Clinique Is the Granny Panties of the Beauty World

AMG asks: How can old brands stay relevant? + Gen Z is SOOO wrong about winged liner, Lesa implores you to not get veneers (if you don't have to), and RECORD CLUB!

CLINIQUE IS THE GRANNY PANTIES OF THE BEAUTY WORLD

In the least-spicy beauty news of late, Clinique is allegedly being exited from Sephora. It’s not surprising to me because I doubt most people remembered that it was IN Sephora to begin with. Its gondolas were among the cleanest in the place—the truest metric that your brand is not in the mix. If you’ve ever had to work with Sephora, you know it’s a hard place for an established brand (meaning, not one developed for Sephora) to control its messaging. Sephora likes Shiny New Things, making it a difficult environment for heritage brands like Clinique to thrive—they have to work much harder to attract and retain younger customers. I have some personal insight on this specific story.

Almost exactly 9 years ago, Clinique reached out to me for a newly created role: editor of its recently launched editorial site, The Wink, which would also function as another point of sale for the brand. After several years writing and editing beauty content aimed at millennial women, I was running the beauty department at Refinery29, during what was its peak of influence as the arbiter of taste for that same demographic. It produced content and experiential events that marketers envied and competitors copied. Clinique, like many older brands, had future-proofing on its mind, and liked what it saw. Could I sprinkle some of R29’s special sauce on its new platform and help attract those same millennials, they asked?

In my first interviews, Clinique presented its vision for The Wink, and I was encouraged by what seemed like an actual interest in doing something cool. Clinique had some history with looking cool at least, during the Irving Penn years, and its skincare-first messaging was ahead of its time, yet nobody would have used “cool” to describe the brand. But everyone seemed excited about The Wink. I proposed some R29-ish story ideas, suggested ways The Wink could improve on diversity, and shared my thoughts on design. They thought my pitch was on target, and moved me to the final round of interviews.

After careful pre-prep with the Clinique team, that final interview was with Jane Lauder, the formidable CDO and heiress of Estee Lauder, who at the time was Clinique’s Global Brand President. She was all-business, incredibly smart, and light on humor. She didn’t like that I was open to leaving my job “so soon,” noting that I hadn’t been there for even a year. (Ma’am, if you only knew.) But more importantly, she did not agree that The Wink needed to mimic R29 in any way. She knew the brand better than anyone—this was her literal family business—and being even minorly disruptive was not her way forward. Looking back, my mistake was in believing that this desire for change was coming from the top, that we were all on the same page—it was not and we were not.

If you’ve ever interviewed with a Lauder brand for a creative role, and I have interviewed for several at this point, none of this is news; they’re a contradictory bunch. (From my Clinique rejection email: Though my “vision was incredible,” the person they ended up hiring had a “strict beauty editor” background.) They tell you they love big swings and bold ideas. It’s “We want something new!” But it’s also “DON’T CHANGE ANYTHING—THANKS!” 

The fact that they let Tom Ford Beauty get away with the absurdity it does is kind of interesting, especially now that Ford (the person), who I was told was very hands on with product naming and copy, is long gone. But it also makes sense in that Tom Ford Beauty, in its horny-corny way, is not so different from Clinique—it is also following a well-trod, one-note path: Tom Ford Beauty is Pervy Clinique, Bobbi Brown is Clinique with an Identity Crisis, MAC is Pop-Culture Clinique, La Mer is Rich Lady Clinique, Too Faced is Clinique for Sephora Tweens, Estee Lauder is Clinique for Boomers, etc., etc. These companies are too large to be nimble and pivot their strategies when the trends go in another direction. They make creative tweaks here and there, shuffle around executives when they’re uncomfy with the numbers, but in between, they survive on being solidly middle of the road.

Relentlessly pink!

As for The Wink, it was basically a boneless version of Refinery29 both in tone (vanilla) and design (millennial pink). It churned out easy beauty how-tos, diet and fitness info, lifestyle advice (“How to Shop Sephora Like a Pro” — heh), and softball interviews with bloggers, tastemakers, and influencers of the day. I don’t know how long they kept up with it—The Wink no longer exists on Clinique’s site, some links redirect to something called “Skin School”—but you can find remnants of it on Google. And as for Jane Lauder, having grown the business during her six year tenure as head of Clinique, she was promoted up and out in 2020—and may one day take the top job at Lauder once held by her uncle, Leonard. I have no idea whose idea The Wink’s was, or how much it contributed to that growth, but it’s worth noting that on her laundry list of achievements from that time, The Wink doesn’t get a mention.

So while it was an interesting exercise to ask branding consultants to weigh in on how they would reboot Clinique and capture the youths in the wake of the Sephora news—and this is the whole point of this long-ass story—Clinique knows, as it has been here before. Functionally, Clinique is the Billy Bookcase. It is granny panties, it is block heels. It has eldest daughter energy. It worries about adding guac because avocados take so much water to grow, uses a Stanley but wants an Owala even though it isn’t practical to buy another water bottle, and is invested in the end of Grey’s Anatomy. I know Clinique, you know Clinique. Maybe you even are Clinique—have you ever made engagement chicken? 

Clinique is content to politely remind you every 5-7 years that Black Honey exists, and be there for you at Duty Free if you left your moisturizer at home. Despite Lauder’s larger woes, Clinique had OK enough sales in Q2. It made its debut on Amazon this year, the first in Lauder’s portfolio to sell there. It brought on PR powerhouse the Lede Company to represent it. It is worth multi-billions of dollars. It’s always the strong friends you never check in on, right? Well, Clinique appreciates your concern, but it’s doing fine. — AMG

I WILL DIE ON THE HILL FOR WINGED EYELINER

Behold the classics

One of the first beauty products I owned as a teenager that was not from the drugstore was Lancome liquid eyeliner. I think it cost just under $25 which seemed insane at the time when anything I bought was well under $10. I had already been experimenting with a liquid liner stolen from my mother’s makeup bag but it had a tiny paint brush tip so it was a bit unwieldy; somehow I mastered it enough to emulate Twiggy’s painted-on lower lashes. But the Lancome one had a precise felt tip and therefore was SO much easier to maneuver. Drawing on those black wings on my upper lid was like WHOA. Is this liner for real? This was it. I had leveled up and there was no going back. 

And I haven’t. Unlike other makeup products I’ll never touch again (lip gloss, brown lipstick, pearlescent illuminator), black liquid liner is something I still wear today. Not daily, but when I want to make an effort (shout out to the micro tip of Stila’s Stay All Day Dual Ended Waterproof Liquid Eyeliner). And I still love it as much as I did when I was 17. I thought of this recently when AMG shared a post from Allure about how Gen Z believed winged liner was “outdated”. EXCUUUUUSE me? Coming from TikTok immediately discredits it of course, but you also cannot claim something that’s survived decades and never ever looks wrong to be antiquated. There’s a word for that and it is timeless. I would also argue black liquid liner is flattering on everybody and anybody. Seriously, no one has ever looked bad with little black flicks at the outer corners of their eyes. One day those Gen Z children are going to grow up and realize the error of their ways. —LH 

YOUR TEETH ARE FINE AS THEY ARE

I’m glad Kate never got veneers.

If you have read The Cut’s recent article Do You Regret Your Veneers?, have you been able to unclench yourself since? I felt sick to my stomach reading the horror stories of what people have gone through in the service of ultra bright, seemingly “perfect” teeth. Just the act of applying veneers alone sounds horrific; your own teeth have to be shaved down, which removes the enamel permanently. (My dudes, are you aware of how important it is? Did you know it’s the hardest substance in the human body?) 

It also triggered my own dental baggage. Over a decade ago I was obsessed with the imperfections in my smile; I was so self conscious and upset about it that I was convinced people must have been judging me whenever they could see my teeth. However, reading this actually made me glad I never had the funds to seek what these people did and that I had to learn to accept how my teeth looked. So yes, while it was a nauseating thing to read, it reaffirmed my beliefs that 1. We as a society get way too hung up on our perceived flaws, only made worse by social media 2. You probably notice them more than anyone else. 3. They are what make you unique and if anyone does notice, they probably think they’re endearing and/or cool. —LH

AMG’s Picks

Video: No Alternative Girls

I was reminded of this Tamra Davis lo-fi short documentary when a clip of it made the rounds on TikTok. It was a companion piece to 1993’s No Alternative album, part of the Red Hot franchise, with proceeds benefiting AIDS relief. Each track from the album had a video, which aired on MTV during a special to promote both the album and safe-sex awareness. It’s easy to forget that at one time MTV was actually cool and had programming that focused on the HIV/AIDS crisis—aimed squarely at teens and college-age people. Davis filmed a number of “alternative” Gen-x women musicians of the day—Kim Gordon, Luscious Jackson, Kathleen Hanna (in a ski mask, because she was doing a media blackout at the time), Courtney Love, and Yoshimi P-We from the Boredoms—shooting the shit about sexism in the music industry and about the importance of having safe sex. It’s not especially deep, but it’s a memory-lane moment, and definitely something that could never happen today.

Single: Malcolm McLaren “Jazz Is Paris”

Video: Catwalk

The album that this song is from, Malcolm McLaren’s 1994 double-CD Paris, is objectively not good. This track, however, is. It was used as the background music for one of my all-time favorite fashion documentaries, Catwalk, which follows Christy Turlington at her absolute height of power, during SS 1993 in Milan, Paris, and New York. This documentary has EVERYTHING: A young Francois Nars trashing W magazine, a baby Kate Moss yet to hit her peak, a model-packed dinner at the late Azzedine Alaia’s house (something I also got to do once!), Helena Christensen calling the then 32-year-old Sharon Stone old for Hollywood, Naomi Campbell being iconic, Isaac Mizrahi being quotable, Karl Lagerfeld being bitchy. Also, by the time you read this, I will be in Paris, probably buying all the lip balms at Monoprix, which is why this whole thing was on my mind. A bientot! 

Lesa’s Picks

Single: “Helsinki I”—Martes Niebla

This is a song from the summer of 2021 that I recently revisited and it’s just as pretty and comforting as it was then. Sometimes you just need a very simple sentiment to steel yourself, flatten the swell of anxiety and remind yourself that you’ll get through this: “Everything’s ok/Tomorrow is beyond time/it’s just another day”.

Album: “Hey What”—Low 

Also from 2021, this absolute stunner of a final act from Low, who are no more since the death of drummer Mimi Parker from ovarian cancer in 2022. I lack the words to articulate how incredible it is, but always loved this quote from a Pitchfork review: “…like a surge of information through a corroded terminal or an electrical storm in the cavern between two earbuds.” It’s organized, melodic chaos that will keep you wondering where it's going next.