Beauty Guru Battle

The world of YouTube beauty guru’s has been booming for the past few years. These gurus make videos testing makeup, showing tutorials, and doing all sorts of crazy makeup challenges for their thousands and up to millions of subscribers.

There has been an abundance of drama recently regarding some beauty gurus by the names of Jeffree Star, Manny Gutierrez (Manny MUA), Laura Lee, Nikita Dragun, and Gabriel (Gabby) Zamora.

Pictured (L to R): Gabriel Zamora, Nikita Dragun, Jeffree Star(circle), Manny MUA, and Laura Lee

The group used to be good friends and they participated in multiple YouTube videos alongside each other. Manny even created a line with Jeffree Star’s brand Jeffree Star Cosmetics. An uproar began when the four began separating themselves from Jeffree and creating their own clique. Multiple members of the group even took to social media to scold Jeffree for racist behavior.

Pictured: Tweet posted by Gabriel Zamora directed at Jeffree Star

After the accusations toward Jeffree, fans searched through Gabby, Nikita, Manny, and Laura’s twitter pages and found racist tweets from their pasts. These tweets began to surface and go viral and the follow and subscriber count for the 4 began to drop and people were labeling them as “CANCELLED”. Typically, when someone is pronounced as cancelled, it means their career is over, etc.

Nikita has basically ignored the accusations and has not mumbled a word about the situation. Gabriel has posted a heartfelt apology video and has partly mended his career. Laura Lee stayed completely quiet from social media for around a month, and fans were beginning to wonder where she was.

After Laura Lee’s absence, she resurfaced to create an apology video. She received tons of backlash regarding the video and accusations of her crying being ingenuine.

Laura Lee Racist Tweet

Recently, she deleted her old apology and created a new one, but people still aren’t having it. There are many tweets regarding the situation, many of them stating how she is just (badly) acting to try and salvage her career.

Manny MUA has been completely silent since the situation began and has not spoken out on any of his social media platforms, so it is unclear when or how he will make his return.

The beauty community is cut throat and this recent issue has brought up accusations toward many other YouTubers. It will definitely be interesting to see these gurus next moves to protect their crumbling careers. This just goes to show the internet is forever and things can always be dug up from the past.

Fast Fashion

“Fast Fashion” or “Copycat Couture” have become commonly used terms in today’s fashion world. In this era of social media, smaller brands that typically hand make all of their clothing are using outlets such as twitter and instagram to advertise their work.

Some of these designers have even gained enough popularity to design custom clothing pieces for big celebrities like Rihanna, Jennifer Lopez, and Beyonce.

“Copycat Couture” is when a bigger corporation, such as Forever 21 or Fashion Nova, copies designs from these smaller social media based or lesser known brands. It can also be when street vendors forge things like designer handbags and belts and sell them as authentic.

A recent copycat couture scandal has arisen between fashion powerhouse Fashion Nova and California-based designer Bao Tranchi. Tranchi had the opportunity to design a dress for JLo, and Fashion Nova stole the design and (cheaply) produced it to sell on their website.

Pictured: Bao Tranchi’s message to Fashion Nova after seeing they had stolen her design, the original dress, and Fashion Nova’s recreation.

Other designers are rushing to aid and defend Tranchi in this, as they are also fed up with putting hard work into their designs only for a big name company to completely rip them off.

One designer in particular who has a lot to say on the subject is Destiney Bleu, owner of online lingerie and clothing brand, Dbleudazzled. Bleu also promotes her brand through social media and puts countless hours of hard work into her designs.

With as popular as Dbleudazzled has become through social media, Destiney Bleu is no stranger to copycat couture either. When Bleu discovered that celebrity Khloe Kardashian was producing clothing for her Good American brand that looked very similar to Bleu’s own designs, she acted immediately.

Destiny Bleu responded to one of Khloe’s Good American promotional videos and said, “When someone buys 1 of everything on your site, has you make them custom @dbleudazzled work, never posts or wears it, then copies it.” This tweet caused quite an uproar within Khloe’s brand and eventually Bleu was sent a cease and desist letter for defamation of Khloe Kardashian’s character and accused Bleu of making false statements.

Pictured: Destiney Bleu’s original tweet calling out Khloe
Kardashian for stolen designs.

Smaller brands work tirelessly to create new and unique designs and build a base of customers. It is a huge offense to steal another designers ideas and products especially if it is a small brand who is still trying to work their way to the top.

Sources/Further information: https://www.google.com/amp/s/people.com/style/destiney-bleu-responds-to-khloe-kardashian-defamation-cease-and-desist-letter/amp/

Beauty Boom

The beauty community has grown in popularity hugely over the past few years. In this age of booming social media, “influencers” have begun to take over. There are many types of influencers that brands are using to campaign and advertise for them, such as fitness models, beauty gurus, fashion bloggers, and gamers. Influencers often use their social media platforms with thousands (or millions) of followers to promote certain brands in exchange for payment or free product. Many of these influencers have made these promotions and advertisements a full-time job and have been able to afford new cars, new homes, and expensive designer clothes.

One of the biggest businesses at this time is the beauty business. Multiple brands are teaming up with YouTubers and Instagrammers and various bloggers that have a large following to either promote their brand or collaborate with their brand to create a new product.

Jaclyn Hill, for example, is a big name in the YouTube and Instagram beauty community. Jaclyn has 5.7 million followers on her Instagram page and 5.4 million subscribers on her YouTube channel as of September 4, 2018. Jaclyn has done multiple collaborations with different brands but one of her most recent would be her “Jaclyn Hill Palette” and “Master Brush Collection” with California-based brand Morphe Brushes.

Pictured: Jaclyn Hill with her “Jaclyn Hill Palette”(left) and “Master Brush Collection”(right).

The “Jaclyn Hill Palette” sold 1 million units at $38 in 2017 alone. The palette is still being carried online at morphebrushes.com and major beauty retailer Ulta. Jaclyn Hill’s success is just one example of how multiple influencers have started sharing their love for makeup online and grown their following into a full-time job.

Instagram ads have almost taken over the feeds of instagram users. There are “Instagram models” who act as influencers for clothing and makeup companies, and all sorts of brands. The influencer world is huge right now and growing rapidly every day.

These four photos are screenshots from various advertisements from Instagrammers. As you can see, even huge celebrities like Kim Kardashian, who has a whopping 116 million followers, do paid promotions. All of the other Instagrammers pictured have above 1 million followers, making them perfect candidates for promotions.

Influencer advertising is a smart move from beauty and clothing companies. These companies will send out their product to popular social media users and give them instructions on what and when to post about their product. They can be offered simply the free product or even large amounts of money for their product to be reviewed. Most beauty companies have a “PR list” of influencers to send their products to every time they put out a new release.

At first, you may look at the job title of “Influencer” and think, “What the heck is that?”, or maybe think that it cannot possibly be a real job. The beauty community is huge right now and being an influencer can really pay off and earn you lots of money. If influencer’s play their cards right, they can land numerous campaigns and collaborations with well known-brands and grow their name to celebrity status.