SPHERE of INFLUENCERS Self-created style mavens with an army of online followers, also known as microinfluencers, are leveraging their power as pollinators of cool products and hot brands. BY AMELY GREEVEN • PHOTOGRAPHY BY WILL ADLER
flatlay (translation: a highly composed, top-down tableau shot of products shot chez toi). Whew! On launch day this spring, the two women, who are both beauty and lifestyle influencers with close to a million Instagram followers between them, pulled their slingshot even tauter with the assistance of the many beauty editors, style bloggers, and, most importantly, the everywoman skincare junkies who have been following the duo’s Insta feeds, YouTube channels and Twitter handles for the past few years, and then let fly. Two weeks later, their Summer Fridays Jet Lag mask was blazing across the style and beauty digiverse, and became the No. 1 skincare product at their (savvily chosen) exclusive retailer, sephora.com. Welcome to the world of social-first beauty and wellness brands, where self-created style mavens are sidestepping traditional business paths and leveraging their power as social media influencers—pollinators of cool products, hot brands, and DIY tips on multiple platforms they have established online—to create nascent empires of their own.
To create a cult beauty product, follow this recipe: Identify an unaddressed but universal need. Formulate a single, multitasking product of clean, cruelty-free ingredients. Package it in a sexy, selfie-worthy tube, stir in an evocative, hashtag-earning logo (don’t name your brand after yourself—that’s so analog-era), then mix in your secret ingredient: a squadron of online influencers who, eager for compelling content about prestige products, will tell the internet about your beauty-boosting invention, for free. That’s what Marianna Hewitt and Lauren Gores Ireland, the (early) 30-something founders of the summer’s most buzzed-about beauty brand, Summer Fridays, did to launch their “tall glass of water for tired skin in a tube,” a hydrating, use-it-anytime-anywhere, mask-meets-deep-moisturizer crammed with refreshing, nature-derived constituents (with a twist of safe synthetics to optimize performance), and a non-gender-specific, periwinkle-blue aluminum tube designed not only to crinkle artfully upon use, but also sit perfectly in any Instagram 138