Beyoncé’s Cécred haircare range finally arrives in the UK
Beyoncé is coming to your bathrooms. This month, the singer’s haircare brand Cécred made its first international retail expansion, landing in 90 stores across the UK and Ireland. It’s perhaps unsurprising that the UK is first in line: it’s already Cécred’s second-largest market after the US, despite the brand only launching last year.
To mark the arrival, Cécred also set up shop in Salt Salon, where our fashion writer Elliot Hoste had his hair done by Beyoncé’s hairstylist and met the singer’s mother, Tina Knowles. “Beyoncé is the best at what she does, and that extends to haircare too,” he says. “Ms Tina and the team were so warm and welcoming.”
“The Detangling Spray was super lightweight but did an amazing job helping to comb out my afro, which usually takes hours. After the wash, they applied the Moisture Sealing Lotion on each of my individual curls, which gave them definition I hadn’t really seen before with any other products I’ve used.” He also rates the Hair and Scalp Balm for being gentle on his scalp and the Scalp Refreshing Spray.
Alongside the brand’s bestselling shampoos, conditioners and treatments, the UK launch introduces Temple Oud Hair Perfume, its first fragrance-focused product and a bottled version of the warm, woody scent that runs through the range.
It’s a fitting drop, given September has also been an especially busy month for fragrance releases. Le Labo brought its elusive City Exclusives to London, Creed went floral, Aesop doubled down on the storytelling behind its scents with the launch of its Fragrant Fables Library, and D.S. & Durga got a sugar rush with their new scent.
Elsewhere, things stayed sweet too, with Sephora Collection turning cinnamon rolls into skincare and Violette_FR giving its cult Bisou Balm a chocolatey update. Read on for the other beauty drops this September.
Fenty Beauty is going back to where it all began. In its biggest launch since 2017, Rihanna has completely overhauled the foundation that helped put Fenty on the map, replacing its original shades with 50 newly developed ones. “It looks like skin, and it feels like nothing,” says Rihanna, who has apparently been secretly wearing the formula for the past year.
D.S. & Durga has gone gourmand – sort of. Described by co-founder and perfumer David Moltz as “a gourmand for people who don’t usually wear gourmands”, Ain’t That Sweet takes the recent obsession with bakery-inspired scents somewhere darker. Inspired by a late-night offering left between lovers, it pairs the sweetness of malty date cake and golden milk with myrrh and lily.
Aesop wants you to read its perfumes as well as smell them. The brand has reimagined its entire 12-scent collection as Fragrant Fables, pairing each perfume with an original poem and imagined accords that range from cracked concrete and silver ore to pure air and first light. The collection also welcomes its newest scent, Unforeseen Aer, a geranium, lavandin and rosemary fragrance inspired by air moving across rugged heights. Londoners can explore the stories IRL at Aesop’s Regent Street Fragrant Fables Library, open until October 4.
After two decades spent in front of the camera, model Lara Worthington is trying her hand at beauty. Her new brand OMMAGE makes a pared-back debut with just three essentials – First Base, Lip Coat and a Buffer Brush. Each comes housed in satisfyingly chunky, sculptural packaging.
Sephora is hitting the sweet spot with its latest limited-edition drop, turning cinnamon rolls into skincare. The sugary-scented collection includes a silver sheet mask, glittery bronze eye patches and a shimmery lip oil.
VIOLETTE_FR is indulging its sweet tooth too, giving its cult Bisou Balm a chocolatey new shade. Somewhere between dark and milk chocolate, Chocolat is a sheer, cool-toned brown with chestnut and mahogany undertones, created to give the brand’s signature just-kissed, bouche mordue finish.
For one month only, Beijing has come to London with Le Labo’s newest City Exclusive, SHIU 25. Inspired by the “sacred silence” of the Chinese capital, it pairs iris and olibanum with warm woods. Usually reserved for Beijing, it joins the rest of Le Labo’s elusive City Exclusives in London until the end of September.
Hourglass’s cult Holiday Palettes are back, with four limited-edition six-shade edits of blushes, bronzers, highlighters and finishing powders. As a bonus, each compact comes finished with a miniature Hope, Love, Wish or Luck charm. Lucky us!
Adding to its house of florals, Creed’s latest fragrance puts iris front and centre. Iris Debonair pairs French iris pallida with English lavender grown in Kent, alongside bergamot, fig and warm amberwood. A perfect one to add to the autumn rotation.
Diptyque is taking its talents beyond fragrances with the launch of Les Rituels de Soin, its first-ever body care collection. Rooted in self-care and inspired by ancient bathing customs, the collection includes two rituals for morning and night. Within ‘The Morning Ritual’ grouping comes awakening products like the Nurturing Cleansing Gel and the Invigorating Body Scrub, while the ‘The Evening Ritual’ lineup sees relaxing products like the Rich Soothing Body Balm and the Relaxing Lip-Oil. In case it wasn’t obvious already, it’s the perfect collection for the “everything shower” obsessed.
Summer fruits are sticking around for autumn with Granado’s two new scents built around raspberry and fig. Framboesa Noir pairs the former with rum, cedar and leather, while Figo Confit mixes ripe fig and plum with dates and woody notes. Better yet, they’re designed to be layered together.
RATIONALE is making a case for a shorter morning routine. Its new Beautiful Skin Superfluid combines a sheer skin tint with SPF30, adding just enough luminous coverage to soften the appearance of redness without hiding what’s underneath.
Field Diary, Sweet Woodland, Rosetopia, Smoky Rain and Verdant Grove may sound like fairytale settings, but they’re the five new additions to LOEWE Perfumes’ Crafted Collection. Landing this month, each scent comes in a sculptural glass bottle topped with a textured granite cap, inspired by the irregularities of handblown glass. A Dazed favourite is Field Diary, a mix of lychee and orange blossom grounded by sandalwood and musk.
SPF for breakout-prone skin has historically been a nightmare to get right. Ultra Violette’s Unblock Screen SPF50 aims to change that, with a whipped, soft-matte formula designed to blur pores, curb shine and keep skin hydrated without clogging it up.
Known for her understated, nature-led scents, perfumer Lyn Harris is bottling the smell of sun-baked earth with CLAY. Built around an unusual baked clay accord, the fragrance pairs orange flower and mandarin with smoky sandalwood and cedar. Sometimes the simplest scents are the best.
A new edition of its blockbuster 1 Million fragrance (one bottle of which is sold every five seconds), Rabanne’s latest scent brings together notes of vanilla, pineapple, coconut and patchouli for a tropical, creamy experience that is said to last for 48 hours.
Vaseline is going on holiday for its latest drop. The skincare staple has teamed up with resortwear label Oceanus on a ten-piece capsule designed to show off what it’s calling “silk skin” – a soft, velvety alternative to glass skin, courtesy of its Gluta-Hya Smoothing Perfector Serum Burst Lotion. The collection itself spans skin-baring mini dresses, matching co-ords and statement jewellery, with plenty of cut-outs and barely-there silhouettes.
