To receive the Glossy Pop newsletter in your inbox every Friday, click here.
All products featured on Glossy Pop are independently selected by our editorial team. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
K-beauty is having a moment, again. And in the coming months, it’s set to go from all over your TikTok FYP to the shelves of your nearest Sephora. In February, two new K-beauty brands will hit the retailer’s shelves, and, according to Brooke Banwart, svp of skin-care merchandising, the retailer will be doubling its K-beauty portfolio this year.
In the December 27 issue, the Glossy Pop Newsletter dubbed the current moment the “second wave” of K-beauty. Now, Aestura, Korea’s top dermatologist-recommended brand and part of the Amorepacific family, is launching at Sephora. On February 14, both online and in-stores, the retailer will introduce nine Aestura SKUs, including one new launch, with prices ranging from $21-$34. They’ll include products from the brand’s hero Atobarrier365 collection, which uses patented technology featuring encapsulated ceramides to hydrate the skin and boost the skin’s barrier.
“We’ve prioritized curating a best-in-class assortment of brands for our clients, going deeper into educating on the benefits and bringing key trends from Korea to the U.S.,” said Banwart. “We hope to show consumers that ‘K-beauty’ is not just a trend and that Korean skin care should be taken seriously as a category, giving it the credit that it deserves. We anticipate that Korean skin care is a category that is here to stay.”
Many of these brands will be featured in Sephora’s in-store “Next Big Thing” fixture, which is a multi-branded space that Banwart hopes will serve as a “one-stop shop” for clients to discover and shop Korean beauty brands.
Though Aestura was founded in 1982, it did not exist under its current brand name until 2015. The 365 collection launched in 2018. Aided by its 2018 launch at Olive Young (the Sephora of Korea) and, more recently, by TikTok, Aestura has become one of Amorepacific’s fastest-growing brands. The conglomerate owns more than 30 brands in its home country, not all of which have presences stateside.
“Amorepacific has a very strong, longstanding relationship with Sephora. We, as a group, work very closely with [them], in terms of our new brands and our new launches, [and consider] what opportunities there are to help grow K-beauty,” said Brian Lee, Aestura’s U.S. gm. As such, it’s a safe bet that more of the conglomerate’s brands will soon be launching at the retailer.
About six months ago, the Sephora team visited Amorepacific’s U.S. office where Lee showed them Aestura’s collection. “Fortunately, they already knew about [the brand],” he said. That was, unsurprisingly, also thanks to TikTok, where the brand’s Atobarrier365 Cream is a hit. The brand now sells one every seven seconds, and the product has been the No. 1 ranked cream at Olive Young for the last two years, based on sales revenue in the cream category. In Korea, an appearance on the popular reality show “Single’s Inferno” also contributed to its popularity.
The growth of the derm, or doctor-led category was also part of Sephora’s draw to the brand, Lee said, pointing to brands like Dr. Sturm and Dr. Idriss. Though Aestura is neither helmed by nor named after a dermatologist, it works with 47 of them in Korea and a growing number stateside — and not just to promote the brand, but also to help develop its products. Dermatologist-approved brands like Cerave have been industry leaders in recent years, which presents an opportunity for brands like Aestura. It’s less expensive than some of Sephora’s other offerings in the category, but can still fit in with the retailer’s other prestige offerings.
Aestura isn’t the only K-beauty brand entering the retailer this year.
On a December 5 episode of The Glossy Beauty Podcast, Sumin Lee, founder of Beauty of Joseon, revealed that the brand would be launching at Sephora around August of 2025. The TikTok-viral brand is best known for its sunscreen.
Biodance, meanwhile, will hit Sephora’s shelves on February 28. The brand’s sheet mask became a beauty superstar last year, also having gone viral on TikTok. Users documented themselves sleeping in it and revealing their “glass skin” results as they peeled it off in the morning. Sephora will carry five SKUs in stores, including four of the brand’s hero sheet masks and its toner pads, which represent a K-beauty trend of the moment. The retailer will sell an additional 10 products online. Prices range from $19-$45.
It should be noted that all three brands are also available on Amazon, and Biodance and Aestura also sell certain products at K-beauty retailer Sokoglam. Sokoglam founder Charlotte Cho’s own brand, Then I Met You, launched at Sephora in October.
The influencer Yuri Lee (827,000 followers) had one of the first viral videos about Biodance’s most famous product — the Bio-Collagen Real Deep Mask — in October 2023. The post, where she dubs the mask the “pore eraser mask” has over 809,000 likes. “Thanks to her, a cycle of viral content started; other influencers — mega, nano and mid-sized — all started to create content because the product itself was quite new to the market. It was easy for them to create viral content because the visual effect — the before-and-after — was quite amazing,” said Hanjun Kim, head of global at Biodance.
The brand’s masks are different from traditional sheet masks, he said. Rather than simply serum absorbed by a fabric material, they are composed of serum solidified into a mask itself.
In 2024, Biodance started to work with more American influencers in a formal manner. They included Sarah Palmyra (1.1 million TikTok followers), who has also has worked with Aestura on paid partnerships and often creates K-beauty-related content. The brand also enlisted Tatyana Lafata (911,000 TikTok followers). Now, it has a group of 700 “core VIP” influencers in the U.S., who, Hanjun Kim said, are “very good at creating high-quality content and at educating their followers.”
Biodance is a young brand — it launched in 2021 — but it has sold 40 million of that viral sheet mask globally, and its sales grew 10x year-over-year from 2023 to 2024. Since January 2024, it has maintained the No. 1 position in the facial mask category on Amazon, and since July 2024, it has consistently ranked in the top 10 of Amazon’s entire beauty and personal care category. “Given the strong brand awareness and positive reputation we’ve built for our mask, now is the ideal moment to leverage this momentum and introduce a broader range of products to the market. Sephora is more than a retail channel. It’s more like a brand-building partner. They don’t simply stock and sell products. They actively collaborate with brands on marketing and branding initiatives, fostering long-term growth,” Hanjun Kim said.
A 2018 Self.com article, “The 11 best Korean skin-care products at Sephora, according to customers” illustrates the transformation the K-beauty industry has been through over the past seven years. Brands included in the article like Saturday Skin, Neogen and Son & Park are no longer carried by Sephora.
Regarding this shift, Banwart said, “Korean beauty has disrupted the industry over the past decade, setting a higher standard for clients’ expectations from their skin-care products. Once best known for its unique jelly-like textures and a baby pink aesthetic, Korean skin care is now more rooted in efficacious products with high-quality ingredients, all at an approachable price point. We’re seeing that consumers are resonating with the [Korean] philosophy that skin care is a preventative and long-term investment and look forward to seeing how this category continues to grow and gain recognition.”
“K-beauty is a category that has had its ups and downs,” Lee said, noting that it’s been a decade since it first began to gain traction in the U.S. “It’s not a fad anymore; it’s not a trend. … With the growth of the K-beauty sector, consumers have also begun to grow and understand that it’s not just about being cute and fun and very accessible and tied to K-pop or K-drama. … Every K-beauty brand is different. There is so much effort [in Korea] that goes into research, technology, the formulations and even the delivery systems.”
And K-beauty brands have also grown, learning more about what matters to U.S. customers, Lee said. On the makeup side, they better understand that having an inclusive shade range is important and have made improvements there. Plus, they know what U.S. customers value, including brand tenets such as sustainability.
Trend of the week: On TikTok, a post inauguration spike in underconsumption
It’s been less than a week since Donald Trump was inaugurated for the second time, but consumers have already taken to expressing their displeasure with the new president by announcing a new commitment to underconsumption. The trend echoes back to two years ago, when “de-influencing” first became a thing, but with overtly political rationale. The TikToker @LivingPlanetFriendly announced a commitment to vote with her dollar for “at least the next four years” and not spend “an unnecessary dime.” The post has over 17,000 likes. The commitment includes only purchasing makeup or skin care if something else has run out. Comments include commitments to cancel Amazon services — in protest of Jeff Bezos, its billionaire founder who attended the inauguration — and others committing to do the same.
In a post with over 80,000 likes, user Sarah Brand says, “And if you needed help spending less money, I’ve got your trick. You just ask yourself: is this worth stimulating Donald Trump’s economy? And almost always, the answer is no.”
Brands continue to show support in the wake of the LA fires
Anine Bing, which donated over 200 boxes of clothing to Angelenos impacted by the fires over the past two weeks, has launched a T-shirt with 100% of proceeds benefiting the LAFD Foundation. “My heart truly belongs to this city, and I knew immediately that I needed to help however I could,” Anine Bing, the brand’s namesake founder and chief creative officer, told Glossy. “From concept to creation, my team and I finished this project in only a few days. I’ll never be able to fully express my gratitude for this community and the love I have for everyone in it, but this felt like a good place to start.” Glossy has reported on how brands have responded to the fires since they began on January 7. The Anine Bing T-shirt joins other fashion fundraising initiatives like the Female Founder Collective’s ‘NY Loves LA’ shirt. Shop it here.
Inside our coverage
NFL fashion editor Kyle Smith: ‘It would be a miss’ for fashion to ignore the sports opportunity
Hailey Bieber on Rhode’s expanding lip empire
Reading list
Kim Kardashian’s Skky Partners takes minority stake in 111Skin