The Glossy Beauty Podcast

Helmed for the past six years by veteran beauty executive Mary van Praag, 25-year-old mass beauty mainstay Milani Cosmetics is in the midst of meteoric growth. In today’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, van Praag sits down with host Lexy Lebsack to discuss Milani’s growth engine, including the tactics and retail partnerships she’s betting on to reach $500 million in annual sales in the next three years.

CPG disruptors have entered just about every legacy category over the past few years in hopes of capturing bored consumers looking for more interesting everyday products.

We’ve seen this play out across dandruff shampoo, toothpaste and mouth wash, supplements, sunscreen, and, most recently, the allergy aisle.

“We did a ton of consumer work up front, probably too much, pulling research reports, data and our own survey of 600 consumers, and what we realized was that there is a huge experience and efficacy gap,” Loren Lucree, the CEO and founder of 9-month-old allergy-care brand Wizard Wellness, told Glossy. “[We found that] only 7% were loyal to their current solutions, which is bananas. … [The] lesson is nobody's writing love letters to Flonase or Zyrtec.”

Lucree is a beauty industry veteran formulator and executive. His CV includes Unilever and Estée Lauder brands. “One morning I woke up and told my poor husband, ‘I have to do this,' … because somebody else will do it if I don't,” Lucree said. “[I thought], ‘I have this amazing beauty network around me, and now's the time’.”

Lucree secured $7 million in funding from True Beauty Ventures, G9 Ventures, Able Partners and The Venture Collective to launch Wizard Wellness via a DTC model in January. The brand is built on a beauty industry playbook, including cleaner ingredients, clear positioning, clinical testing, a dynamic OOH advertising funnel and social-first marketing.

Now, just nine months post-launch, Wizard Wellness has entered CVS, Walmart and, as of Monday, Target stores.

Glossy West Coast correspondent Lexy Lebsack sat down with Lucree to learn firsthand how he took on allergy incumbents and what it’ll take to become a leader in the space.

There’s an interesting tension happening in the beauty industry today around makeup.

Last year, consumer beauty publications and industry executives heralded 2026 as the year bold, maximalist makeup would return. Top publications predicted a shift away from the persistent "clean girl aesthetic" that entered the zeitgeist around 2021 toward bolder, brighter makeup. Meanwhile, executives from Sephora, Ulta Beauty and Revlon told Glossy they were betting big on a return to more expressive makeup in 2026.

But that hasn’t happened at scale – at least not yet. Instead, sales at conglomerates that report earnings, like L’Oréal Group and E.l.f. Beauty, tell us that top-selling categories in 2026 remain the mainstays of "no-makeup makeup," like lip gloss, balm and liner; complexion products, like tinted sunscreen, blush, bronzer, and setting spray; and mascara.

For today’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, host Lexy Lebsack sat down with veteran celebrity makeup artist Jamie Greenberg to unpack exactly where makeup is headed next.

Greenberg has been a working makeup artist for more than 20 years. Her client list today includes Rashida Jones, Kaley Cuoco, Chelsea Handler, Tracee Ellis Ross and Kristen Stewart, among others.

Greenberg is also the founder of the DTC makeup line Jamie Makeup, known best for its blush/highlighter hybrid product called Blighlighter and spray makeup remover named B.F.M.R. Mist. She’s also a prolific social media creator with more than 700,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram, and she runs a monthly subscription beauty box called SwagBag that features her latest favorite products from a wide array of brands.

Press play now for a candid conversation on where makeup is headed, including the trends and signals Greenberg is paying attention to now.

Midi Health is betting on topical skin care and body care as it diversifies its telehealth offerings to capture more women.

“Women in midlife go through amazing changes with their hormones, … [and] our skin care needs actually change over time with our hormone evolution,” Dr. Kathleen Jordan, MD, chief medical officer of Midi Health, told Glossy. “I usually talk about [this care expansion] as ‘hormone informed skin care’ because that's really what the market's been lacking.”

That is, skin care that treats a variety of skin concerns that can develop in mid-life such as dryness, loss of collagen, hyperpigmentation, and acne.

“We saw patients for many years without having [skin-care] products, but what we saw was them struggling to get good products that were actually designed for them,” Dr. Jordan said. “We now see tens of thousands of women every week, and we actually hear from them. We hear their questions. We understand where they're struggling to get products that actually are meaningful [for their skin concerns], and then in response, we can develop products that actually help them.”

For Midi Health, this means offering prescription and OTC products with ingredients like estrogen, retinol, hydroquinone and tretinoin. In June, Midi expanded its skin-care selection to include topical copper peptides. According to Dr. Jordan, this is just the start for the company.

Midi Health launched in 2021 and currently treats around 25,000 women per week. Oftentimes, this includes care for issues dismissed by the traditional medical industry, like fatigue, weight gain, mood and sleep disturbance, which can be treated with things like hormone replacement therapies or other OTC and prescription interventions.

Midi Health is privately held by its founders plus investors like Connie Britton, Brandi Chastain, Tory Burch, Amy Schumer, and Meghan Markle, as well as private equity firms like Google Ventures and Emerson Collective, plus a laundry list of tech execs including Sheryl Sandberg, the former COO of Meta, and Tekedra Mawakana, the co-CEO of Waymo. Midi Health was valued at $1 billion following a $100 million series D funding round in February.

Glossy West Coast correspondent Lexy Lebsack sat down with Dr. Jordan to discuss Midi Health’s skin- and body-care aspirations, the category’s role in telehealth in the future, and how Midi Health hopes to earn more market share.

Behind every great in-person beauty or wellness event is an invisible team of insiders that has engineered the gathering for maximum impact.

Bilal Kaiser, the founder and principal of Agency Guacamole, is one of those insiders. Kaiser and his team have produced events for leading retailers and brands like Olive Young, NYX, Therabody, Matrix, Redken, Ole Henriksen, Evereden and many more.

Kaiser is a former L’Oréal Group executive and marketing instructor at UCLA and NYC’s General Assembly. He launched Agency Guacamole in 2016, a boutique communications agency based in Los Angeles and New York City that provides experiential, media communications, and influencer marketing services to the beauty and lifestyle industries.

For today’s episode, host Lexy Lebsack challenged Kaiser to break down the ins and outs of eventing in 2026. More specifically, he was asked to break down the nuances behind a successful event made for different age groups, including Gen Alpha, Gen Z, millennials and Gen X, and industry demographics, like press, influencers and consumers. Kaiser also fielded questions about event budgets, timelines, the future of eventing, and the optics to consider when planning luxury events or brand trips.