John Legend introduces his skincare line, Loved01 at the 2024 Voices of Beauty Summit in Los Angeles. Photo: Claire Painchaud
LOS ANGELES, CA (LA ELEMENTS) 4/36/2024 – “I want everyone to feel that they’re known and they’re seen and they’re valued. And that is a huge priority that we had in this event,” says Landing International CEO Sarah Chung Park of the Voices of Beauty Summit.
The two-day event commenced on March 27th and 28th in Downtown LA and celebrated diversity in the beauty industry with some of the top names in music and a host of coveted skincare and lifestyle brands.
Day 1 The keynote speaker was none other than 12-time Grammy winner, John Legend, who introduced his skincare line, Loved01. Joining Legend on day 1 was chemist Ron Robinson, the force behind Rhode by Hailey Bieber and now his own line, BeautyStat Skincare. There was a retail bootcamp that boasted an array of industry experts including David Yi, co-founder and CEO of Good Light Cosmetics, Michon King, Senior Merchandise Manager, Color Cosmetics at JC Penney Beauty, and Katie Rosen Kitchens, co-founder and Editor-In-Chief of FabFitFun.
Day 2 The keynote speaker was Grammy winning singer/songwriter, Ciara, who introduced OAM Skin, her cruelty free skincare line. Panel discussions centered around vital topics such as Inclusion’s New Frontier: Accessibility in Beauty with Sephora’s Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion, George-Axelle Broussillon Matschings. There was also a fireside chat with Ayesha Curry, founder of Sweet July Skin, moderated by Sara Tan.
For both days of this event, the Voices of Beauty Summit provided a catered lunch with both vegan and non-vegan options. Cocktail mixers were also on the agenda for both days. Each guest went home with a gift bag filled with cutting edge beauty products from Cosrx, Beauty Stat, Hanskin, Sepia and provocative fragrances from Phlur.
Ayesha Curry talks about her skincare line Sweet July.
Photo: Claire Painchaud
We sat down with Julee Wilson, Beauty Editor-at-Large at Cosmopolitan Magazine and Sarah Chung Park of Landing International, producers of this special event. We asked them about vegan and sustainable beauty brands, their go-to beauty products, what they turn to when they need that vital “me” time and more. Interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
Cosmopolitan Magazine Beauty Editor at Large Julee Wilson, pictured here with Johnny Wright, takes the state at the 2024 Voices of Beauty Summit in LA.
Julee Wilson
In your role as Beauty Editor at Large of Cosmopolitan magazine, what achievement have you been proudest of so far?
“Being able to tell diverse stories. I don’t think that should be seen as something that’s a given in the industry and so I’m happy that Cosmo has allowed me to be extra “woke” when it comes to my story telling. I have my column, Yours, Mine Ours which is the intersection between black culture and beauty. I take it very seriously. It’s a badge of honor that I’m able to take up space at the biggest young woman’s media brand in the world and tell diverse stories. That is definitely my proudest achievement there.”
How would you describe the impact of say, a young teenage girl of color, who goes to a website looking at some of her favorite beauty products and she sees a model there that kind of looks like her?
“I mean it’s huge. I didn’t have that growing up. And the few times that you did see it, was obviously exciting and something that brought a lot of pride and joy to see someone of color being represented in your favorite magazine or website.”
“There’s not enough to be said about ‘you have to see what you want to be.’ And the fact that now more of our readers can see themselves in the pages, on the website and on our social media posts, is important. Otherwise, you’re doing the mental gymnastics of trying to figure out, ‘Well how would that blush look on me?’ ‘How would that lipstick look against my skin tone?’ If we’re not giving diversity within our diversity…you can’t just give us one Black model and think that you are being extra diverse. You have to show that there’s a new skin tone, there’s a new hair texture born every day.”
“We must do the work to continuously keep showing up and showing the world a reflection of themselves.”
Diversity in the beauty industry is very savvy because it’s great business, isn’t it?
“I mean of course. I always say that. When I talk to brands, I’m like, ‘you all don’t like making money if you’re not talking to the Black and Brown community.’ We over index especially in beauty spending. There’s so many rituals and ways in which we approach beauty that they’re not even thinking about. Bonnets and scarves on our heads…no one else is doing that. A woman who say is white, wouldn’t be having that whole beauty ritual at night without a million options. So, I do think that there’s a lot of business opportunity but it’s also the right thing to do. If you’re going to be putting something out into the world, do something that no one else has done.”
I love that! At the end of the day, Inclusivity in beauty is a very successful business model.
“It’s altruism that can also give you the profitability that you want. I feel that we must move away from just greed and scale and money and think about what you’re putting out into the world.”
“I was just having this conversation with someone around legacy. What is your legacy? How are we wielding the power that we have, the seats that we have at the table? When this is all said and done, because it ends, what are they going to write about you? What are you going to leave behind? That you just scaled a company to a billion dollars? That you died with all this money in the bank that you can’t take with you? Or did you contribute to society in a way or change people’s lives or tell stories that no one else was telling. I keep that as my north star of having a legacy that isn’t based in greed and profit.”
Now for some beauty product questions. There’s been a huge movement towards vegan skincare products.
“Skincare, haircare, everyone is kind of going vegan I think.”
What are some vegan skincare products or haircare products that you feel deserve the acclaim?
“I love Hyper Skin. You’ve got OG’s like Eminence, the ones who have been doing it for a long time and doing it well. Pacifica is vegan and they’re juggernaut to be able to be massive vegan and not have necessarily the weighty price tag of having people having to buy into the organic vegan small batch ingredients. I feel like Pacifica has done a real good job of bringing it to the masses.
Vitamin C Day is in April. Is there a particular brand that you feel really delivers on Vitamin C?
“There are so many. I mean obviously Beauty Stat. Number one product that you can get. I feel like that is just a given. I feel like the world knows that Ron is creating one of the best if not the best Vitamin C products on the shelf. I really love Olay . I think that they are just classic, Olay has a great Vitamin C and they keep figuring out how to deliver Vitamin C in very interesting ways. I also love this brand Epi.logic. They have an amazing Vitamin C serum and it’s Black owned by this amazing doctor, Doctor Jeanniton based in Brooklyn. And she has an amazing vitamin C as well. There’s so many good ones out there but I think those three are my constant go-to’s.”
What is the challenge for a beauty product to be both clean, sustainable and successful?
“I think right now we’re in a very interesting place with the whole idea of “clean beauty.” Does that include sustainability? Does it not? We’re trying to figure out what this universal definition will be. What boxes do you need to check to be “clean” or “sustainable” right?
“So it’s hard for me to answer that question when I think it’s still kind of the Wild Wild West when it comes to, ‘I have all clean products but then my packaging isn’t sustainable.’ Or like, ‘my packaging is sustainable, but we have some products in there that might be creating a large carbon footprint’ or are maybe not great on the scale of being natural or clean. I think we need to figure out what the difference of that is. Clean and sustainability. There’s a lot of brands that are thinking about it. Think about all the brands that are doing reusable packaging. The idea of buying a refillable palette isn’t a learned habit yet. But I do think that the beauty industry will get to a point where it’s going to become mandated. It’s just too much single use plastic.”
“And obviously, the clean of it all. I mean there are good chemicals out there. I feel like we must figure that out too and that definition. It’s a work in progress.”
You’re a mom, you’re heavily involved in the success of Cosmo, all sorts of people demand your time. What do you do just for you and you alone? So not magazine related, not family related just for Julee?
“I mean you have to carve out that time. I’ve got two kids. I’m living in New York City. I’m a hustler. I’m trying to create a career and a legacy that not only makes me proud but makes my family proud so like, there’ s no rest for the weary. But I have been carving out some time in the mornings and on the weekends to paint which is really odd because I would not consider myself an artist. The last art class I took was probably in middle school.”
‘I just needed something to help me with my anxiety and my anxiousness over what’s happening in the world. I mean, there’s a whole genocide happening. I’m also trying to be a great mom and a wife and an editor. So, in order to get my mind off of, ‘How am I going to pay my next bill?’ ‘Who’s going to be taking the kids to basketball practice?’ With all of those things, I’ve been finding real peace in painting. I literally just picked up a paint set, randomly at a store and decided I’m just going to start putting paint on paper and see what happens. But I’ve been really enjoying it and painting things that make me happy.”
That’s amazing that it was random and now it’s turned into something you need.
“I’ll paint products that I love. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. It’s like, I’m not selling these paintings. This is just for me and my own personal mental health and well-being. I started to share a little bit on my social media and people have been really into it. Like, ‘You should make them into stickers!’ The possibilities are endless but right now, it’s more a tool for me to work through my mental health stuff.”
If you turned it into a business, then you would have to find something else to deal with your anxiety.
“I talk to founders all the time and I think it’s admirable what they’re doing. It would give me agida because it’s so crazy to have to be round 1 raising and round 2 raising and vc funds and angel investors. I think there’s something to be said about also just creating something. Where did we lose just, ‘I created something with my mind and my heart and want to put it out into the world? If it scales it scales. If it doesn’t, that’s fine,’ and not putting that pressure on you. Just having the fans or the community that you create around that product or that idea flourish organically rather than forcing it into such a saturated marketplace and then also having maybe your mental health go down the drain with it.”
“I talk to a lot of these founders like I said and it’s so hard for them to juggle this thing that they started off as a passion and then it’s become this big like spiraling around the business aspect of it. I want success for everyone, but I also want them to maintain healthy mental health.”
I love the diversity that Cosmo is presenting. Are there other frontiers? What is the direction that Cosmo will be going in?
“Look, I mean our Editor-in-Chief Jessica Giles is just a bad ass and she uses data in a way that’s really inspiring. She really looks at our readership. She really understands what stories are resonating with them and then leads us as a team to push that. But I think that we’re just going to keep telling real authentic stories. That has been the recipe for success since the beginning.”
“We just did our first digital package with Lisa Rinna on the cover about sex after 60. A whole package where we interviewed women over 60 about their sex lives and what it’s like and what they learned in their life pre-sixty and what they’re learning now about themselves. That’s powerful to be able to say at a certain age you’re not washed up. We’re going to keep telling these stories and we’re going to meet you where you are.”
“We do have a very big Gen Z audience and we can still serve them, tell their stories and tell, say, a Millennial story. I’m a Millennial and I hope to be someone who makes it into their 60’s and I hope that stories are going to be written about me having a healthy and exciting sex life or what do I need for my beauty.”
“What we’ve always done, it’s just going to keep getting better.”
Gen Z is more politically active and more socially aware.
“They are. I think that all the generations are too. They care but we all care, right? We have to feed that curiosity and that desire to want to be a part of the political landscape or understanding world issues because they are our future.”
“I’m also raising Gen Alpha, I have two Gen Alpha kids that I want to make sure are also kind, feeling and curious. I feel like those three things, kind curious and caring will make sure that they’re set up for a very healthy and happy life because those are all things that contribute to being a good person in society. Also, that curiosity will make them want to learn about their world behind their own block and want to make it better. We have to stop thinking about just us. There’s a whole world out there that needs our mindshare, ideas and I want to raise kids that think that way.”
Landing International CEO Sarah Chung Park. Photo: Elogee Studio
Sarah Chung Park
How did the concept of Landing International come about?
“I’ve been in the beauty space for over 20 years all behind the scenes. I worked with a lot of brands including Amore Pacific when they first launch in the U.S. They were a big brand in Korea, but no one knew about them in the States. I worked with so many brands that were trying to get into Sephora or CVS or Target. Helping them with their business plan, raising money. And it kind of evolved into helping them to get what they really want which is sales through retail presence.”
“We have a technology platform that is very focused on helping brands succeed while they are also living out their diversity and inclusivity values. Our education tool, Beauty Fluent, is a mobile app and it helps brands to allow customers to search them by their diverse values. So, let’s say you want to support a female founder. A sales associate can look and say, “Here are the female founders that have color brands.” We also have partnerships where we do shade matching. It’s very hard to shade match me if you’re a Caucasian woman and so we have an app that does that for you.”
K beauty has really taken off in a big way. I think a lot of that had to do with the ingredients, better for your skin and not so many harsh chemicals.
“And I think that we launched with K beauty, we launched the k beauty prestige section at Ulta. And then we expanded to Jbeauty,, Southeast Asian beauty, Black owned beauty, female founded beauty. I’ve launched over 200 brands that are bipop female founded lgbtq+ and we’re really focused on helping diverse brands succeed and serve diverse customers.”
I know that vegan cosmetics, vegan skincare has really taken off. So let me ask you this. Which vegan brands do you feel really serves that need for a high-quality vegan product, one that actually works that you yourself use?
“Well one of our partners that uses our app, Good Light, I know is vegan and I love their products. I think it also depends on if it’s important for you to have all products in that brand are vegan or certain products. So if it’s like a values based thing where you don’t believe in using animal by parts, then I think that there are, like COSRX is a brand that we work with and they have a lot of vegan products in addition to their bee products and their snail products.”
This is on a more personal level. I know that you’re a mom, you run a business, you are beyond busy. What do you do just for you? Not your family, not your business, just you.
“The funny thing is I love going to a café by myself. I got married at 41. I had my first child at 44 so I lived a very long simple life where I would travel by myself. And I love going to a café by myself and working on my laptop or like doing a gratitude journal and it kind of helps me to just to reconnect with myself. I like to just observe people, not have to engage in like, active conversations. So, I’ll get a babysitter and I’ll just go to a café.”
That is wonderful. You’ve got to rejuvenate yourself.
“I will say this, I have loved putting on this summit, but after tomorrow I will go to a café, and I will just sit there for two hours and I will not say one word. “
What has been to you the highlight of this summit so far?
“So far, it’s been the brand founders. I felt very welcomed. I felt very included. The content was great but the people were kind. I think that is the most important thing to me.”
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On our cover: Sarah Chung Park and Ciara. Photo by Claire Painchaud.
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