 52 percent of retail customers on its hero Extreme Cream trio.

Byoma, acquired by Bansk Group just three years after launch, wrapped 2025 with more than $300 million in retail sales. The brand has logged 130,000-plus skin measurements across 110-plus clinical trials since 2022.

La Roche-Posay, nearing the $1 billion sales mark with Circana-reported growth of 13 percent, entered Walmart in April and already ranks top-10 by online sales there. Its Toleriane Double Repair Face Moisturizer alone generates more than $200,000 monthly, per Market Defense.

What to watch next?

Sol de Janeiro's men's fragrance Cheiroso 7 and 10 — launched exclusively at Sephora in June under new CEO Jordan Saxemard — and Medicube's offline expansion via Target and Ulta will set the second-half tone. The next data point: Ulta's Q4 read on La Roche-Posay after its April Walmart entry, which will signal whether the derm-leaning mass tier can sustain its 13 percent growth into 2027.