E-commerce and diversity-forward campaigns lead the Glossy Beauty and Fashion Awards – Glossy

Expertly-constructed experiential activations — featuring a wide array of speakers, events and expert educators — made their way to the forefront. Also making the cut were brands, agencies and technology companies that filled gaps around distribution and creative content via perfectly tailored partnerships.

Across tactics, two core themes ran strong across all of this year’s winning efforts: inclusivity and diversity. This year’s Fashion and Beauty Awards winners strove to demolish restrictive thinking and biased standards, creating products and marketing campaigns that included every incarnation of the fashion and beauty customer.

Glossy Fashion Awards

Best Influencer Partnership
ShopStyle Collective and Ray-Ban 

Ray-Ban tapped into ShopStyle Collective’s roster of influencers to fuel six months’ worth of digital and in-person activations, driving brand awareness among new audiences ahead of last year’s holiday season. ShopStyle Collective brought the influencers; Ray-Ban brought style. 

Best Brand Collaboration
Fashionphile and Neiman Marcus

Fashionphile, an online leader in handbags and accessories, took its wares to Neiman Marcus. Its luxury pre-owned bags graced the retailer’s storefronts, with options for online purchase and pick-up. The brand showed how to strategically dovetail brick-and-mortar and strong e-commerce strategies. 

Best Multi-Platform Campaign
Stella Rising and Gudrun Sjödén

The 44-year-old Swedish fashion brand Gudrun Sjödén, a Nordic favorite with a flair for colorful designs and natural fabrics, chose Stella Rising to aid its U.S. launch. The agency started with basic awareness campaigns and wound up executing all of Gudrun Sjödén’s digital efforts. In the right hands, Nordic style seamlessly translates to U.S. audiences. 

Best Non-Digital Marketing Campaign
The Knot, Hunter McGrady and CurvyCon

To embrace and promote size inclusivity, multi-platform wedding resource The Knot chose model and body-positivity advocate Hunter McGrady — herself a newlywed — to adorn the cover of the company’s Fall 2019 fashion issue. Shortly afterward, The Knot (along with bridal fashion company Kleinfeld) partnered with CurvyCon to host the first size-inclusive wedding fashion show in the history of New York Fashion Week. 

Best Product, Category or Sub-Brand Launch Campaign
Stuart Weitzman and Aglit Italy

Designer footwear brand Stuart Weitzman introduced its first global sneaker, Daryl. Daryl found a friend in accessories brand Aglit Italy, which stepped in to collaborate on a new customization program allowing customers to mix-and-match sneakers and unique lace options. Laces were due an upgrade to accessory status. 

Best Use of Video
AVX Digital and Tip Top

Canadian men’s retailer Tip Top turned to social-media pioneer AVX Digital to spearhead a video campaign promoting the brand’s new prom line for high-school-aged males and their parents. The companies leveraged programmatic networks and connected TV platforms, including Roku and Apple TV. In addition, AVX Digital turned Tip Top on to TikTok, becoming one of the first advertisers on the video app. For brands targeting younger customers, TikTok is a “tip top” solution. 

Best E-Commerce Experience
Azazie

E-commerce pioneer Azazie modernized the way people shop for bridalwear online, allowing women to try on dresses in their own homes, sourcing from the largest sample program in the industry. Add to that the brand’s virtual showroom, which allows brides to get further organized and collaborate. Today, even the bridal party needs a remote option. 

Best Physical Retail Launch
Frame at The Grove

Best known for its “dressed-up casual” styles, clothing brand Frame launched a retail store at The Grove, Los Angeles’ iconic 2,850-square-foot shopping destination. In addition to modular fitting rooms featuring three-way mirrors, the store offers personalized shopping experiences, including one-on-one appointments with denim specialists. 

Best Sustainability Initiative
Boyish

Women’s jeans brand Boyish uses a circular process that uses only sustainable fabric and produces zero waste. The brand even pioneered a new way of making plant-based denim; it’s the only carbon-neutral denim brand in the U.S. 

Best Breakthrough Startup
Laws of Motion

Women’s fashion brand Laws of Motion first launched in May 2019, and now offers 144 micro-sizes, within sizes 00–24. Laws of Motion’s goal: to cater to all women, as they distribute their weight differently across and within sizes. In fashion, there’s no such thing as one size fits all, or even “every 24 is the same size 24.”

Glossy Beauty Awards

Best Influencer Partnership
Biossance and Jonathan Van Ness

Sustainable skin-care brand Biossance partnered with beauty influencer Jonathan Van Ness for a wide-ranging partnership. Van Ness now creates exclusive digital content for the brand, acting as a media-facing spokesperson and leading the brand’s educational initiative, The Clean Academy. In an influencer partnership, nothing beats expertise matched with continuity. 

Best Brand Collaboration
Dove Hair and Kelly Rowland

Dove Hair partnered with Kelly Rowland to create “Crown,” a new song and accompanying music video that were inspired by real stories of peer bullying and tied to Rowland’s own personal hair experiences. Nothing beats bullies like a good power anthem. 

Best Social Media Campaign
e.l.f. Cosmetics | #eyeslipsface Challenge

With the goal of generating record-setting virality and user participation on TikTok, the cosmetics brand created the original song “eyes. lips. face.” to express the brand’s message of inclusivity. The resulting production was the first ad ever to earn TikTok’s No. 1 trend spot. There’s no better home for shareable self-expression than TikTok.

Best Multi-Platform Campaign
Dove and The Crown Coalition | The Crown Act

Dove embarked on an advocacy mission to create a more equitable experience for Black women and girls through the advancement of anti-hair-discrimination legislation. Known as the Crown Act, its goal was to create a respectful and open world for natural hair. 

Best Product, Category or Sub-Brand Launch Campaign
Lycored and Madwell | Pops of Positivity

To resonate with consumers and promote its new ingestible skin-care product, wellness brand Lycored partnered with Madwell to challenge traditional notions of beauty. The brand promoted Pops of Positivity through its new wellness app, Littleglow, and brought Pops to life at live events by creating letter-writing stations encouraging visitors to write themselves a love note. The Lycored team then mailed the letter to the writer when they least expected it. Affirmation is always a welcome message. 

Best Use of Video
Glow Recipe | “How the Watermelon Mask Is Made”

Skin-care brand Glow Recipe launched the “How The Watermelon Mask is Made” video campaign across Refinery29’s, Sephora’s and its own YouTube channels. The campaign, which shared the behind-the-scenes factory process of creating Glow Recipe’s watermelon-infused mask, generated more than 2 million views. 

Best Use of Customization
eSalon

Hair-color brand eSalon enabled customers to create a fully customized color from scratch and have it shipped to their door. The brand’s personal colorists worked to create products based on photos, hair history and color goals. Here’s to personalization via collaboration. 

Best E-Commerce Experience
Beekman 1802

In October 2019, the skin-care brand Beekman 1802 launched its new e-commerce site, improving load times, shopability and SEO. Since the launch, Beekman 1802’s conversion rates have shot up, and more customers are coming back. 

Best Omnichannel Experience
Sephora | Sephoria

Sephora brought its experiential activation — Sephoria: House of Beauty — back to Los Angeles in 2019 for a second year. Featuring 16 interactive rooms, more than 60 beauty experiences and 15 masterclass speakers, Sephoria brought more than 6,000 attendees together to revel in their love of beauty. For the brick-and-mortar giant, experiential activations play to Sephora’s inherent strengths. 

Best Service-Based Concept
Dermalogica

Skin-care brand Dermalogica launched Face Mapping, a free digital skin-analysis tool that combines live chat with skin therapists with artificial intelligence. The goal was to help customers identify prominent skin conditions and receive personalized product recommendations. When it comes to skin health, and all the analysis that goes with it, AI and real-life expertise go-hand-in-hand.

Best Physical Retail Launch
Holition and Faces

Faces enlisted London-based creative innovation studio Holition to create a next-gen space that provides recommendations based on users’ individual needs. The store includes a personalized tool to help customers discover which fragrance is right for them and an interactive display that uses personality diagnostics to help users find the right gift for a specific occasion.

Best Event Series/Activation
Benefit Cosmetics | Benefit Brow Search

The cosmetic brand’s new beauty competition selected 20 contestants to compete for the title of Best in Brows. The campaign expanded brand awareness and recognition among beauty consumers, and reinvested in the beauty community by giving influencers and aspiring makeup artists a place to showcase their talents. In the beauty arena, there’s always new talent to discover. 

Best Subscription/Membership Program
Ipsy

Ipsy unveiled the Discover Yourself campaign in September 2019, featuring a diverse group of creators that challenged standard perceptions of beauty. Ipsy’s brand ambassadors shared their personal journeys of self discovery through a series of videos on Ipsy’s digital properties, which was followed by an omnichannel marketing campaign. Beauty comes in many shapes and sizes, not to mention many channels. 

Best Sustainability Initiative
The Body Shop

The Body Shop launched its first Community Trade Recycled Plastic program, in partnership with Plastics For Change, in Bengaluru, India in May of 2019. The goal: to highlight the human side of the plastic crisis. Consumers are quicker to embrace a cause when they connect a face to the issue. 

Best Community Hub
Superdrug and TokyWoky

Superdrug, the top retailer for beauty, health and skin-care in the U.K. and Ireland, launched community platform TokyWoky in July 2019, offering live chat and makeup advice channels, thematic discussion groups, gamification lectures, and product-test and review channels. 

Best Breakthrough Startup
Kinship

Skin-care brand Kinship made waves with mindful packaging that included ocean-waste plastic and post-consumer recycled materials, all the while developing sophisticated and clean, natural products priced under $25. Its content strategy leaned heavily on Gen-Z collaboration and co-creation. For startups, it’s never a bad idea to look to younger generations for future-forward moves.