“The lipstick index has been substituted with the moisturizing index. But the concept of the index is still there.”

Estee Lauder chairman Leonard Lauder created the “lipstick index” during the economic downturn following September 11, 2001. In 2020, at the height of the COVID economic downturn, Estee Lauder’s CEO Fabrizio Freda said that the lipstick index had been replaced by a skin care item as customers donned masks and worked from home. Now we may be seeing that phenomenon rear its head once more. Sephora recently announced a record sales year and data from consumer research group Circana shows that prestige beauty growth has outpaced mass beauty sales, growing 9 percent and 2 percent, respectively, in the first quarter of the year. Reach the CNN article, “Is a Recession Coming? Economists Say Look at Women’s Lips.”