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The Break Up of Break Ups
โ
โ
I'm Team Skindinavia ๐๐ฝ
Article ๐๐ฝ
Spoiler
L'Orรฉal-owned make-up brand Urban Decay has reportedly ended a 15-year formulation partnership with Skindinavia, the maker of its All Nigher Setting Spray.
The news was announced in an Instagram post on 28 July by Skindinavia, which described the move as the end of โthe most successful collaboration in make-upโ.
Skindinavia stated in the Instagram post: โSince 2010, Skinvidania has proudly made the All Nighter Setting Spray for Urban Decay.
โIt was the first and only make-up setting spray to work by cooling the make-up, not just sealing it.
โOur partnership was built on trust, sealed with a handshake and carried on for 15 wonderful years.
โSadly, Urban Decay and its parent company L'Orรฉal have chosen to end the partnership with Skindinavia.โ
Skindinavia added that Urban Decay All Nigher Setting Sprayโs formula has been changed, which now no longer includes the brandโs cooling ingredients, it claims.
The original formula, which was developed in an exclusive partnership with Skindinavia, is protected by US patent 9198840, according to the company.
Skindinavia added in the post: โTo promote their new setting spray, Urban Decay has taken to social media to diminish the existing All Nighter setting Spray formula โ which Skindinavia will still make.โ
Urban Decay began teasing the updated formula on Instagram on 24 July, before fully revealing the new product one day later.
It will be available to purchase via its website on 31 July, as well as Sephora and Ulta Beauty at a later date.
In another post teasing the launch, Urban Decay highlighted comments from some users complaining about the original formula and said: โThe best got even better.
โNew All Nighter Setting Spray now lasts longer than ever with 24hr wear, finer mist, temperature cooling technology and a refreshed scent.โ
Skindinavia added in its Instagram post: โMost brands cannot stand up to big companies.
โBut Skindinavia will โ and we hope this might inspire others to do the same when being bullied.
โOur award-winning formula is still here for you.
โIt will only change when you decide it should, not us.โ
Skindinavia creates setting spray and was founded by Allen Goldman in 2005.
Cosmetics Business has contacted Urban Decay and Skindinavia for a comment.
The news was announced in an Instagram post on 28 July by Skindinavia, which described the move as the end of โthe most successful collaboration in make-upโ.
Skindinavia stated in the Instagram post: โSince 2010, Skinvidania has proudly made the All Nighter Setting Spray for Urban Decay.
โIt was the first and only make-up setting spray to work by cooling the make-up, not just sealing it.
โOur partnership was built on trust, sealed with a handshake and carried on for 15 wonderful years.
โSadly, Urban Decay and its parent company L'Orรฉal have chosen to end the partnership with Skindinavia.โ
Skindinavia added that Urban Decay All Nigher Setting Sprayโs formula has been changed, which now no longer includes the brandโs cooling ingredients, it claims.
The original formula, which was developed in an exclusive partnership with Skindinavia, is protected by US patent 9198840, according to the company.
Skindinavia added in the post: โTo promote their new setting spray, Urban Decay has taken to social media to diminish the existing All Nighter setting Spray formula โ which Skindinavia will still make.โ
Urban Decay began teasing the updated formula on Instagram on 24 July, before fully revealing the new product one day later.
It will be available to purchase via its website on 31 July, as well as Sephora and Ulta Beauty at a later date.
In another post teasing the launch, Urban Decay highlighted comments from some users complaining about the original formula and said: โThe best got even better.
โNew All Nighter Setting Spray now lasts longer than ever with 24hr wear, finer mist, temperature cooling technology and a refreshed scent.โ
Skindinavia added in its Instagram post: โMost brands cannot stand up to big companies.
โBut Skindinavia will โ and we hope this might inspire others to do the same when being bullied.
โOur award-winning formula is still here for you.
โIt will only change when you decide it should, not us.โ
Skindinavia creates setting spray and was founded by Allen Goldman in 2005.
Cosmetics Business has contacted Urban Decay and Skindinavia for a comment.
Another sale / acquisition in the works; this time, Phlur.
Photo from Fashionista on MSN. Press release from TSG Consumer
โ๐ญ๐ญ๐ญ
Article in spoiler
Photo: Vanessa Feder
Spoiler
Why I Am Closing Ami Colรฉ My beauty brand offered Black women shades they couldnโt find elsewhere. Why wasnโt that enough?
By Diarrha N'Diaye-Mbaye, founder of the beauty brand Ami Colรฉ.
In 1989, my Senegalese mother and father worked together to purchase a hair salon on 125th Street in the heart of Harlem. At one of the first African braiding salons in the country, my mother, Aminata โAmiโ Colรฉ, wrapped my baby self tight on her back as she stood eight to 12 hours a day, making her clients feel beautiful. As I learned to talk โ both in my native tongue, Wolof, from my โfake aunties,โ and in English, from my motherโs loyal customers โ the underlying lessons I heard and internalized were about community, womanhood, and beauty. As she finished up with a customer, my mother would ask, โDo you like?โ She wasnโt satisfied until she could tell the answer from a personโs smile.
Decades later, in that same salon, I hosted events for the beauty brand I named after my mother. Ami Colรฉ launched in May 2021 to a devoted, excited audience of Black and brown women who felt seen and celebrated by what we offered. At first, the brand offered skin tints in shades they couldnโt find elsewhere and started a lip-oil craze that still carries through to this day. As I built my business, I stayed true to what I knew: community and quality. I looked most at how to lend real expertise to the formulas I wanted to make.
As we grew, I met people who told me Ami Colรฉ was their first foundation match, or their go-to glow, or their clean-girl staple. I met a girl in Paris who pulled out her empty Lip Treatment Oil at Charles de Gaulle Airport. My best friend was there or else I wouldnโt have believed it had happened โ I was so happy. Eventually, though, that was no longer enough.
ADVERTISEMENTSCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT
After nearly four beautiful soul-stretching years, Ami Colรฉ will close this September. This decision was so hard for me โ the business bears my motherโs name and, as I built it, my daughterโs name, too. But after looking at every option, it became clear that continuing in this current market wasnโt sustainable.
For as long as I can remember, I have been studying the gaps in beauty products for all women, especially those with Black and brown skin. What was missing? I started doing my friendsโ makeup in college, sourcing my artistry with trips to CVS to buy LโOrรฉal HIP eye-shadow palettes. I turned my dorm room into a beauty studio to make sure girls looked and felt good, just as my mom had shown me how to do. I remember being so emotional and frustrated when shades flashed too ashy, too red, or too yellow on my friendsโ cheeks โ masking the beauty I saw versus enhancing it.
When I saw signs for a Sephora store opening at the mall, I didnโt know how Iโd balance a job with school full time, but I knew it had to be mine. I was one of two Black people to join the opening team. I was so elated that it took me six months to realize I had been placed in the far back of the store selling fragrance, though my passion was skin care, hair care, and makeup. Perfume was the only thing I didnโt care about as much. I wondered later on, Was this a coincidence? But the discount meant I could do even better makeup on my friends.
After I graduated, I returned to New York. I ran the gamut of industry jobs and internships, experiencing the racism that characterized the industry in the 2010s in every role I landed. I turned to the comments on the beauty site Into the Gloss as an outlet for my frustrations โ not to vent but to share my obsessions with shade ranges and formulas. I had fervent conversations about Kelly Rowlandโs installment of โThe Top Shelf,โ a feature where luminaries showed the depths of their bathroom cabinets and where I bought my cleansers as a result. It showed me not only that this was a science but the place that beauty could have in peopleโs everyday lives.
Back and forth in the comments, I debated with strangers: โWhat kind of products were good for oily-combination skin?โ It was suddenly clear to me that what I cared about, other people did, too. How cathartic and thrilling to talk to strangers about products, techniques, and, just as my mother had done at her salon, finding deeper connections through our experiences with beauty. (Okay, we also vented. Who would make actually good makeup for us?)
As I worked at my various day jobs for big cosmetics and media companies, I thought, Why not pitch myself for my own Into the Gloss feature? It worked. Soon after, I got an email about a top-secret project that I was invited to help develop. I still believe my skin informed the first line of Glossier skin tints for the shade Rich. (Many others would tell you this too.)
At the height of Glossier, I was recruited to join its product-development team. The job wove together my decades of experience in social-media marketing, my dedication to figuring out the complexities of what made specific formulas work, and my deep love of making other people look good. I was the staff lookout, in terms of what peopleโs needs and ambitions and worries were, in terms of the products they wore. I sifted through the most-buried-possible Reddit threads and Instagram comments to unearth every answer I could to two big questions: โWhat should we create next?โ and โWhat do we want the audience to feel?โ I knew that they were not just โour audienceโ but people.
By this point in 2018, my millennial-pink dreams became more black-and-white. The job that I was offered as an inroad to help with development and marketing turned into a situation in which I lacked mentorship and support. The impression I got from higher-ups was โDonโt worry! Just come into the company and weโll figure it out.โ Obviously, thatโs not what happened. It was crushing.
Despite this experience, I was still committed to finding a way to get people the products I dreamed would become a beloved part of their daily routines. In 2019, I found an answer in putting together ideas for the business that would become Ami Colรฉ. I turned to social media to share the beginnings of this brand, surveying at least 400 women on their beauty rituals, product favorites, and the missing pieces in their routines. The responses, while varied, painted an easy picture of what I needed to do next. They said their complexions and self-images needed the formulas and vision I had to offer.
I knew that less than one percent of VC money went to Black founders โ even less for solo founders. I had no idea how my vision would come to fruition, with my savings depleted and no financial support from my family, but I would use my black book of contacts, my Instagram page of 3,000 followers, and tenacity. And my credit card to pay for the labs where I mixed up my first products.
My first big outing was at a conference called Cosmoprof, to which I wore a pink suit in the Vegas heat and talked to everyone who would listen about my vision for more flattering products that felt modern and cute. After months of posting my progress on Instagram, I received an email from a fancy investor who later invested in the likes of Kim Kardashian and Gwyneth Paltrow.
I came to her Flatiron HQ with the concept, the business plan, the lab sample formulas, the 3-D renderings of the packaging, the brand guidebook, the organization chart, and the breakdown of the list of funds Iโd need to bring this concept to life. โThis is great. Itโs exactly what the industry needs,โ she said. I went home on a high, only to be ghosted. No email, no feedback, no next steps. Weeks later, I finally received a response from the investor: The sentiment was that, with no clear star power, itโs hard to think this could be a success given the โniche audience.โ She called my vision for more inclusive shades โnondescriptโ and dismissed me. This would be the beginning of many noes Iโd receive from potential investors in 2019. By my 150th pitch, I had begun to lose hope.
Then, in 2020, the world witnessed the video of George Floydโs murder and rose up in sadness and protest. Within weeks of when the riots started, I received an influx of requests to bring my โdeserving brandโ to life. (Guess if the initial investor who shooed me away followed up on the same thread.) In general, all these follow-ups usually sounded like โYou are the future. The worldโs been waiting for a brand like this.โ I was sped through a process that meant that, as far as I was told, I needed to seize on the money that was being pumped into my business. It was a dream come true, or so I thought โ well, and yes, it actually was. Within months, I became one of 30 Black women to raise over $1 million for her start-up.
All that I was expected to do in return? Well, Iโd have to figure it out myself.
On the summer day that Ami Colรฉ had launched, my Instagram DMs, comments, and text messages were flooded. One stranger โ another woman I talked to online about beauty over the years, now that I think of it โ wrote, โI am buying every single thing, because this brand is ME.โ Another person commented, โI could almost cry. Iโm so excited to try this out. May Allah make this the best of the best for you. The humility, love and sincerity exudes through your work.โ I fought tears. I lost that fight. We sold out of our first run of skin tints and lip oil in a month.
I had no coaches, no family money. Just those Instagram comments and my own momentum. Ami Colรฉ continued to raise more capital from well-meaning investors, including the woman who had initially told me I wouldnโt succeed. We, all told, took home north of 80 awards for our tints and oils, including four Allure Best of Beauty awards and a spot on โOprahโs Favorite Thingsโ list. We were in the makeup bags of Nia Long, Kelly Rowland (full circle โ my inspiration), Mindy Kaling, Hailey Bieber, and Martha Stewart. Better yet, we were on the shelves of the people whose needs matched what our products offered. I felt as if I could finally unclench my jaw. This was what I had always wanted.
To show investors we could turn the profit they were expecting, Ami Colรฉ moved quickly onto the shelves of Sephora in 2022, starting with 270 doors and building to 600 doors nationwide within 16 months of the launch of the brand. I was so excited about the deal, but it meant new expectations to meet โ on social media and in terms of sales. (Not from Sephora but from investors.)
I wanted to make the most of the opportunity, so I invested heavily in marketing and prayed. But I couldnโt compete with the deep pockets of corporate brands; at retail stores, prime shelf space comes at a price, and we couldnโt afford it. As we tried to grow, our sales wavered. We made operational decisions that felt necessary at the time โ like scaling up production to meet potential demand โ without truly knowing how the market would respond. One week weโd be completely sold out because an influencer mentioned us; the next, weโd be stuck with inventory we couldnโt move.
Instead of focusing on the healthy, sustainable future of the company and meeting the needs of our loyal fan base, I rode a temperamental wave of appraising investors โ some of whom seemed to have an attitude toward equity and โbetting big on inclusivityโ that changed its tune a lot, to my ears, from what it sounded like in 2020.
Almost six years after Ami Colรฉ first lived in my head โ and four years after we officially launched โ the world feels upside down. Weโve got this president, climbing tariffs, and marketing costs that are brutal for small brands like mine. And while my story isnโt unique, it still hurts to watch an industry preach inclusivity while remaining so unforgiving.
Iโm proud of what we built โ for the women we built it all for โ even as I navigate the grief of letting go. To those who felt seen in our mission: Thank you. Thank you for letting me be part of your daily routines.
From Senegal to Harlem and beyond, we created something real. And while this chapter is ending, my work isnโt done. I still believe in beauty โ at every level โ and Iโm looking forward to discovering what comes next.
The Cut is a Vox Media Network.
ยฉ 2025 Vox Media, LLC. All rights reserved.
Why I Am Closing Ami Colรฉ My beauty brand offered Black women shades they couldnโt find elsewhere. Why wasnโt that enough?
By Diarrha N'Diaye-Mbaye, founder of the beauty brand Ami Colรฉ.
In 1989, my Senegalese mother and father worked together to purchase a hair salon on 125th Street in the heart of Harlem. At one of the first African braiding salons in the country, my mother, Aminata โAmiโ Colรฉ, wrapped my baby self tight on her back as she stood eight to 12 hours a day, making her clients feel beautiful. As I learned to talk โ both in my native tongue, Wolof, from my โfake aunties,โ and in English, from my motherโs loyal customers โ the underlying lessons I heard and internalized were about community, womanhood, and beauty. As she finished up with a customer, my mother would ask, โDo you like?โ She wasnโt satisfied until she could tell the answer from a personโs smile.
Decades later, in that same salon, I hosted events for the beauty brand I named after my mother. Ami Colรฉ launched in May 2021 to a devoted, excited audience of Black and brown women who felt seen and celebrated by what we offered. At first, the brand offered skin tints in shades they couldnโt find elsewhere and started a lip-oil craze that still carries through to this day. As I built my business, I stayed true to what I knew: community and quality. I looked most at how to lend real expertise to the formulas I wanted to make.
As we grew, I met people who told me Ami Colรฉ was their first foundation match, or their go-to glow, or their clean-girl staple. I met a girl in Paris who pulled out her empty Lip Treatment Oil at Charles de Gaulle Airport. My best friend was there or else I wouldnโt have believed it had happened โ I was so happy. Eventually, though, that was no longer enough.
ADVERTISEMENTSCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT
After nearly four beautiful soul-stretching years, Ami Colรฉ will close this September. This decision was so hard for me โ the business bears my motherโs name and, as I built it, my daughterโs name, too. But after looking at every option, it became clear that continuing in this current market wasnโt sustainable.
For as long as I can remember, I have been studying the gaps in beauty products for all women, especially those with Black and brown skin. What was missing? I started doing my friendsโ makeup in college, sourcing my artistry with trips to CVS to buy LโOrรฉal HIP eye-shadow palettes. I turned my dorm room into a beauty studio to make sure girls looked and felt good, just as my mom had shown me how to do. I remember being so emotional and frustrated when shades flashed too ashy, too red, or too yellow on my friendsโ cheeks โ masking the beauty I saw versus enhancing it.
When I saw signs for a Sephora store opening at the mall, I didnโt know how Iโd balance a job with school full time, but I knew it had to be mine. I was one of two Black people to join the opening team. I was so elated that it took me six months to realize I had been placed in the far back of the store selling fragrance, though my passion was skin care, hair care, and makeup. Perfume was the only thing I didnโt care about as much. I wondered later on, Was this a coincidence? But the discount meant I could do even better makeup on my friends.
After I graduated, I returned to New York. I ran the gamut of industry jobs and internships, experiencing the racism that characterized the industry in the 2010s in every role I landed. I turned to the comments on the beauty site Into the Gloss as an outlet for my frustrations โ not to vent but to share my obsessions with shade ranges and formulas. I had fervent conversations about Kelly Rowlandโs installment of โThe Top Shelf,โ a feature where luminaries showed the depths of their bathroom cabinets and where I bought my cleansers as a result. It showed me not only that this was a science but the place that beauty could have in peopleโs everyday lives.
Back and forth in the comments, I debated with strangers: โWhat kind of products were good for oily-combination skin?โ It was suddenly clear to me that what I cared about, other people did, too. How cathartic and thrilling to talk to strangers about products, techniques, and, just as my mother had done at her salon, finding deeper connections through our experiences with beauty. (Okay, we also vented. Who would make actually good makeup for us?)
As I worked at my various day jobs for big cosmetics and media companies, I thought, Why not pitch myself for my own Into the Gloss feature? It worked. Soon after, I got an email about a top-secret project that I was invited to help develop. I still believe my skin informed the first line of Glossier skin tints for the shade Rich. (Many others would tell you this too.)
At the height of Glossier, I was recruited to join its product-development team. The job wove together my decades of experience in social-media marketing, my dedication to figuring out the complexities of what made specific formulas work, and my deep love of making other people look good. I was the staff lookout, in terms of what peopleโs needs and ambitions and worries were, in terms of the products they wore. I sifted through the most-buried-possible Reddit threads and Instagram comments to unearth every answer I could to two big questions: โWhat should we create next?โ and โWhat do we want the audience to feel?โ I knew that they were not just โour audienceโ but people.
By this point in 2018, my millennial-pink dreams became more black-and-white. The job that I was offered as an inroad to help with development and marketing turned into a situation in which I lacked mentorship and support. The impression I got from higher-ups was โDonโt worry! Just come into the company and weโll figure it out.โ Obviously, thatโs not what happened. It was crushing.
Despite this experience, I was still committed to finding a way to get people the products I dreamed would become a beloved part of their daily routines. In 2019, I found an answer in putting together ideas for the business that would become Ami Colรฉ. I turned to social media to share the beginnings of this brand, surveying at least 400 women on their beauty rituals, product favorites, and the missing pieces in their routines. The responses, while varied, painted an easy picture of what I needed to do next. They said their complexions and self-images needed the formulas and vision I had to offer.
I knew that less than one percent of VC money went to Black founders โ even less for solo founders. I had no idea how my vision would come to fruition, with my savings depleted and no financial support from my family, but I would use my black book of contacts, my Instagram page of 3,000 followers, and tenacity. And my credit card to pay for the labs where I mixed up my first products.
My first big outing was at a conference called Cosmoprof, to which I wore a pink suit in the Vegas heat and talked to everyone who would listen about my vision for more flattering products that felt modern and cute. After months of posting my progress on Instagram, I received an email from a fancy investor who later invested in the likes of Kim Kardashian and Gwyneth Paltrow.
I came to her Flatiron HQ with the concept, the business plan, the lab sample formulas, the 3-D renderings of the packaging, the brand guidebook, the organization chart, and the breakdown of the list of funds Iโd need to bring this concept to life. โThis is great. Itโs exactly what the industry needs,โ she said. I went home on a high, only to be ghosted. No email, no feedback, no next steps. Weeks later, I finally received a response from the investor: The sentiment was that, with no clear star power, itโs hard to think this could be a success given the โniche audience.โ She called my vision for more inclusive shades โnondescriptโ and dismissed me. This would be the beginning of many noes Iโd receive from potential investors in 2019. By my 150th pitch, I had begun to lose hope.
Then, in 2020, the world witnessed the video of George Floydโs murder and rose up in sadness and protest. Within weeks of when the riots started, I received an influx of requests to bring my โdeserving brandโ to life. (Guess if the initial investor who shooed me away followed up on the same thread.) In general, all these follow-ups usually sounded like โYou are the future. The worldโs been waiting for a brand like this.โ I was sped through a process that meant that, as far as I was told, I needed to seize on the money that was being pumped into my business. It was a dream come true, or so I thought โ well, and yes, it actually was. Within months, I became one of 30 Black women to raise over $1 million for her start-up.
All that I was expected to do in return? Well, Iโd have to figure it out myself.
On the summer day that Ami Colรฉ had launched, my Instagram DMs, comments, and text messages were flooded. One stranger โ another woman I talked to online about beauty over the years, now that I think of it โ wrote, โI am buying every single thing, because this brand is ME.โ Another person commented, โI could almost cry. Iโm so excited to try this out. May Allah make this the best of the best for you. The humility, love and sincerity exudes through your work.โ I fought tears. I lost that fight. We sold out of our first run of skin tints and lip oil in a month.
I had no coaches, no family money. Just those Instagram comments and my own momentum. Ami Colรฉ continued to raise more capital from well-meaning investors, including the woman who had initially told me I wouldnโt succeed. We, all told, took home north of 80 awards for our tints and oils, including four Allure Best of Beauty awards and a spot on โOprahโs Favorite Thingsโ list. We were in the makeup bags of Nia Long, Kelly Rowland (full circle โ my inspiration), Mindy Kaling, Hailey Bieber, and Martha Stewart. Better yet, we were on the shelves of the people whose needs matched what our products offered. I felt as if I could finally unclench my jaw. This was what I had always wanted.
To show investors we could turn the profit they were expecting, Ami Colรฉ moved quickly onto the shelves of Sephora in 2022, starting with 270 doors and building to 600 doors nationwide within 16 months of the launch of the brand. I was so excited about the deal, but it meant new expectations to meet โ on social media and in terms of sales. (Not from Sephora but from investors.)
I wanted to make the most of the opportunity, so I invested heavily in marketing and prayed. But I couldnโt compete with the deep pockets of corporate brands; at retail stores, prime shelf space comes at a price, and we couldnโt afford it. As we tried to grow, our sales wavered. We made operational decisions that felt necessary at the time โ like scaling up production to meet potential demand โ without truly knowing how the market would respond. One week weโd be completely sold out because an influencer mentioned us; the next, weโd be stuck with inventory we couldnโt move.
Instead of focusing on the healthy, sustainable future of the company and meeting the needs of our loyal fan base, I rode a temperamental wave of appraising investors โ some of whom seemed to have an attitude toward equity and โbetting big on inclusivityโ that changed its tune a lot, to my ears, from what it sounded like in 2020.
Almost six years after Ami Colรฉ first lived in my head โ and four years after we officially launched โ the world feels upside down. Weโve got this president, climbing tariffs, and marketing costs that are brutal for small brands like mine. And while my story isnโt unique, it still hurts to watch an industry preach inclusivity while remaining so unforgiving.
Iโm proud of what we built โ for the women we built it all for โ even as I navigate the grief of letting go. To those who felt seen in our mission: Thank you. Thank you for letting me be part of your daily routines.
From Senegal to Harlem and beyond, we created something real. And while this chapter is ending, my work isnโt done. I still believe in beauty โ at every level โ and Iโm looking forward to discovering what comes next.
The Cut is a Vox Media Network.
ยฉ 2025 Vox Media, LLC. All rights reserved.
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