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Sephoraplay

The power of Hailey Bieber’s Rhode buoyed Sephora’s 2025, but existential questions linger. Take the rise of Amazon and TikTok Shop, and prestige beauty brands’ increasingly common conclusion that their customers don’t really care where they replenish their products so long as it’s convenient.

Hailey Bieber rhode sephora launch
During a Wednesday presentation at the summit, Sephora credited Bieber’s brand with lifting its skincare business by 21 percent in the back half of 2025, but the retailer is still reeling from the loss of several of its most important “exclusive” brands. Photo: Aeon/GC Images
Rachel Strugatz
February 25, 2026
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There are plenty of reasons why a Sephora executive might have trouble sleeping these days, from the ongoing Huda Kattan nightmare to the rising prominence of Amazon and TikTok Shop as sellers of prestige beauty. But you wouldn’t know it from this year’s Sephora Brand Summit, the LVMH-backed retailer’s annual event that’s essentially the beauty industry version of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference. Over the past two days, founders and executives from hundreds of brands descended on the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco for a slate of presentations, awards, and boozy dinners.

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