LONDON — It was a Saturday afternoon at London’s Westfield Stratford City mall, and fast fashion stores were still trying to prove they could sell beauty, too.
At Zara, the tidy cosmetics section was mostly a day care for boyfriends and husbands whose other halves queued for the nearby cash registers. H&M Beauty’s minishops had the searing white lights and duochrome palette of a Sephora or a MAC Cosmetics store. By far, Primark carried the most abundant assortment, spanning every conceivable beauty category from makeup tools to press-ons nails and skincare.
Apparel retailers have long tried to pull off adjacent beauty businesses, often in fits and starts. In 1994, Gap first launched a bath and body line, discontinued it and then tried again with the help of specialist firm Interparfums between 2007 and 2015. The US retail giant hopes the third time is the charm, with former Nordstrom beauty head Deb Redmond currently overseeing a rollout of beauty into Gap and Old Navy. Old Navy’s new beauty selection has already arrived at 150 (out of over 1,100) US stores, 45 of which have dedicated shop-in-shops. The range includes private label body lotions and mists in scents like Amber Vibe and Vanilla Crush as well as products from E.l.f. Beauty, Garnier and Neutrogena, all under $25.
The problem for retailers is sticking the landing. Zara has offered everything from hair products to fragrance; H&M-owned & Other Stories continually launches new products and retains a dedicated PR agency for beauty. But the fact remains that these stores are frequently within steps of a Sephora, Ulta Beauty or Space NK. (Even closer? TikTok Shop and Amazon, literally in customers’ pockets.)
“The challenge comes down to execution,” said Luc-Henry Rousselle, a managing director at investment bank DC Advisory specialising in beauty and personal care — investing not only in product quality but in its surrounding environment.
Arguably the most successful experiment of its kind was Victoria’s Secret Beauty, thanks to a convergence of factors that almost certainly can never happen again.
“Resources, talent, autonomy. These were part of the ingredients of how the Victoria Beauty business got started,” said Leslee King, founder of Real Street Retail Research and a former chief merchant for VS Beauty. Les Wexner, the founder of L Brands, brought in Robin Burns from The Estée Lauder Companies to build the company’s beauty divison. Burns stayed in New York, where she could hire the best talent, while benefitting from the Ohio-based operational efficiencies of sister brand Bath & Body Works, which could bring new products to stores at Mach 5 speed.
VS had a multicategory prestige offering, with So Sexy hair and makeup lines and a strategic skincare partnership with Shiseido. After Lancôme released its Juicy Tubes, VS had their own version called Beauty Rush “overnight” said King — with Gisele as the face and placement at cash registers. The business began to change shape in the late 2000s, when the retailer cut its designated beauty sales staff and pivoted to perfumes. The retailer’s products “had to sell themselves,” King said, which is now what every fast fashion beauty line has to do. Customers don’t wander into Victoria’s Secret or H&M looking for concealers or perfumes, but might be inclined to pick them up under the right circumstances.
In these environments, beauty products have to be sampleable, Rousselle pointed out. “These retailers have an edge on merchandising and trial,” he said, but need to find ways to make their offerings stand out. VS pared its beauty assortment back to body mists, shimmery lotions and lip products, which still drive healthy revenue for the business: In the year ended Oct. 2025, Victoria’s Secret generated $400 million in beauty sales in the US.
Making it Emotional
The business case for launching beauty is obvious. Gap’s beauty line was estimated to generate between $200 and $300 million in 1996 retail sales — 6 percent of its overall revenue that year, but a third of Banana Republic’s entire take. VS Beauty scaled from about $250 million in the late 1990s to $1 billion by 2010, aided by the launch of the Bombshell fragrance, King said.
Fragrance is now beauty’s fastest growing category, and explains why more recent strategies revolve around perfumes. The other tried-and-true assortment strategy involves dupes, which makes sense given fast fashion’s overall business model. “Some consumers are shopping for the copy of the latest fashions, not going straight to the designer,” Rousselle said.
Primark offers the most brazen example of this strategy, stocking its stores with private label lines that bear a strong resemblance to lines like Charlotte Tilbury, Summer Fridays or Bubble. The sheer abundance of their assortment, coupled with prices largely below $30, make it easy to drop this or that into the store’s wheeled shopping baskets.
Zara flexed its fashion associations with its own beauty line in 2021 with makeup and hair products developed with backstage pros Diane Kendal and Guido Palau respectively. But what customers prefer are its dupes of prestige and niche perfumes from Chanel or Maison Francis Kurkdjian.
For Victoria’s Secret, glittery vanilla-scented lotion is on brand, but it raises the question of what beauty authority a Gap, a Zara or an H&M has in the first place.
It’s “emotional relevance” that makes a beauty product covetable in these environments, said King. “There’s always a market for high value, low price point things.”
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