Millie Bobby Brown and her brand Florence by Mills proved one of the hottest beauty brands of 2022
2022 proved to be quite the year for Stranger Things and Enola Holmes actress Millie Bobby Brown, with her beauty brand Florence by Mills proving a standout, with millions of followers, searches, and social engagement.
Online beauty discovery platform, Cosmetify, has released its new Cosmetify Index, which reveals a 2022 rundown of the global beauty industry.
The report explores the hottest brands, the year’s most popular hair brands, the hottest beauty retailers, the world’s most powerful influencers, rising stars of beauty, the most sustainable brands, and much more.
This year, the world made a switch, preferring sustainable, natural ingredients in their products.
2022’s hottest beauty brands ranked
Cosmetify took five major factors into account to reveal the hottest beauty brands of 2022. Ranking each brand on the increase in search interest as shown on Google Trends, with the overall brand searches each month, the number of Instagram tags and followers, and the brand’s ‘engagement rate’ on the social platform, the results are:
- Florence By Mills
- CeraVe
- Glossier
- The Body Shop (also top of the charts in New Zealand)
- Estee Lauder
- Revolution
- Yves Rocher
- Olaplex
- Fenty Beauty
- Caudalie
Already-established celebrities possess a powerful platform in which to shout about their brand and get their message across. Florence by Mills, named after Millie Bobby Brown’s (aka Mills) beloved grandmother Florence, stormed into the top spot this year with impressive Instagram engagement (3.1 million Instagram followers and one million Instagram hashtags).
In the second spot, CeraVe is the number-one dermatologist-recommended skincare brand, with 18.4 million searches in the last 12 months, an increase of 26.62% on the previous year.
Another fresh new brand featuring in the top 10 is Glossier, a minimalist cosmetics brand that boasts 2.6 million Instagram followers, with a profile featuring influencer collaborations, tips, tricks, and videos.
Headlining the charts in New Zealand, and taking fourth place overall is The Body Shop. The UK-based skincare beauty and bath brand was also crowned the most searched beauty brand in the world, with more than 40 million Google searches.
Estee Lauder products are sold in approximately 150 countries (with brand names including Estee Lauder, Aramis, Clinique, Lab Series, Origins, MAC, La Mer, and Bobbi Brown). Estee Lauder has 4.3 million followers on Instagram and its Google searches have gone up 7.71% in the last year.
Cosmetify’s top sustainable brands
With sustainability and eco-friendly products proving a key focus for brands in the 2022 Cosmetify Index report, some of the sustainable brands that users at Cosmetify have been loving the most are below:
ILIA: a skincare and make-up brand that offers skincare-powered make-up and strives towards recycled packaging and prioritising the end of make-up life to ensure products don’t end up at a landfill.
UpCircle: with a mission to repurpose what would be waste ingredients to create award-winning skincare and beauty products, the UpCircle story started with giving used coffee grounds a new lease of life.
Biolage: professional haircare with all products having a vegan formula, cruelty-free and made out of 100% recyclable materials.
Aveda: the first beauty company to use 100% post-consumer recycled PET packaging, Aveda has been leading the way in sustainability for some time.
REN: a clean skincare brand that endeavours to produce sustainable products and launched a Zero Waste Pledge in 2018.
Social media stars
Many of the faces behind beauty brands are just as well-known as the products themselves. Cosmetify revealed that the world’s most Followed On Socials brands of 2022 are Huda Beauty (50.8 million Instagram followers), followed by Kylie Cosmetics (25.9 million) and MAC Cosmetics (24.5 million).
Beauty influencers
When it comes to the Most Powerful Beauty Influencers, Cosmetify inspected follower accounts on YouTube and Instagram, as well as potential income earned from sponsored posts. The top three beauty influencers of 2022 are James Charles (who also topped the list in 2021 with a combined total of 52.1 million across Instagram and YouTube, despite some high-profile controversies in the last year he kept his top spot); Mari Maria (a Brazilian beauty guru who became an influencer phenomenon and now boasts 30.1 million across both platforms); and Bretman Rock (rose to fame with a series of viral contouring videos and has gone on to star in his own reality TV show. Born in the Philippines but based in Hawaii).
The Rising Stars of Beauty are decided from among beauty brands that have seen the biggest increase in interest over the last 12 months. With a 95% increase, Italian make-up and skincare brand Kiko Milano tops this list. Since its founding in 1997, there are now more than 1000 Kiko Milano stores in 21 countries. The brand had a small search volume of 2476 in 2021, which exploded to 4.8 million in the last 12 months.
The debut brand of runway make-up artist Charlotte Tilbury is not a newbie, but nevertheless has blown up in popularity in the last year, thanks to her platform on TikTok.Charlotte’s brand had a search volume of just under 10m in 2021, and this has risen to almost 15.5 million in the last year.
IsaDora cosmetics, established in 1983, was voted Sweden’s most popular cosmetics brand and has enjoyed a 54% increase from 2021.
Each country’s favourite brand
When it comes to specifying each country’s favourite brand, Cosmetify noticed some changes in this space. Avon dominated all other brands and was a staple for 21 countries. Oriflame has headed back into one of the most popular brands, as the most searched-for beauty brand in 19 countries. There has been a dramatic increase in love for Origins and Nordstrom, with 19 countries opting for Origins and 17 for Nordstrom. Other popular brands around the world include Revolution, The Body Shop, and Rituals, making for a varied picture of favourites this year.
Images by Florence by Mills and ILIA