Beauty's Great Menopause Conundrum

Business of Fashion

3 days ago

In the early to mid 20th century, beauty brands such as Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein touted an ingredient that later became long-lost: Oestrogen. A 1949 ad for Arden's Joie de Vivre hormone cream warned that '30 is often the critical age for beauty,' telling women just exiting their 20s that they needed the cream's 'abundant supply' of 'natural hormones.'
Regulations classifying oestrogen as a drug helped to bring an end to the fad at the beauty counter. But more recently, oestrogen skin creams are back in full force, thanks to telemedicine startups like Alloy and Midi, with more on the way. They join a wider wave of wellness and beauty labels tapping into opportunities in skincare, telemedicine and hormone alternatives such as All Golden, Naomi Watts' Stripes and Womanness.
Investors see big profit potential for an underserved consumer, driven by celebrity- and influencer-led visibility and retailer demand. A report by women's health VC firm Amboy St. Ventures valued the US menopause wellness market at $131 billion in 2025, calling the category an overlooked 'ghost market' estimated to include around 63 million US women. In September 2024, Ulta Beauty launched menopause wellness brand Joylux and expanded it to 300 physical stores this month, growing a roster of brands that started with Womaness in 2022. Walgreens released a torrent of advertisements this summer intending to 'reframe' the stage — #MenopauseIsHot — and directing customers to the supplements and medicines stocked in its pharmacy.
'They're really doubling down on women's wellness, and specifically menopause, because that really resonates with their customer base,' said Joylux founder and CEO Colette Courtion.
But whether brands can successfully marry menopause with beauty is another question. Some early companies in the space have already shuttered or had to relaunch, and newcomers have honed their messaging and widened their audiences. They also face challenges speaking to customers who have long felt ignored, or overmarketed to.
'There's, unfortunately, a lot of mistrust, gaslighting and dismissal of women in the health care system today, especially when it comes to menopause,' said Ally Tam Tumasova, a former investor who left the VC world to co-found the menopause wellness platform Respin Health with actress Halle Berry. Can Beauty Mix With Menopause?
Beauty and wellness have long been intertwined, but menopause is a category where their links are strongest, tying together endocrine system support with claims about looking and feeling better. Demand for these prescriptions has led directly to a boom in hormone telemedicine startups like Alloy and Midi, created in response to women's difficulty in obtaining hormone therapy — and ushering in an oestrogen skincare resurgence.
Menopause-focussed company Alloy expanded its two-year-old M4 oestrogen skincare into a multi-product line with serum and eye cream last week. Respin launched hormone telemedicine on July 28 so its audience could access prescription-strength solutions, and later plans to enter skincare with an oestrogen offering in luxe packaging. These join a market of oestrogen skincare offerings from other telemedicine companies like Midi and generalist Musely.
'It was just this really sort of hidden secret that not many people knew about,' said Anne Fulenwider, the co-founder and co-CEO of Alloy Women's Health and former editor in chief of Marie Claire.
The 'beautification' of menopause isn't a good idea to everyone. Dr. Jen Gunter, an OB/GYN known for criticisms of Goop's health claims, took aim at the oestrogen face cream market in a February 2025 article for her newsletter 'The Vajenda.' She described the products as 'woefully understudied' and lacking in oversight from the FDA, given the fact that they're made from compounding pharmacies that are frequently used by telemedicine companies.
'It sure seems that for some influencers, the need for women to have quality science is flexible based on what is making money or getting a video to go viral. And right now the gold rush is fueled by [oestrogen] face cream,' she wrote.
To address scientific doubts, Alloy commissioned clinical studies in both 2023 and 2025 to back up its claims. The M-Word
Beyond telemedicine, early 2020s launches have already resulted in some failures for menopause-centred beauty startups. Glossier's former president Henry Davis created the skincare brand State of Menopause with influencer Stacy London, which closed in 2023, while 'menopause-centric' skincare brand Pause Well-Aging shut down in 2024. Others have undergone revamps. Stripes is still in business after being sold at auction for $500,000 in 2023, while P&G-backed Pepper & Wits was eventually rebranded to Kindra.
According to founders who have launched brands for the 40+ shopper since then, the earlier brands were a bit too enthusiastic about using the m-word in their marketing, and are taking a different approach by emphasising positive ageing.
'There are a bunch of brands that really jumped in the market very focussed on menopause, which on the one hand, was great that it wasn't stigmatised and people were talking about it, but on the other hand, it was like, 'Okay, now am I just about my menopause?'' said Sarah Kugelman, who launched skincare brand All Golden for the 45-plus age group in December 2024. (Kugelman previously founded the brand Skyn Iceland, which was acquired by the Amerikas in 2024.)
She uses the word menopause 'a little bit' in marketing language, instead focusing on 'well ageing' and product innovation. She's doubled down on TikTok traction for All Golden's full-eye wraparound mask.
Others like Jones Road, Sarah Creal Beauty and Yse Beauty have avoided the word, instead positioning themselves as brands for Gen X or 'mature skin.' As Yse Beauty founder Molly Sims told InStyle earlier this year, 'I don't want to talk about beauty during menopause or being someone's grandmother.'
Still, the conversation is flourishing as beauty businesses approach the category. Mainstream brands are starting to co-opt the terminology, targeting elder Millennials with discussion of perimenopause: Paula's Choice's offers a Phytoestrogen Elasticity Renewal Serum and L'Oréal-owned Vichy has a Neovadiol Peri-Menopause Day Cream.
As celebrity founders and influencers are also helping to drive chatter, some hope that stigmas around talking about menopause are finally waning.
'I didn't even use the word menopause ever on the air as a journalist; we never talked about this,' said Tamsen Fadal, a former broadcast journalist and the author of the book 'How to Menopause,' who discusses menopause with her 1.6 million followers. She's planning on launching her own menopause brand, which she said will be squarely in the wellness arena rather than beauty. 'We just didn't even have the conversations, more or less, the opportunity to use the words.'
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