The “it” bag among a subset of shoppers-in-the-know is adorned with tacky logos, contains a garish combination of two primary colors, and has a kind of glitchy zipper. Despite all this, it is sometimes unavailable due to high demand. You can often find it marked up by 300 percent on third-party marketplace sites. 

Gucci? Coach? Nope, it’s the Frakta bag, courtesy of Swedish designer … Ikea. I just bought six of them direct from the retailer, at $4.99 each. 

The Frakta bags are made out of the same blue plasticky material as Ikea’s large open shopping bags, except they’re shaped like duffel bags and have a zipper and extra straps that can function as a backpack. I know about them from a Facebook page called Dorm Chatter, a 35,000-follower-strong bastion of mostly moms who debate the best fans, sheets, and, yes, storage bags, for moving their students to college. 

In the early ’90s, I attended a state university with standard cinderblock dorm rooms. I decorated it with posters, milk crates, and a brown, beat-up, rented mini-fridge. So I was not fully prepared for what these amateur dorm experts were telling me my kid, who will be a freshman this fall attending college six hours away, “needed” for his room. 

First and foremost, the Frakta bags. Group members posted tons of pictures showing how much stuff could fit in one and their superior stackability in the back of SUVs. Plus, they can have a second life as travel bags or as laundry bags. I was convinced. 

But then it started to get more esoteric. There’s the Woozoo, a globular, oscillating fan that also moves up and down for superior cooling, which regularly sells out at Costco. There’s the Lucid mattress topper (oh, shit, he needs a mattress topper?), for which it had been determined that the 3-inch thickness was ideal. There are multiple pool noodle hacks — a shockingly popular DIY tool — including one in which you slice the noodle in half lengthwise and put it on the bottom edge of a lofted bed so taller kids don’t hit their heads on the frame.

There were questions about temporary wallpaper and bedskirts and even the feasibility of portable in-room washing machines. I quickly panicked, overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff. I had to shut my laptop and calm myself down before I mindlessly spent hundreds of dollars on over-the-fridge storage shelves and dozens of Command hooks. 

The dorm shopping economy is a robust one, with plenty of places to buy things that you see on Instagram or TikTok or Facebook groups. In addition to Amazon, the traditional dorm retailers like Target and Bed Bath & Beyond offer dorm registries, complete with discounts. Then there are specialty retailers like OCM, DormCo, and Dormify that offer dorm-specific storage options and decor. They even sell full packages that allow students and families to buy everything all at once, like OCM’s 27-piece, $250 package that includes everything from sheets and towels to a laundry bag and surge protector.

Dormify, which has the trendiest products of the bunch and even offers design services, just landed a Series B round of private equity funding this spring and counts American Eagle Outfitters as a strategic investor. Social media has changed the game on dorm shopping, but also, students look to express their personalities via decor and parents see one last opportunity to take care of their children at the end of their childhoods. 

Aaryn Peterson, a parent in Portland, Oregon, estimates she spent close to $3,000 buying stuff for her freshman daughter Grace last year. She posted a picture on the Dorm Chatter page of her in a UHaul on the last day of school surrounded by boxes, with an impassioned plea that read, in part: “Don’t be me. Learn from my mistakes.” She got almost 500 responses in return, including some sweary and defensive DMs. She says she was just trying to provide some hindsight wisdom for all of us newbies. 

“[Grace] didn’t want 7,000 throw pillows. She didn’t want them, but I kept buying cute ones,” says Peterson. “And it was because I just kept thinking, ‘She needs this to be comfortable. She needs this to feel all the things.’” 

I empathize with the pull of that inclination as I debate whether or not my kid needs a special bed caddy for his electronics.

According to a July report from the consulting firm Deloitte, which publishes annual college shopping surveys, $26.7 billion will be spent on back-to-college items, an average of about $1,459 per student. Computers and gadgets make up a big chunk of this, but dorm appliances/furniture will account for $6.8 billion of the total. 

“It’s really expensive to outfit a complete dorm. It can be thousands without really even going over the top,” says Fran Bardio, the founder of the Dorm Chatter page. The group’s first iteration was for discussing college admissions, a process she found stressful and confusing. Other parents did, too, but the conversation soon transitioned to dorms, so she started Dorm Chatter separately three years ago when her first child was heading off to school. (She says she gets about 60 comments a day on the page and currently there is a queue of 1,000 people requesting page access.)

Typical dorm rooms are small and sparsely furnished with a desk, a closet, a small chest of drawers, and a bed that can usually be lofted to different heights. The shopping checklist my son’s school sent out was a few dozen bullet points of mostly obvious items: towels, hangers, chargers. A comprehensive document floating around on Dorm Chatter is four pages long and includes helpful items I didn’t even think about like water bottles, and things I’m not sure are really necessary, like husband pillows. Once you start getting into decor like fairy lights and ornamental headboards (more on this extremely hot item shortly), you can see how the bill can climb. 

This is, of course, on top of ever-increasing college costs that leave many students with debilitating debt. Tuition for the 2020-2021 school year averaged $41,411 at private colleges, and $11,171 for in-state students and $26,809 for out-of-state students at state schools, according to US News data. Room and board can add thousands more to the total. 

The McMansioning that is sometimes happening in dorms can have the unfortunate effect of mirroring the financial inequality in society. “You can definitely tell where the equity gaps are based on what someone’s room looks like. We see some people investing quite a bit of money on their residential spaces and then some who can’t afford to do that at all,” says Melantha Ardrey, the director of student life at the College of Charleston. 

In a Reddit post a few years ago, a user said she grew up homeless for part of her childhood but was attending “one of the best colleges in the country.” This reality was highlighted before she even got to school. “The most basic dorm supplies at stores [are] incredibly out of my budget. My family and I live paycheck to paycheck so we can’t afford to spend anything else on bedsheets, a comforter, mattress topper, a pillow, toiletries, lamp, etc. It adds up so quickly!” she wrote.

About five years ago, highly designed and coordinated dorm rooms went viral. It’s a trend that has been popular for a while, particularly at Southern schools, per the retailers I spoke to. The concept, with the help of social media, has since trickled into the mainstream. It’s prompted the market to come up with all sorts of specialty items for dorm spaces as well as an often pricey outlook about what a dorm can be.  

“Five years ago, it was treated more like, ‘This is like sleepaway camp for the semester.’ And now [students are] treated like adults. This is your first home away from home,” says DormCo founder Jeff Gawronski. When he was a college student in the early 2000s, Gawronski created a bedpost shelf called the Mini Mantle, which allowed students to keep their stuff close by on a lofted bed. He sold it on campus door-to-door, then eventually launched his own company. He founded the current iteration of DormCo in 2010, and it sells everything you can imagine for a dorm room on a rather utilitarian website. 

But Amazon, dollar stores, Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, and other big-box stores are often the first stop for students of all budget levels. These places are easy and affordable. Target and Bed Bath & Beyond even offer dorm registries that come with discounts of 15 and 20 percent, respectively. Often families will register and just buy the whole order themselves at the discounted rate. While these stores have historically offered basics for dorms and a limited variety of sheets and comforters in the dorm twin XL size, they are ramping up and meeting the desire for more personalized rooms.

Bed Bath & Beyond, which has been struggling financially for years, is in the midst of attempting to turn around its business. Part of the strategy of the new CEO, a former Target executive, is to launch several private label brands that will likely appeal to dorm shoppers. Simply Essential is a less expensive brand for the shopper who wants basic sheets and towels. There is a storage brand called Squared Away, featuring chests of drawers and drying racks that are more stylish than the usual plain plastic fare. But the most blatant attempt to win over Gen Z is the eclectic and colorful Anthropologie-esque brand Wild Sage. (You could be forgiven if you confuse it with Target’s Wild Fable clothing brand or its Opalhouse home decor brand.)

The goal is “to create a customer that we don’t have today,” says Neil Lick, the senior vice president of owned brands at Bed Bath & Beyond. Lick says that internal research showed that Gen Z doesn’t identify their decorating tastes as “modern” or “traditional,” but rather that they want their space to reflect their identities and personalities. They also are cooking more at a younger age, so the retailer is selling smaller personal blenders and other dorm-safe appliances. He says it is also marketing to that group multifunctional, smaller-scale furniture pieces, like a $150 bar cart that can be a “side table or a study area.” (The top of my ugly rental fridge was my bar cart.) 

So ostensibly this is all meant to appeal to students, but it’s also obvious that parents and caregivers — often the ones paying for everything — are emotionally invested in their kids’ space. 

Many students don’t necessarily care if they have a hanging tapestry that matches their throw pillows. My son told me he wanted gray sheets but was not at all interested in discussing specific shades of gray with me. I told him about a mom on Dorm Chatter who wrote that her son never used a shower caddy because he just squirted some shampoo on his head and body wash in his hand and walked down the hall to the showers; he could relate. 

But there are enough people who do want to personalize and organize their rooms, and investors have taken notice. Dormify is the ascendant retailer in this space, and it looks like the Gen Z child of Instagram, Pinterest, and Glossier. Pictures of beautiful dorm tableaus on the site feature fluffy pillows and neon signs announcing “GRL PWR.” 

Dormify offers room “stylists”; has IRL pop-ups in several cities like Boston, Chicago, and New York City where you can make a styling appointment; and has virtual tools that allow shoppers to see what all the pieces will look like in a room. “That combination of an e-commerce platform with a comprehensive solution and the engagement factor was something that we didn’t see out there,” says Lisa Myers, the co-founder and managing partner of Clerisy, the firm that invested an undisclosed amount in Dormify in March.

Plus, just like the bridal market, there is a never-ending supply of new customers. “You get 2 million new college students who you reload the gun with every year. Not to mention the 18 million across the country that are in college over the four years,” she says. She hints that the brand aims to stay with these young adults as they finish college and enter starter apartments.

Amanda Zuckerman founded Dormify with her mom in 2011 while she was still in college, growing a blog about college life and dorm decor into a business. As a student, she was into fashion and couldn’t find stylish, fun bedding in the twin XL size. She partnered with American Eagle in 2015, when the retailer was interested in making home goods for the Aerie brand. It invested $3.45 million in the company in 2018. Dormify has grown from there thanks to a commitment to engaging with its customer cohort on social media and active recruitment of influencers to work with the brand. 

Zuckerman says the typical Dormify customer is finding inspiration from the social media accounts of older influencers. “From an aesthetic standpoint, there has definitely been a shift. Twelve-year-olds think they’re 25, and 18-year-olds want to be 30. Everyone just wants to be super sophisticated and much older than they actually are,” Zuckerman says. So they’re aspiring to the homes of influencers like Danielle Bernstein/We Wore What and Emma Chamberlain. Dormify attempts to translate the aesthetic into attainable bedrooms. They also partnered on a collection with Katie Feeney, a TikToker with over 6 million followers who is headed to Penn State as a freshman this fall. 

Headboards ($99 to $199) — fluffy, tufted, textured — have become bestsellers for Dormify. They’re never discounted. The ones the site sells attach to the wall via velcro strips or Command hooks, and many feature charging stations. Zuckerman says customers often buy headboards before they even decide on a color scheme. White faux-fur pillows are perennial bestsellers. Must-have lighting includes both a desk and floor lamp, but now decorative strings and LED strips are de rigueur as well. Removable wallpaper that looks like faux bricks has also been flying off the shelves. And gray everything, much like in the larger home decor world, refuses to go away. 

It’s easy to mock all this blatant consumerism for a temporary room that someone may live in for less than a year. And I have certainly mocked myself for getting influenced. But there are some strong psychological and developmental phenomena at play here that these retailers have been brilliant at exploiting or supporting, depending how cynical you want to be about it. 

First, there’s a bit of helicopter parenting, something I have enough self-awareness to realize. I’m far from alone here, though. Of the dorm move-in and decorating process, “We definitely have had more parental involvement over the years. This is sort of a generational change that we’ve seen,” says Ardrey of the College of Charleston. 

So many moms on Dorm Chatter have noted that all this frenetic gathering on behalf of our children feels like a second nesting phase, akin to the one many parents go through when they are pregnant. To me, making sure my son has new shower flip-flops and a convenient laundry bag feels like a final, momentous caretaking task. 

“It’s this weird emotional time. You’re so proud of them, but yet you want to hold onto the life that you knew and it’s never going to be the same. Your kid’s not going to be with you for the daily interactions. So it takes a very emotional toll on parents,” says Bardio, the Dorm Chatter founder.  

For the young adults going out on their own for the first time, they want to visually show off their identities via their living spaces. It’s often the first test of their newfound independence. Bed Bath & Beyond’s consumer research led them to conclude that for this generation “the importance of your space as a nurturing escape from the world or a place you’re proud of combined with the ability to show off and share your space with the world has put the importance of dorm decor more on the radar than ever before.” 

Mychelle Oliver, a student at Kent State, was excited to decorate her dorm. She used graduation money to shop at Target, Home Goods, Dormify, and the home decor store Kirkland’s, where she worked and had an employee discount. She scrolled through Pinterest and watched dorm tours on YouTube for ideas, and credits her mom with having an interior designer’s sensibility. 

“It made me feel very independent, and I have always loved decorating. It was like serotonin when I was able to decorate something,” Oliver wrote in an email. “The level of decor compared to my friends’ and peers at school was to the extreme lol… They were always amazed how I made a small, empty room into something I called a second home.”

But yes, it all adds up to a ton of shopping.

“We’re making ourselves sick trying to make sure that our kids have this Disney World experience every single day that they’re at college. It’s not necessary,” says Peterson, the mom from Portland who wrote the Facebook post arguing against buying too much. “They just want to experience college.” 

But I still bought the Woozoo fan. 

If you were to take a poll of which bird people most associate with New York City, it would surely be the pigeon. These ubiquitous “flying rats” (as my dad calls them) are incessantly cooing and pooping and head-bobbing at the edges of residents’ peripheral vision on street corners all over the city. I have spent the two decades I’ve lived here vaguely hoping they wouldn’t accidentally brush up against me. 

But pigeons, which are actually quite beautiful if you stop and look at them, are far from the only avian residents. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t know until recently that there are more than 200 species that live here or pass through. I know it now, though, because I’ve become a bird person. 

Birding experienced a surge in interest in the US during the pandemic, as millions of people stuck in their homes began to notice the wildlife right outside their windows. Bird feeder sales shot up. Walking around outside was one of the few activities that felt truly safe. And if you could do that, you could watch birds, because they’re everywhere. 

In the middle of all the past year’s awfulness and uncertainty, my oldest son was applying to college. The city shut down the day before he was supposed to take his SAT exam. We had planned to go visit some colleges that spring but weren’t able to see any as the coronavirus surged. He didn’t want to write his admission essays after spending all day on Zoom isolated from his peers. We all fought about it a lot. Then at night, I’d lie awake worrying about him. The future had never looked more bleak or uncertain, and the thought of sending my child out into it was inconceivable to me.

Early in the pandemic, we spent time in upstate New York. Anxiety and an inability to focus made it difficult to read and write, the two activities I could normally count on to help keep me busy and avoid the minute-to-minute news monstrosities on Twitter. So I would sit on the porch and watch the birds. Soon, they stopped all looking like the same tiny brown blobs and I could pick out different kinds, even if I didn’t know their names. There were the curious gray ones that sounded like creepy babies. The ones that had geometric red and yellow and blue markings and pecked at the lawn. The ones with a red mark on their wings that scolded me whenever I walked by.

One day, I noticed a flash of red high up in the tree canopy, so I grabbed an old pair of binoculars from a drawer to try to get a better look at it. When it came into view, through the shaky, blurry, way-too-magnified lenses, it sat still for long enough so I could get a peek at its attributes and do a Google search. I felt a little thrill when I identified this exotic creature as a Scarlet Tanager. This became my “spark bird,” the first one that got me interested in really knowing more about birds. (I’m not original here — this brilliant red bird with black wings is a spark for a lot of people, according to a recent New York Times article about the uptick in newbie birders.) I wanted to see more. 

I told my husband that for Christmas, I wanted decent binoculars. He spoke to my good friend Karen, who I met when our now college-bound sons were in kindergarten, to ask what kind of binoculars were the best. She and her family are deeply involved in the NYC birding community, and she had already gifted me a copy of The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America. (I once made fun of birders, before I was indoctrinated, when she told me some people call binoculars “bins.”)

On Christmas morning, I opened up my Nikon Monarch 5 binoculars, size 8×42 ($280) and my life hasn’t been the same since. Technically, I didn’t exactly buy these for myself, but I’ve been married to my husband for over 20 years and at this point, our finances are inextricably linked.

Unlike the crappy old pair I first used to study the tanager, these are magnified enough to see without straining the eyes or looking shaky, with a large enough field of vision to quickly pick out a flitty bird in a tree. Binocular prices can go beyond $2,000, so in the world of birding bins, these are fairly entry-level. I’ve used them almost every day since I got them. 

Once I was able to see and identify birds more easily, I started a life list, a way of keeping track of all the birds you’ve identified. Karen describes birding as “like Pokémon Go, but for nature.” As a person who dragged two tween boys around the city hunting for rare Pokémon at the height of that craze, it’s a completely accurate analogy. 

I uploaded the Audubon app and Cornell’s Merlin ID app, bought a couple more books, followed a bunch of accounts on Bird Twitter, and joined the American Birding Association’s “What’s this Bird?” Facebook group. Every time I went to Central Park, even in the winter, I was able to add something new to my list, which made me want to go back out and find even more birds. And yes, pigeons (Rock Pigeon, per Merlin) made the list. 

I was one of the bundled-up people standing around the reservoir in Central Park to witness the other once-in-a-century phenomena that occurred this year, a rare NYC visit from a Snowy Owl. When I learned about all the sub-tropical species that come through New York City in the spring, I bought The Warbler Guide and threw myself into trying to learn how to differentiate them all. This spring, I’ve been out birding almost every single morning, either for a few minutes alone or on guided walks. Scarlet Tanagers have been abundant. And the best corrective to the tech neck I’ve acquired from a year of doomscrolling on my phone has been warbler neck, the act of hyperextending in order to spot flashes of yellow in the tops of the trees. Mostly, though, watching birds flit and hop is meditative and relaxing, two feelings I’ve been chasing since March 2020. 

Since having kids, I really haven’t had many hobbies. The last one, blogging, became a job when I mounted a career change and switched from nursing to journalism. I haven’t really learned anything brand new that requires concentration and memorization in a long time. I recently had a big milestone birthday, and I’ve noticed that my memory for names and places is fuzzy. It’s scaring me, so it feels good to force my brain to work, to learn, to remember things again, like what a White-throated Sparrow sounds like and how to tell the differences among various woodpeckers. And I’m hoping it will keep me busy and distract me after I send my kid to college this fall. I’m going to look up the species that are abundant near his campus. 

Recently, two weeks before my son’s high school graduation, I was wandering around in Central Park alone, trying out my warbler ID skills. I came upon a “birdy” tree, ringed by photographers and binocular-wielding people all staring intently into its branches. I noticed a woman and her husband stroll up, part of this flock. It was a friend with whom I had been pretty close while our kids were in preschool together, back when I had a whole different set of worries about my child. When our kids went to different schools for kindergarten, we drifted apart, victims of a situational friendship and busy family and work lives. But during our half-hour catch-up on the park path, it was like no time had passed. We talked about birds we’d seen that day, our kids’ plans for the future, and our anxiety about sending our fledglings out into the world. Then, we made a date to go birding. 

Cheryl Wischhover is a former nurse practitioner and current journalist who writes about the beauty industry, wellness, and retail. There are 99 birds on her life list. 

In a dying mall in New York’s Hudson Valley, all the department store anchors are gone; Dick’s Sporting Goods is the biggest store now. The carpeted interior of the mall is eerily quiet, with empty, barred storefronts everywhere. 

But at noon on December 4, Bath & Body Works was abuzz. After all, it was Candle Day, the scented sale bacchanalia it holds the first week of every December. I was hoping to pick up a “Fresh Balsam” candle, which smells like 10,000 Christmas trees were crammed into a glass jar. The store was teeming with about a dozen masked people, many carrying the cardboard crates the store provides for lugging around bulky candles. I can tell you from experience that you can smell the fragrances through a mask just fine. A salesperson told me seven people were lined up to get in when the store opened at 6 am. 

On Candle Day, Bath & Body Works’ famous $24.50 three-wicks, in scents like “Twisted Peppermint” and “Champagne Toast,” are offered for about 60 percent off — $9.95 this year. Candle Day lasted a full weekend in stores this year, but just one day online. Historically, fans load up their online carts the night before and click “buy” as soon as the sale hits. True diehards show up in person to try to maximize their hauls. 

Many retailers have struggled in 2020, but Bath & Body Works is thriving. By the end of October, it racked up $3.7 billion in sales, which is up almost 20 percent compared to its sales by the same time last year. It did that despite its over 1,600 stores being closed for weeks, followed by occupancy limits imposed on shoppers for Covid safety reasons. For context, beauty retailer Ulta saw its sales decrease by 20 percent for the first nine months of this year compared to the same period in 2019. 

Since its founding in 1990, Bath & Body Works has been a perennial favorite. But this year in particular, the devotion is striking. It has a foundation of built-up good will and loyalty coupled with a lack of any similar close competitors. It also has a savvy discounting strategy, like Candle Day, that constantly drives customers to stores looking for deals. And crucially in 2020, it has the sheer luck of selling the very things that people are craving during this pandemic: cozy candles, hand soap, and sanitizer. 

“They have items that are very broad penetration, which means many, many people are willing to buy that,” says Barbara Kahn, a professor of marketing at Wharton. “It’s in a sweet spot. And then when you add on top of it a good price in a time when people are obviously facing some big economic difficulties, that’s a very good strategy.”

A pandemic purchasing powerhouse

Marcy Alvarez, who lives in El Paso, Texas, was one of the pre-dawn line waiters, showing up outside her local store by 4:15 for the 5 am opening. The store was only allowing 25 people in at a time, and she wanted to be in the first group. She’s been to three consecutive annual Candle Days and knows the ropes. The 28-year-old is a bartender who’s been out of work since March because of the pandemic and the mother to a young son. Her husband is a frontline health care worker. Alvarez says she doesn’t leave the house much lately, but she made an exception for Candle Day on December 4. 

“If I can have one thing this year, let me have Candle Day, you know?” Alvarez said on a call. 

During this pandemic, people are buying things that make themselves feel more comfortable in their homes, that provide a means for self-care, or that they hope will keep the virus at bay. Candles obviously fit the bill here, at a price point that’s considerably cheaper than a new couch. And why wash your hands 20 times a day with utilitarian hand soap from Target or use dodgy no-name sanitizer, when you can scrub with “Frosted Moscow Mule” and carry “Sunshine & Lemons” sanitizer gel on an anthropomorphic avocado keychain? (Plus, if you can smell a candle, that’s one more sign you may not have Covid.)

Bath & Body Works’ CEO Andrew Meslow said on an earnings call in November, “There has been, understandably, a lot of attention paid to the tremendous growth that we’re seeing in our soap and sanitizer business and we certainly count ourselves fortunate to be a major player in that category…” Soap sales made up about a quarter of the brand’s sales this year, up from the mid-teens. 

Candles have generally been selling great all over since the pandemic started. An analyst at Kline Group, a market research company, wrote in a report in August, “Home scent products, notably candles, have become a category of comfort and escapism for housebound consumers in 2020, moving from a desirable purchase to a quarantine essential.” Kline notes that Bath & Body Works is a top-five home fragrance seller, along with brands like Glade, Febreze, and Yankee Candle. 

So it’s fortuitous that Bath & Body Works sells these things, yes, but the retailer has also spent decades building a model that ensures people are continually buying them. 

“The once-a-year event means the absolute best prices for customers on the largest selection of highly coveted candles – customers prep and plan (some even dress up) and they have adopted this day as part of their annual Christmas traditions,” a Bath & Body Works spokesperson said in an email. The event has been around for seven years. 

The scent of success

Alvarez, for one, bought 20 candles this year, her biggest haul ever. She burns different seasonal candles most evenings and estimates that she spends about $500 a year at Bath & Body Works. (Her husband loves the body washes, too.) She collects the brand’s coupons and carefully strategizes how to shop to maximize her discounts. She recalls waiting in line for an hour during her first Candle Day, but was in and out quickly this year thanks to a pared-down Covid-19 crowd. But that’s not to imply this Candle Day was a bust — online, the brand’s website crashed on and off through the day, as virtual customers flooded the site.

Bath & Body Works was founded in 1990 and is a part of L Brands, the company that includes Victoria’s Secret and which used to own The Limited, Express, Lane Bryant, Abercrombie & Fitch, Henri Bendel, and others. L Brands was founded by Les Wexner, who stepped down as CEO amid questions around his long business relationship with the late accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. 

The diminished company is now down to Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works. Victoria’s Secret was formerly the powerhouse earner, but it canceled its televised fashion show last November and closed about a quarter of its stores as its hypersexualized selling tactics have become offensive and outdated. L Brands tried to sell Victoria’s Secret to a private equity firm, but the deal fell apart early in the pandemic. Bath & Body Works, growing consistently for years, is now the crown jewel. 

As Racked chronicled in a 2014 feature on the brand, Bath & Body Works has tinkered with its selling model through the years, bringing third party brands in and offering more complex fragrances. White Barn, a more sophisticated and mature in-house brand, has been incorporated into the overall collection; some stores have Bath & Body Works and White Barn shops side by side.  

If you’ve never been in a Bath & Body Works store or can’t quite recall the assault on your nostrils when walking past one in a mall, the store sells scents. A lot of them — in lotions, hand soaps, sanitizers, home fragrance plug-ins, and candles. (Alvarez’s favorite, for instance, is “Watermelon Lemonade.”) The names are whimsical, the packaging is colorful, the salespeople are friendly. The stores are not chic or cool. They’re warm, inviting, and a little overstimulating. 

There are classic fragrances that are always there, but much like a sneaker company or Supreme, Bath & Body Works trafficks in drops and limited edition scents too. Khiem Tran, 33, is a recent convert to the brand, having been introduced to its candles by an ex-partner three years ago. (He has since turned his roommate onto them.) His most prized candle now is “Pistachio Ice Cream,” a retired scent that he only burns sparingly. 

Tran lined up at 4:15 am at his local store in Richmond, Virginia on Candle Day, after having made a reconnoitering trip earlier in the week to make a list of his must-haves. His roommate was interested in online-only exclusive scents, so she was on her computer early. During his shopping trip, he says at one point a clerk screamed out, “Just found some more ‘Sweater Weather,’ who wants it?” He picked up seven candles, but didn’t get everything he wanted. 

“I wasn’t able to get the Blueberry Maple Pancake, which I know is like a really hot ticket item,” he said on a call. 

How Bath & Body Works uses deals to keep people coming back 

The brand has the advantage of being a trusted, known entity, with plenty of reasons for spontaneous trips. “[Bath & Body Works] has the consistency and nostalgia and the brand identity, but also innovation and newness,” says Kahn, the Wharton professor. 

Then there are the discounts and freebies. Both Alvarez and Tran, the two Candle Day early risers I spoke to, stacked some of the many deals Bath & Body Works constantly offers on top of their candle discounts. Alvarez says she gets emails daily or more frequently from the brand. This year it offered $10 off a $40 purchase that coincided with Candle Day. Thanks to friends and family, she had four of these, which the store let her use by ringing her haul up as four separate purchases. Tran also used a few of these coupons, plus got a free product. As for me, “Fresh Balsam” was sold out. As I was lamenting the lack of the piney candle I wanted, the salesperson recommended that I buy another scent and come back in at a later date to exchange it for the one I wanted once it was restocked. 

Using discounting is tricky in retail. If brands do it too often — as has been the case at struggling stores like The Gap and J. Crew —  it can be a sign of desperation and can lead to a degraded or cheapened perception of a brand’s image. It also makes customers never want to pay full price if they know that eventually it will be 40 percent off. The flip side of this, as Khan pointed out, is what JC Penney did a few years ago. It took away sales and implemented an “everyday low price strategy. The mistake is they didn’t give people a reason to come into the store.” She explains that you “need a trigger to initiate the shopping trip.” 

Bath & Body Works walks this line perfectly.  Alvarez says she’s never paid full price for a candle. The store discounts a lot, but in a way that allows people to gamify it. It’s never just only  flat sales. It’s Candle Day, or a free lotion with a purchase, or a “Buy 3, Get 2 Free” deal. It brings people in, and they inevitably buy more than what the promotion is offering. Tran said he made sure to buy at least five candles so that the discount would kick in. He says of Bath & Body Works’ appeal, “The coupons definitely play a factor.” 

How long can Bath & Body Works reign? 

There are plenty of places that sell inexpensive candles and lotions. But none of them do it quite like Bath & Body Works does, and in as many places as it does. Khiem says he tried Yankee Candle, a similar price point, but wasn’t impressed. Alvarez tried to support some smaller brands but says the scents weren’t consistent. 

“[Bath & Body Works] are working on a strategy of accessibility and low price,” says Kahn. “It’s kind of like a candy shop. Scent is a dimension that people relate to on a sensual level. So it’s fun. It’s pleasurable. And that’s where you get fierce loyalty.”

But this is not guaranteed forever. The majority of Bath & Body Works stores are in malls. Department stores are dying, taking malls along with them. By some estimates, 25 percent could close by 2025. If the malls that house its stores start closing, Bath & Body Works is going to have to invest in real estate elsewhere. 

Then there’s e-commerce. During this year, Bath & Body Works’ online sales increased by 138 percent due to the pandemic. It takes different skills, warehousing, tech, transportation, and fulfillment capabilities to be a good and efficient e-tailer. Candle Day did not go smoothly online. The site crashed multiple times, and there have been complaints on forums like Reddit’s r/bathandbodyworks from customers with confirmed orders getting messages that they weren’t going to be fulfilled due to products selling out. Plus, selling scents through a computer is a different proposition. It’s one thing to read a description of the abstract fragrance “Party Dress” and another to stick your nose in and really experience it. 

But for now, Bath & Body Works keeps collecting fans. Alvarez says she convinced a friend to get up early to hit up Candle Day with her. “She told me, ‘I want to experience a Candle Day in all of its glory with you, but I’m only going to get maybe five or six.’ She walked out with 16.”

Fawnia Soo Hoo, who used to work out almost every day at her local franchise-owned Crunch gym, was happy when the gym froze her membership in mid-March. Gyms across the country shut down abruptly once it became clear that the coronavirus was spreading through US communities, and Fawnia (a friend of mine who lives in Brooklyn, New York City) didn’t want to pay for something she couldn’t use. Then, when gyms were allowed to open with restrictions in early September, the usual $49 charge appeared on her credit card.

She began emailing addresses she found on Crunch’s corporate site, but got a message back noting that “our systems are frozen and our staff is minimal.” When her gym outpost opened, she called directly to cancel but was told she had to visit in person to do so. Frustrated, she did what many people do in situations like this — she angry-tweeted:

After getting only automated responses to her various emails questioning this requirement, Fawnia finally went in. She was given a form indicating she would have to pay a fee to freeze the membership. Eventually she was told the fee would be waived, but at that point she just wanted to cancel, having been so frustrated by the “bad customer service and inconsistent information.” Ultimately, she was able to cancel without any sort of financial penalty. (Crunch did not respond to requests for comment.)

As for when she might consider going back to a gym to work out? “There has to be a viable vaccine, so I guess I’m probably not going back for like two years,” she says, adding that she loves group fitness classes and misses doing them in person. “It sucks.”

As gyms around the country started reopening in recent weeks, members have been questioning whether they feel safe going back. Gyms, by their very nature, include people huffing and puffing in very close proximity. There’s increasing evidence that aerosol transmission is an important factor in coronavirus infection, meaning that social distancing might not be enough in poorly ventilated areas. Although masks can theoretically help, they can be uncomfortable to wear during hard cardio workouts, their efficacy decreases as they become wet and sweaty, and not every state requires them. We’re in a golden age of at-home streaming workouts, and many gym buffs are opting for that instead, at least for the short term.

In the last few months, several gym chains have been slapped with lawsuits after members alleged they were still being charged while the gyms were closed. Chains have also been declaring bankruptcy at an unprecedented rate. Fawnia’s experience trying to cancel isn’t uncommon, but hers is actually better than some. Every state and municipality has different rules, making the process a free-for-all.

The pandemic has added a layer of frustration and hoop-jumping to a process that was already fraught and opaque and difficult for consumers even in the best of times.

It’s always been hard to cancel a gym membership

There’s a Friends episode that features Chandler bemoaning how difficult it is to cancel his gym membership. Ross offers to go with him for support but ends up joining the gym too. Chandler says, “We’re doomed. They’re gonna take fifty bucks out of our accounts for the rest of our lives.”

Yep. That’s the model, and it’s been that way for decades. (The boutique fitness model, which allows people to pay per class or for packages, upended that a bit in recent years, but a contract is still the main way most gyms make money.)

In California, there’s a consumer protection law for gym members that dates back to the 1960s. “You’ll see decades-old history of how much flimflammery there has been historically in the provision of membership to gyms. They decided this was the economic model they wanted, contracted as long as possible,” says Ted Mermin, the interim executive director of the Berkeley Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice and a former deputy attorney general in the state. “If you see gyms as folks who want to make a buck, you’ll see various reasons for why they might structure their contracts the way that they have.”

A lot of gyms require members wishing to cancel to show up in person or send a certified letter. Contracts are often worded in such a way that they’re impossible to break, unless you move or have a serious medical condition. Through the years, people have initiated lawsuits against Equinox for “unreasonable” cancellation policies, Orangetheory for hidden cancellation fees, LA Fitness for misrepresenting its monthly-membership renewal policies, and Washington Sports Clubs for “deceptive” cancellation and billing policies. The Better Business Bureau website is filled with lists of hundreds of complaints against gyms by people who claim they’re being blocked from canceling.

But what about when there’s the potential to contract a serious medical condition at the gym?

Canceling a gym membership during a pandemic can be even harder

“I do feel bad,” Fawnia says of canceling her membership. “I’m sure Covid hitting was not great for them.”

The pandemic has been near catastrophic for gyms. There are 40,000 to 50,000 gyms that serve about 73 million people in the US, according to a spokesperson for the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association (IHRSA), a trade association representing the industry. The spokesperson noted that while gym attendance is limited to 25 to 50 percent capacity in many states, gyms are still required to pay 100 percent of their costs. The IHRSA estimates that without financial relief, 25 percent could close by the end of the year. So they need every penny right now.

Some chains — 24 Hour Fitness, Gold’s Gym, and Town Sports, which owns New York Sports Club and Boston Sports Club, among others — have already declared bankruptcy.

Then there are the pending lawsuits members have filed. LA Fitness, 24 Hour Fitness, Town Sports, and Planet Fitness are all facing potential legal action from members who say they have been charged even while the gyms were closed. Town Sports earmarked as much as a reported $850,000 to pay back members.

YogaWorks, a chain of yoga studios owned by private equity firm Great Hills Partners, has been attracting ire on social media, mostly from people who are being charged and can’t get through.  

“Due to the unprecedented nature of the Covid pandemic and the extremely rapid location closures and associated staff furloughs, there were large points of contact gaps where customers just didn’t know where to go because their normal studio location and associated point of contact went offline,” CEO Brian Cooper wrote in an email to me when I reached out to ask about the complaints. “No student has been denied a refund or cancellation or purposely ignored, we are just dealing with a backlog issue and closing any communication gaps.” 

How to get gyms’ attention

If you’ve been getting charged and your gym isn’t open, it’s fairly straightforward that, unless the contract is pretty draconian, gyms probably need to reimburse you or credit you. Many gyms are extending memberships to credit months they were closed. But if you want to cancel, first figure out whether your gym is franchised — meaning it’s owned by an individual owner — or corporate-owned. You should call or email any pertinent contacts you can find. Sometimes the corporate office can help you find a more direct line of communication with the franchisee. 

Once you do find a contact, it may be necessary to send a stronger message to gyms. Berkeley’s Mermin recommends that “when you send your letter to the gym describing in detail what happened, CC those people whom the gym would really like not to hear the story,” like a local attorney general, district attorney, department of consumer affairs, or even the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission. (Although the FTC did not return a request for comment for this story, so maybe they’re too busy.) He also recommends searching for company executives and the company’s general counsel via Google and LinkedIn and escalating your complaints up the chain of command.

Mermin also recommends checking in with your local assembly person or state senator. Those officials may have some guidance for residents or may already be aware of problems at local establishments and can assist. Filing an official complaint at the Better Business Bureau will get the attention of companies, too. 

It’s a little muddier when gyms are technically open and start charging you but you don’t want to go, like Fawnia’s situation. I’m a member at Equinox, and I was shocked that after reopening, they cancelled with no questions asked when I requested it. 

“The most ethical will allow you out and they may also be the most clear-eyed,” says Mermin, meaning that perhaps gyms realize that they don’t want to alienate anyone willing to pay luxury membership fees, because they’re going to be competing for those members once they feel safe to come back to the gym. 

While contract law differs in every state, according to New York State law, a member can cancel membership “after the services are no longer available or substantially available as provided in the contract because of the seller’s permanent discontinuance of operation or substantial change in operation.” Gyms in NYC aren’t allowed to have group classes, so that’s a potential argument that they aren’t providing full services. In the worst case scenario, you may need to consult an attorney, depending on your state’s laws. 

Finally, forums like Reddit are full of advice that you should cancel the charge with the bank that holds your credit card. A representative for Mastercard said in an email that card holders and gyms enter into a contract, and there may not be recourse to cancel. But the rep said to call your bank directly. Canceling your entire credit card is the nuclear option, but then you may incur fees from your bank for doing that. 

And if worse comes to worst, there’s always rage tweeting. “Shame ‘em,” says Mermin. “It’s a valuable tool.” 

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At Revlon, only 5 percent of employees at the director level or above are black. At Sephora, just 6 percent of leadership roles are filled by black people. L’Oréal, a global company with 12,000 US employees, counts 8 percent who identify as black at the executive level in America. No black people hold leadership roles at Glossier. And at Lime Crime, there are no black employees at the brand’s corporate headquarters at all. 

Just a few weeks ago, it would have been nearly impossible to get these numbers from popular beauty companies. But over the past two weeks, they’ve provided them willingly, due to intense pressure from activists within the beauty industry and the consumers who buy from the brands. And not only that, some of these companies are making concrete commitments for the first time to improve their diversity. 

Pull Up for Change, the initiative that was the catalyst for the sudden transparency on employment numbers, launched on Instagram on June 3 and has almost 120,000 followers. Its founder, Sharon Chuter, formerly worked in corporate roles at L’Oréal and at LVMH with Benefit Cosmetics. She now has her own makeup brand, Uoma. 

“I had never worked in a company with enough black people. I didn’t know what it felt like to have another black colleague in the office. That was why I started my own brand,” Chuter says. Uoma launched in spring 2019 and was picked up by Ulta (which has 13 percent black-identifying people on the leadership team) a few months later. 

Chuter launched the Pull Up for Change rallying cry after becoming frustrated seeing the seemingly superficial messages of support and MLK quotes beauty brands were posting on social media. The message, which challenged brands to post the racial breakdown of their teams along with commitments to improve, was amplified by popular beauty influencers like Jackie Aina. So far, more than 200 brands have participated, and the initiative has expanded beyond beauty companies to brands like Levi’s, Everlane, and even Allure magazine, which is what Chuter was hoping would happen. On the Pull Up page, the brands are thanked for their transparency, even when numbers are dismal. 

“This is not a witch hunt,” says Chuter. “If you have not been employing black people, just say now, ‘We know, yes, we do profit from the black community, and we do have an obligation to hire black people.’”

The protests over police brutality and the increased support for the Black Lives Matter movement have served to also highlight that black citizens haven’t been given equitable economic opportunities. The beauty industry employment statistics shared by companies underscore this starkly. But demand for accountability and equity in hiring is now happening in all sectors of US society, in a way that feels more urgent.

“Corporate America has failed black America,” Darren Walker, the black president of the Ford Foundation and a board member at PepsiCo, told the New York Times, which noted that only 40 percent of companies are “transparent about the gender and racial makeup of their employees.” Industries now are facing increased pressure to hire more black people, especially for leadership roles where they will have decision-making power, with the hope of ensuring structural change. Now, institutions like the media, the NFL, and even the equestrian world are grappling with questions of diversity and racial inequality. (This includes Vox Media, Vox’s parent company, which employed 8 percent black or African American people as of 2019 statistics.)

The conversation has been simmering for a long time in the beauty industry. It’s now boiled over.  

Black consumers buy a lot of beauty products, but brands and retailers don’t make it easy

Beauty is a $532 billion industry, and one in which black shoppers enthusiastically spend a lot of money. Black people are about 13 to 15 percent of the US population, according to US census data and other sources. But they spend more than that proportionally in categories like fragrances, bath products, men’s toiletries, and “ethnic” hair and beauty aides, according to a 2019 Nielsen report. (As a classification, “ethnic” is falling out of favor in the industry.) The black hair care industry alone is worth more than $2.5 billion. 

Brands and companies have actively marketed to black communities, sometimes to predatory and detrimental effect. Some products with the potential to contain dangerous chemicals are more aggressively marketed to women of color, according to commentary published in 2017 in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Over the decades, companies have sold products like hair straighteners, skin lighteners, and odor-masking products disproportionately to black consumers. Some of these have been found to contain potentially hazardous substances like formaldehyde, mercury, and phthalates. 

Then there’s shopping. Beauty product shopping, at least in pre-coronavirus times, was an activity mostly done in stores. Sales online have been growing steadily, but generally people like shopping for beauty products in person, an activity that can be fraught for black shoppers. In 2019, both Ulta and Sephora, the two biggest beauty retailers in the US, faced accusations of racial profiling in their stores. After the singer SZA announced on social media that a Sephora employee had called security on her, the chain shut down for one hour nationwide to conduct diversity training. Ulta also faced accusations of racial profiling, after employees said the company actively encouraged it. The retailer said in a statement at the time: “We stand for equality, inclusivity and acceptance and strive to create a space that is welcoming to all. That is why we make it a practice to offer our associates ongoing training on diversity and inclusion.”

And just last week, Walmart, Walgreens, and CVS all announced they were no longer going to lock up beauty products marketed to black consumers, a practice common for decades. “Retailers are rethinking their merchandising strategies. … While trying to undo discriminatory policies, they also realize they can’t afford to turn off multicultural customers who are big spenders of beauty products,” wrote the Associated Press.  

Then there’s the fact that when black women go looking for products for their skin and hair, they are often hard-pressed to find them. The majority of non-specialty products have always been centered on the needs of white people, with black customers an afterthought, if considered at all.

Dana Oliver, the beauty director at Yahoo, says she was invited on an overseas press trip with a hair care brand, but before she accepted, she asked if there were products appropriate for her hair and stylists experienced with her hair type. She was assured there were, but when she got there, that wasn’t the case. “I had to explain and teach these people how to style my hair. I couldn’t laugh it off because I tried to establish it before even taking this trip,” she says. “I was having to educate brands, where they should be doing the work themselves.”

Makeup is a problem too. Foundation shades for major makeup brands, with the exception of a few like MAC, historically have tended to skew light. The shade “nude” has always been reserved for light colors, a default favoring white consumers. And when brands do make an extended range, retailers won’t always carry all of them. 

Rihanna changed that for mainstream brands in 2017 with the launch of Fenty Beauty, which included 40 shades of foundation with plenty of options on the deeper side of the spectrum. Suddenly, brands began clamoring to keep up, launching their own 40 or 50 shades of foundation, what some called the “Fenty effect.”

Chuter says that some brands’ darker shades tend to be off, and she suspects they aren’t really tested on the skin tones they’re meant for. She says when she was formulating her makeup in Italy (the epicenter for makeup pigments), she had to recruit women off the streets to try her foundation because local modeling agencies could not provide darker-skinned women. But  Fenty felt like the beginning of change in the industry, and definitely raised awareness.

“Pull up or shut up”

When the protests over George Floyd’s killing at the hands of police intensified, brands in every sector started posting messages of solidarity, which many people saw as hollow. In the beauty industry, these pat posts were met with an immediate outcry, as influencers, consumers, and the anonymous beauty watchdog collective Estée Laundry started posting examples of non-diverse workforces and brands whose leadership exhibited ”problematic” behavior. 

Lush Cosmetics, the UK-based maker of soap and bath bombs, drew ire after pictures of its CEO distributing products to police in the UK started circulating. Glamsquad, a company that employs many women of color as makeup artists and hairstylists who make house calls, faced a revolt on its Instagram page amid allegations of racist behavior.

Then there is Ronald Lauder, a son of matriarch Estée and a board member at the company, which owns multiple brands including Clinique, MAC, Bobbi Brown, and La Mer. He donated $1.6 million to the Trump campaign, prompting employees to start a petition to remove him from the board, which the company has not done. The company did say in a statement: “This week, several employees asked whether a single member of the Lauder family and our Board, represents the views of our company. The answer is no. While we respect everyone’s right to make their own political decisions, no single individual represents the views of our company.” 

A handful of global conglomerates own the majority of popular beauty brands — Estée Lauder, LVMH, Coty, Unilever, Shiseido, L’Oréal, P&G. Chuter wanted to draw attention to the people who make the decisions about shade ranges and the images you see in ads and who ultimately hold the purse strings. “People are starting to understand now that all the brands are owned by the same people. When you don’t have a black person on a board, it’s not affecting one brand; it’s affecting 15 brands,” she says.  

The trade paper WWD released a list of the major companies’ C-suites and boards, noting how many nonwhite executives and board members each had. L’Oréal had zero on its board, and one on the executive committee. LVMH had none in either. Others varied from one to five out of 12 to 20-plus people, but the paper did not break down how many of these were black.

Chuter’s Pull Up for Change challenge zoomed in even further, asking brands to “pull up or shut up,” which means “show me, don’t tell me.” Chuter asked companies specifically how many black executives and employees they had. The results were eye-opening.

The beginning of accountability in the beauty industry

The mea culpas came fast and furiously to the Pull Up hashtag, as consumers and beauty influencers encouraged brands to participate. Kylie Cosmetics, Coty, and Glossier, among others, gave their numbers. They are still imperfect admissions, because it’s not clear how brands counted and categorized their employees, it says nothing about their internal culture, and it doesn’t reveal if there are pay gaps. But it’s a start.

It’s also complicated. Fenty Beauty, while founded by Rihanna, is a part of Kendo Brands, a beauty incubator ultimately owned by LVMH, the French conglomerate that owns Dior, Sephora, and countless fashion and fragrance brands. Neither the brand nor its parent entities have “pulled up” their employment statistics for the challenge.

It’s a nuanced situation, because LVMH has given the singer an opportunity that few black celebrities have had in beauty in the past, while white celebrities have landed seven-figure beauty deals to front brands for decades. Rihanna’s (unknown) ownership stake is likely lucrative, and she became LVMH’s first black female designer when the luxury Fenty fashion brand launched in May 2019. These deals give her clout and some power in an industry that has largely ignored black women. Fenty Beauty has been influential by forcing other brands to confront their shade limitations and by providing shades that work for a wider variety of skin tones. But LVMH has zero people of color on its board or executive committee.

Fenty Beauty did announce it was “supporting” the NAACP and  “partnering” with Rihanna’s charity, the Clara Lionel Foundation, which funds education and emergency response initiatives.  A spokesperson confirmed in an email it was a monetary donation. The representative did not address queries about whether it will respond to the Pull Up challenge.

“It’s been disappointing that Fenty didn’t pull up. They want to get our black dollars, but they don’t want to employ our black people,” says Chuter, who acknowledges that what Fenty did was groundbreaking. “Rihanna is getting a cut, but [Bernard] Arnault [LVMH’s chair and CEO] is getting all the money. He’s the third-richest man in the world. Rihanna is not the third-richest woman in the world. … Rihanna is amazing, she’s a pillar of our community, she’s an activist, she’s an amazing human being. And that’s why I’m so angry that LVMH is doing this to her.”

Ella Gorgla and Cara Sabin, both beauty executives with about two decades of experience each, are hoping to help change the percentages of black decision-makers in these companies. They founded 25 Black Women in Beauty on Juneteenth last year as a platform to help place black women executives in leadership roles at beauty companies. It offers support and networking in the form of groups and events for professionals, as well as a résumé book for companies looking to hire and job listings on the site. 

“Regardless of our education or where we stood and the experience and stories we brought with us, we felt marginalized. We are carrying the emotional weight of being a black woman in beauty and we felt it was getting too heavy,” says Gorgla of starting the group, for which she serves as CEO. “It’s an important time for the industry, and my hope is big beauty companies and small brands that don’t have the level of diversity you would expect to see realize that now is the time to make those changes.” 

How brands have pledged to change 

In the first few days of the recent Black Lives Matter protests, some beauty brands stepped in immediately to support organizations monetarily. Glossier was one of the first, donating $500,000 to organizations like the NAACP and Black Lives Matter and committing another $500,000 in grants to black-owned beauty businesses. Others were more noncommittal. Model and transgender activist Munroe Bergdorf called out L’Oréal for posting the message: “Speaking Out Is Worth It,” a play on its “Because I’m Worth It” tagline. The brand had fired the model in 2017 after she posted on social media decrying white supremacy in the aftermath of the 2017 Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally that resulted in a neo-Nazi killing an anti-racist protester with his car. The brand has now apologized and hired Bergdorf to sit on its diversity and inclusion board. 

Estée Lauder originally committed to donating $1 million, but employees, as part of the backlash against Ronald Lauder, were not happy with this number and pressed the company to donate more. The Estée Lauder Companies has since committed to donating $5 million this year and another $5 million over the next two years. It’s also made a commitment to “reach US population parity for our Black employees in the next five years,” ensure product development addresses diverse consumer needs, double recruits from historically black colleges and universities for entry-level jobs, require more diverse candidates for executive positions, and increase the use of black creative talent like photographers and models.

Lauder’s was one of the most comprehensive plans, and other beauty brands have made commitments to hiring, but some have just acknowledged they need to do better without offering specific action plans. Chuter and Pull Up for Change plan to follow up with all the participating brands in six months to see what progress has been made. Chuter also hopes to launch a site or plug-in that can alert consumers as they’re shopping which brands have “pulled up.”

“Some brands are recognizing that they need to educate themselves and do the work in order to become a true ally,” says a longtime beauty publicist who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak frankly about the matter. “I do think some brands do not view this moment as the sea change that it is. There is a sense among some that things will go back to business as usual. We are trying to show them that you have to incorporate anti-racism practices into the course of your daily business.”

There’s also a focus on black-owned brands, which are funded by investors and sold at retailers at a mere fraction of those owned by white founders. Aurora James, a fashion designer, launched the 15 Percent Pledge, whose mission is to get retailers across fashion and beauty to commit to carrying at least 15 percent black-owned brands. Sephora has just announced that it will do so. Ulta has not, but Monica Arnaudo, chief merchandising officer, said in an emailed statement:

We are proud to carry many Black-owned brands including UOMA Beauty, Juvia’s Place, Beauty Bakerie, PATTERN, Mixed Chicks and TGIN, among others. As a retailer where beauty brands can grow and be discovered, we take our responsibility to evolve our assortment to ensure it is diverse and reflective of our guests very seriously. Our work is not done and we look forward to adding more Black-owned brands to our product offering to further these efforts and celebrate the beauty in diversity.

While there is still a long way to go and real work to be done, it feels like the beginning of change. To those who love the industry and whom it has ignored at best or treated terribly at worst, it has to be.

“Those folks who are in decision-making roles who are not committed to change and are hoping this blows over, that’s going to be a problem,” says Gorgla, the 25 Black Women in Beauty founder. “It’s not going to blow over.”

Last week, The Washington Post published a story about the experience of undocumented workers employed by the Trump Organization, both before and during his run for the presidency. It’s full of anecdotes of hypocrisy and raises important questions about immigration and underpaid labor. 

But buried many paragraphs into the narrative is a section detailing Trump’s unusually specific habits and requests, like requiring exactly 2.5 boxes of Tic Tacs in his bedroom at all times. Then came this sentence: “The same rule applied to the Bronx Colors-brand face makeup from Switzerland that Trump slathered on — two full containers, one half full — even if it meant the housekeepers had to regularly bring new shirts from the pro shop because of the rust-colored stains on the collars.”

The story moves right along into the president’s penchant for Irish Spring soap, never pausing to consider the remarkable fact that we finally have concrete information about Trump’s face. This is information reporters have been trying to find for years. 

It’s a fact that Trump’s face appears as an unnatural shade of orange. But it’s not at all clear how it got that way. One theory is that he uses a tanning bed, which Omarosa Manigault claimed in her book; the White House denied it. This idea is supported by the fact that the skin around his eyes looks lighter than the rest of his face, possibly because of the protective goggles one wears in a tanning bed. One official told The New York Times it was “good genes.” 

Last September, Trump complained about energy-efficient light bulbs (which his administration has tried to block) making him look orange to House Republicans at a policy retreat. Jason Kelly, a makeup artist who touched up Trump’s makeup during the Republican convention in 2016, thinks it is makeup on top of tanning. He told the paper, “When I see him, I see a line of oxidized bronzer around his hairline. The application is like a kindergartner did it.”

The current Post story doesn’t specify the exact product Trump allegedly used, but Bronx Colors, a Swiss brand, claimed it’s the Boosting Hydrating Concealer in orange. It even offered shoppers a special deal, splashing the Post’s story on its landing page: Buy anything on the site and get one of the orange tubes for free. It retails for €6.50, or about $7.22. The site has crashed multiple times since the story was published. 

While these are all heady revelations, there are still lots of questions. Is Bronx Colors just trolling us? Is it really just as simple as Trump smearing orange makeup all over his face? How did he even find this particular brand, which isn’t currently sold in the US? Since there’s nothing I love more than political beauty investigative reporting — like the mystery of Scott Pruitt’s fancy hotel lotion and how exactly Stephen Miller’s spray-on hair works — I attempted to find answers.

What is Bronx Colors? 

Bronx Colors is an inexpensive Swiss makeup brand that was founded in 2015 by Werner Kaufmann. A Refinery 29 story about the brand from December 2016 called Kaufmann a “beauty vet with 30 years of skin-care experience under his belt.” His jobs prior to Bronx Colors aren’t listed on his LinkedIn page. 

Isabelle von Känel, the COO of Bronx Colors, cannot confirm that Donald Trump uses the brand’s orange concealer. “We are not sending him a product knowing that we are sending products to him, because there are different ways he can get it,” she says. Von Känel confirmed that she spoke to David Fahrenthold, one of the reporters who broke the story, who asked her the same question. He tweeted after the story broke that when he asked the housekeepers what makeup shade it was, one replied “una naranja espantosa,” which roughly translates to “a scary orange.” Von Känel says, “They mentioned how [the housekeepers] described it and it can only be that one,” she says, meaning the orange concealer. 

The brand is currently only sold directly in a handful of European countries and the UK, but has wider distribution in about 40 countries. I couldn’t get my hands on it myself, because it does not ship to the US. There are only a few products from the brand available on Amazon. 

However, it was briefly sold here and got coverage on a few lifestyle sites, like Bustle and Allure. Ulta, the specialty beauty retailer, carried it online for several months, from late 2016 until sometime in 2017. Von Känel confirms that Ulta stocked the brand online as part of a trial run. It was also a sponsor for Lifetime’s American Beauty Star, a Project Runway-like show for hair and makeup that first ran in September 2017. The show, which was thrown together too quickly to sign on big makeup companies as sponsors, worked with a lot of lesser known brands, according to a Beauty Independent story at the time. 

Bronx Colors never really caught on. Perhaps that was for the best. One YouTube review, with over 300,000 views, was a brutal takedown. In the words of one commenter: “I feel like it looks like poop.” Von Känel confirms the brand didn’t really market the product enough and that it “wasn’t ready” for the US market. She says they have been in talks with distributors and retailers, including Walmart, to bring the product here. 

Indeed, the Bronx-inspired promo copy echoes a slightly stilted and off-kilter view of the US that Euro brands sometimes have, describing the “northernmost district of New York City” where “the origins of hip-hop, breakdance and graffiti are pervasive and emphasize the urban lifestyle.”

The products are pretty standard if you’ve spent any time around makeup. It has all the usual items, like eye shadow palettes, foundation, eye liners, and yes, that orange concealer. The “o” in Bronx is rendered as the female symbol. This gives me pause, because knowing everything we know about Trump, would he use a product so blatantly marketed for women? Bronx Colors has three products specifically geared toward men, gendered via the male symbol; this concealer is not one of them. 

Orange makeup isn’t meant to be worn alone

First, a quick detour. Orange makeup is a specialty item, but it’s not rare. It’s meant to be a color corrector. In fact, von Känel says the orange one is their bestselling concealer. Orange is opposite blue on the color wheel, which means it can theoretically neutralize blue tones in the skin, most commonly found under the eyes. Orange color correctors can also be helpful for evening out darker skin tones, according to Alexis Androulakis, a makeup artist and the founder of Fempower Beauty. 

“It’s never an on-its-own product. It’s a neutralizer and certainly most effective on the overall complexion for darker skin tones,” says Androulakis. Whether it’s used under the eyes to cover dark circles, or used on areas of hyperpigmented skin on those with olive skin or darker, it is meant to be buffed out so it’s not visible and so that a more natural skin-toned concealer or foundation can be placed on top. 

Von Känel wouldn’t comment on any political implications or whether this attention could be negative, but she did say, “If he really uses it … then I would say, ‘Okay, Mr. President, I think you are using it a little bit wrong.”

The point is, you shouldn’t see any orange at all, because it’s not a skin undertone that humans have, according to Androulakis. “Orange just has all these negative connotations. It’s not very flattering. It’s really the thing we try to avoid in any type of shade matching exercise, period.”

When asked if she had any further opinions on Trump’s application process, assuming that orange concealer is the culprit, the makeup artist says, “He has a nickname for a reason. I’m just surprised in all these years he hasn’t consulted with an image consultant who can lead him down a different path.”

Donald Trump reportedly has rosacea, a condition that can cause a ruddiness in the skin. This is best color corrected with green-tinted products; Bronx Colors has one in its lineup. 

How did Donald Trump learn about products like this?

There is evidence from as early as 2012 that Trump was using orange-y makeup. One of the same workers featured in this week’s Post story, Sandra Diaz, was interviewed in a 2018 New York Times article: “That same year, she said, Mr. Trump had an outburst over some orange stains on the collar of his white golf shirt, which Ms. Diaz described as stubborn remnants of his makeup, which she had difficulty removing.”

Since the year in question was 2012, there’s no way that makeup could have been Bronx Colors, since it wasn’t around yet. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t find the brand at a later time. 

Nicole Bryl has been Melania Trump’s makeup artist since well before she became First Lady. Bryl has done makeup for celebs like Kathie Lee Gifford and Maria Menounos. She also kept a blog. 

In a 2016 post she wrote, “Life these days can be exhilarating when words such as Trump. Makeup & Skincare are mentioned, especially during this 2016 campaign period…I have been asked this so many times through the years and I can honestly report that I know nothing about Mr. T’s hair and DO NOT and NEVER HAVE DONE HIS MAKEUP!” (Sic)

As a professional makeup artist, it’s not surprising she’d want to distance herself from his much-ridiculed aesthetic, but she has talked to him about products, as she chronicled in a 2013 post: “At dinner Mr. Trump was engaging in conversation. He asked me what my favorite makeup products were and why? Which brands did I think were cutting edge? He then …thanked me for my work which I thought was extremely generous of him to express out loud.” Again, this is pre-Bronx Colors, and Bryl had a predilection for super high-end brands. She herself sells a $450 skin care product. 

She has also recommended color correcting. In a 2014 post about getting a “polished” makeup look, she wrote, “With a foundation brush, conservatively apply MAC’s ‘Prep + Prime CC color correcting’ all over face and neck which evens out skin tone, while also brightening the skin.” 

A link to the product is broken, because it’s a range that MAC has discontinued. But it included orange correcting products, both lighter and darker ones. In 2014, a makeup blogger interviewed a MAC artist about the products, including the apricot-hued powders and cream, meant to be put all over the face. He said they were sheer and that the darker orange was meant to be used on deeper skin tones as a preparation step. 

Again, there is no direct evidence that Bryl told Trump to put orange color corrector all over his face. And the sticking point for me in all this is: why Bronx Colors? It’s not exactly a household name. 

I searched another avenue. Trump also had makeup applied for TV — with a much heavier hand — when he hosted The Apprentice. So I tried to track down some makeup artists from that era. According to the show’s IMDb page, Kathy Santiago was there from 2009 through 2017. A quick search confirms her specialty is men’s grooming. She would have had contact with him at a time when Bronx Colors was available in the US. Alas, she did not respond to requests for an interview. 

We know a little more about Trump’s grooming habits, but not enough, in my opinion. I’m hoping Fahrenthold has more details to reveal. I reached out to him, too, just in case some important makeup tidbit got cut from the story. I’ll update if so. Feel free to email me at cheryl.wischhover@gmail.com if you have any tips or intel.

Orange you glad you made it through this? 

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