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Latinas are the biggest consumers in the beauty industry. With a population of 62.5 million in the US, we have an estimated buying power of $2.4 trillion (and that’s up 87 percent in the past 10 years) and reports show we spend more on beauty overall than any other ethnic group. And yet, even during Hispanic Heritage Month, I can’t help but feel like the industry is hesitant to recognize us. As a result, I feel incredibly ignored.
Hispanic Heritage Month takes place from September 15 to October 15. The dates commemorate the independence of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Chile, and Belize. Just like other heritage months, its purpose is to celebrate the rich histories and contributions of those communities. When it comes to beauty brands, this usually manifests in special limited-edition collections, ad campaigns, social media posts, special displays in stores, and more. Last year, my email inbox was flooded with invites to HHM events, details on brand new collections devoted to the month, and press releases highlighting Latine beauty brand founders. This year, all I found were crickets.
In all fairness, plenty of brands and retailers are still participating in the HHM festivities — but maybe not as loudly as they did in years past. Last year, for example, Sephora deployed a celebratory campaign across its social media accounts and brick-and-mortar stores called “Celebramos la Belleza de la Cultura.” It included empowering career panels, store events celebrating Hispanic culture, and a free recipe book created by Latine Sephora employees. This year, at the start of HHM, the company shouted out its resource group for Latine employees, its partnership with the Latine civil rights and advocacy group UnidosUs, and boasted its 37 percent Hispanic/Latine workforce. These mentions were paired with an illustration of the words “Tus raices son hermosas” (meaning “Your roots are beautiful”), which was only posted on the company’s LinkedIn and the employee-dedicated Sephora Life Instagram page, which only has 69K followers. The only HHM mention made so far this year on Sephora’s primary Instagram, which has over 22 million followers, was an ’80s Latine beauty tutorial featuring a mix of Latine-owned brands and non-Latine-owned brands. As of the time I’m writing this, its retail homepage makes no mention of the month or its Latine-owned offerings. (Sephora declined to comment on its HHM efforts to Allure for this story.)
I believe it’s more crucial than ever for beauty companies to showcase support of Latine consumers, employees, and brand founders, not just in the monetary, behind-the-scenes kind of way but also in the loud-and-proud way. One without the other, to me, feels shallow. It’s one thing to quietly invest in a Latine brand or cause, but it’s another to use a big platform to bring real awareness. If a retailer, for example, makes internal efforts to support Latine causes during HHM, that’s great — but can you imagine if, on top of that, it also encouraged its customer base to donate to those causes alongside them? You could argue that companies risk ruffling some feathers among customers and investors by doing that, yes, but it doesn’t compare to the risk Latine people are facing by merely existing in public every single day right now.
Meanwhile, Latine brand founders themselves seem to be struggling to secure the financial support and investment they need, even during their month. One of the best HHM efforts I’ve witnessed this year is a collaborative limited-edition kit from Ceremonia, Maed Beauty, and La Voûte (an ode to the staple Latina look: slicked-back hair, red lips, and hoops). At the top of HHM, I attended a panel featuring the brands’ founders — Babba Rivera, Denise Vasi, and Adrienne Eliza Bailon-Houghton, respectively — who recalled struggles to secure sponsors for the campaign, which surprised me given that they’re high-profile celebrities, influencers, and founders whose brands have big retailer partnerships. A representative for Ceremonia tells me that in previous years, the brand partnered with various liquor brands for HHM pop-up events — this year, however, the brand was unable to secure any sponsors despite reaching out to multiple liquor, credit card, and business software companies. During the panel, the three brand founders said they ended up paying for the campaign entirely out of their own pockets.
