A couple years ago, Beautycon was just a small meetup in LA made up of a few dozen beauty bloggers. Fast forward to today, and we have what we know as the gigantic, business to consumer beauty summit that has garnered over 100,000 fans worldwide, in major cities including LA, New York City, Dubai, and Dallas. The New York City Edition occurred over a two day weekend earlier this month.
Taking place at the Javits Center, the space looked as if it had imploded into a galaxy of sparkly glitter, amongst a sea of hundreds of beauty pop ups. Favorites included heavy hitters like Revlon and Maybelline, to smaller indie brands like Pixi and Verb. Attendees lined up for hours in hopes of scoring freebies and/or a chance to snap a selfie with their favorite beauty influencers.
Target Beauty hosted different zodiac themed vanity rooms furnished with beauty products. Shea Moisture treated fans a braid bar and free full-sized goodies. Dove invited fans to engage in an interactive experience which consisted of a 360 boomerang cam and a chance to score full sized products. Maybelline showed their love for NYC with a subway inspired beauty lounge which featured product samples and a meet & greet with beauty influencer Aaliyah Jay. One of our fave indie brands Verb actually had one of the best booths, a super cool, industrial style bathroom filled with product to snag!
Over on the other side of the convention center I saw some pretty cool live demonstrations from hair god Yusuf and up and comers who are also killing the game like Trenton Stylez!
Over in the amphitheater, there was also a series of panel discussions throughout the day, including a conversation on “The Evolution of Shade” with Shade Room CEO Angie Nwandu and Charlamagne Tha God. And perhaps the high (and low for many) of the day was headliner Cardi B, more on that below.
As previously mentioned, the main event for Sunday was a panel discussion “Money Moves”, featuring Cardi and her sister Hennessy Carolina, moderated by Beautycon CEO Moj Mahdara. It was sold as conversation that was SUPPOSED to be about financial literacy, making money moves and pay equality. The discussion did happen and Cardi did make some points (from what I could bear to listen to) but honestly majority of the discussion was just messy. Aside from the fact that she was over 3 1/2 hours late, the nature of the conversation was a little much. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Cardi, but when you have an event that’s marketed as all ages and there’s literally children in the audience… just do better. I’ll keep it at that.
Overall, Beautycon was a cool experience. Something you should definitely check out at least once if you’re into keeping ontop of what new in beauty. Would I go back? Possibly! But only if they upgrade the programming and tier system, to make things even more exclusive and inclusive. We’ll keep our eyes peeled for next year!
