Style is a living, breathing response to and architect of culture. Increasingly, it’s being shaped by independent creators and everyday consumers.
This was the core idea at the heart of a lively onstage discussion at ADWEEK’s Brandweek 2025 event in Atlanta on Monday. Marketing executives at some of the largest style and beauty brands told a packed room about the trends they’re seeing develop.
Luggage and lifestyle brand Béis has seen a shift from skin-deep sheen to authenticity play out across its social feeds. A few years ago, the content “was completely different,” according to Liz Money, the company’s senior vice president of brand and creative. “We were all about aesthetics and kind of showing [an] aspirational idea of style. And now, the way that culture has changed, we’ve leaned into making our employees the face of things.”
Earlier this year, the brand spotlighted its own staff in a campaign promoting a new line of travel-ready products developed in collaboration with Gap. The brand launched another joint product line with Selena Gomez’s cosmetics label Rare Beauty on Monday.
That campaign also stars real Béis employees—an initiative of “humanizing the brand,” Money said.
Gap, for its part, has gone through its own evolution. In recent years, it’s made a strategic effort to position its brand more squarely in the zeitgeist. It’s done so by working with culture-defining stars and creators whose messages resonate with Gap’s target customers.
In August, the apparel brand made waves with an energetic, youthful denim campaign starring the girl group Katseye. It fused Y2K music nostalgia with the hyperrelevance of the summer’s culture war (playing out in competing denim ads responding to Sydney Sweeney’s controversial American Eagle spot). The campaign was an instant hit: It attracted 400 million views in three days, and, according to Gap, won over 8 billion total impressions.
“Were we expecting 8 billion impressions? No. But we were hoping to become viral, and more importantly for us was making sure that our community was engaging and sharing,” Faby Torres, global CMO at Gap, told moderator Lauren Finney Harden onstage at Brandweek.
“Our purpose is to champion originality and self-expression,” Torres added.
Self-expression, of course, means a wide range of backgrounds and viewpoints. Catering to real consumers of all expressions is a tall order. It demands high degrees of curiosity, empathy, and adaptability.
Another brand determined to meet consumers where they are is beauty retail giant Sephora, which has for years evidenced a commitment to equity and inclusion in beauty.
“Beauty is self-expression,” said Anne Cambria, the company’s senior vice president of marketing for brand, retail, creative, and insights. “And our job as a brand is to help amplify the diverse voices and wanting to be the most diverse beauty retailer there is. In humanizing that, sharing the stories, sharing the client stories, their journeys with beauty, [we can achieve that].”
The company is embodying this message in much of its marketing. Last month, the retailer worked with Rare Beauty on a push for youth mental health. In August, the company became an official partner of Athletes Unlimited Softball League, a new professional league for women. Around the same time, its The Perfect Shade For You campaign promoted diverse identities across the Asia Pacific region.
For Sephora, speaking to the diversity of perspectives across its client portfolio and vast consumer base helps position the brand as a leader in the beauty category.
“How do you have this authority as a brand or retailer in this world where it is all about self-expression and It’s about how you empower your clients,” Cambria said. “What we really try to pay attention to is our community and really understanding where and when there’s different content or voices that we need to amplify so that our clients can see themselves within those communities. That’s how you kind of become that authority for them.”
As the lively conversation wrapped Monday afternoon, one takeaway became clear: The future of style will be defined by real people.