How Will Beauty Perform During The Holiday Shopping Season?

Holiday shopping season — one of beauty’s most consequential sales periods — has arrived. 

Earlier than usual, in fact, according to data from Bank of America, which shows that more than half of consumers, or 52 percent, began buying holiday gifts before October in an effort to maximize savings by planning ahead.

This in part due to decreased consumer sentiment versus last year: The University of Michigan’s October Sentiment Index indicates consumer confidence slid for the third month in a row in October — sitting higher than in April when President Trump first introduced new tariffs, but lower than it was in January. 

“In general, consumer sentiment is not great, but consumer sentiment toward beauty is different from consumer sentiment overall,” said Larissa Jensen, global beauty industry adviser at Circana, pointing to the “lipstick index” phenomenon in which beauty sales tend to show resilience relative to other categories during times of economic turmoil. 

In 2024, 23.4 percent of annual beauty sales occurred during the November and December holiday period, up 0.5 percentage points from the year prior, data from NielsenIQ shows. 

“We expect that rhythm to hold steady this year, based on the year-to-date trend,” said Jacqueline Flam Stokes, senior vice president of beauty retail at NielsenIQ. 

Still, with beauty’s overall growth tempering this year, particularly in the prestige market, many expect holiday sales growth will endure the same.  

“We do anticipate there will be positive performance, but likely softer than we’ve seen in years past, just because we’re now anniversarying four years of strong growth in the fourth quarter,” said Jensen. 

The Consumer Outlook

Because the holiday season tends to “accentuate the trends that we see as we move through the year,” said Anna Lizzul, vice president of equity research at Bank of America, fragrance will likely be a key category, while others like prestige makeup will see softer sales, in part due to less innovation in the space versus years prior.

But beyond a dip in innovation-fueled gifting excitement, uncertain economic conditions are having a growing impact on consumer spending, as well.

“We’re seeing a large bifurcation in spending between low-income consumers, who continue to be squeezed and thus tighten their spending, while the higher-income cohort has been more resilient in overall spending — though we’re now beginning to see challenges with wages and job growth,” Lizzul said. 

Gen Z, too, is beginning to feel pressure, particularly those who “might be struggling to find employment following college graduation,” she continued. Though the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not release a September job report due to the ongoing government shutdown, a September ADP National Employment Report shows 32,000 private-sector jobs were shed in September alone, with hiring growth also seeing a slowdown. 

These are likely contributing factors to why consumers are getting a head start on shopping for the holidays, which according to Adobe Digital Insights will see discount levels on par with the 2023 holiday season, and not as steep as the 2024 season. 

“There are a few factors which have elevated prices a bit this year — tariff announcements, which caused some consumers to stock up on certain goods — but because there is so much more competition in the online retailer space, consumers will still be able to win out with decent deals,” said Vivek Pandya, director of Adobe Digital Insights at Adobe. 

Beauty’s Expected Big Winners

A 2025 Holiday Shopping Intentions survey from Circana indicates 60 percent of consumers plan to do both online and in-store shopping for the holidays, with fragrance being the number-one category they plan to spend on, followed by skin care, makeup and hair care, respectively. 

Hair tools, though, are a seasonal standout, with nearly one-third of annual sales happening during the holiday period, according to NielsenIQ, which reports that TikTok Shop — which has catapulted brands in the category like Wavytalk and The Beachwaver Co. to success — drives 29 percent of that volume. 

Beauty is the number-one category by revenue on TikTok Shop, and was responsible for 19 percent of the platform’s sales last November and December, according to data from Charm.io. This holiday season, brands like Medicube, Tarte Cosmetics, Wavytalk and K-beauty line Dr. Melaxin and dupe fragrance brand BellaVita Luxury are expected to be among the top-sellers. 

Yes, even dupes will be gifting items, particularly within a category like fragrance which benefits from its breadth of offerings — in price, format and beyond. 

“If you want to have a value gift, if you want to indulge, there’s something for everybody,” said Jensen. Prestige fragrances currently comprise more than 80 percent of the category’s sales, but mass-market fragrances are growing at a faster clip this year, and “there’s going to be growth across both,” during the holidays, said Jensen. 

According to NielsenIQ’s Holiday Sentiment Survey, bath and body products track just behind fragrance as a top gifting category, with 69 percent of consumers citing those as a go-to gift. More broadly, these products fit into a broader “self care” category which experts expect to be a significant holiday driver for beauty.

According to Adobe, “wellness will be a bigger gifting item this year than years prior, and a bright spot for overall holiday season spending,” Pandya said, pointing to health tracking devices like Oura Rings as a leading beneficiary of this predicted boom. 

NielsenIQ also reports reports that supplements are seeing growth now, as are candles, prestige hair care, K-beauty, and facial devices as “consumers step back from professional services [due to economic pressures] and invest in pro-grade at-home treatments,” said Flam Stokes.  

Even though makeup as a whole may not be a standout this season, Adobe predicts celebrity makeup brands will grow 8.7 percent year-over-year during the holidays, fueled in part by trendy brands like Hailey Bieber’s Rhode and its increased distribution at Sephora, while skin care-infused makeup will also grow 15.1 percent. 

On Amazon, Laneige and Sol de Janeiro were among the top quarter-over-quarter share gainers during the fourth quarter of 2024, growing more than 300 percent and more than 140 percent, respectively, and are expected to be top-performers again, per Navigo Marketing. Even though consumers are by and large taking an omnichannel approach to holiday shopping, Circana’s holiday survey indicates Amazon as one of the highest online-only websites by consumer purchase intent.

More broadly, Adobe anticipates a 520 percent year-over-year jump in product link traffic from large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT during the holidays as consumers increasingly use ChatGPT to shop, and reports that more than half of total online holiday spend this year will be conducted via mobile device. Influencer affiliate links, in particular, will be an important sales converter, which retailers seem to know, given recent creator affiliate program launches from companies like Sephora and Gap Inc., which is soon entering beauty.

“While we may see a greater pullback in other areas of discretionary spend, beauty tends to hold on a little bit better than other categories,” said Lizzul, adding that third-quarter earnings reports from beauty giants like The Estée Lauder Cos., Coty and E.l.f. within the coming weeks will paint a clearer picture for how beauty will fare for the rest of the year.