9 hours ago
Anastasia Beverly Hills Debuts Skincare: A ‘Jack Of All Trades' SPF
Anastasia Beverly Hills Hydra Prime SPF 50 Photo courtesy of Anastasia Beverly Hills
When you've done it all in color cosmetics, there's only one thing left to do: enter a new beauty category altogether. Following more than 20 years of innovation in brows, eyeshadow, blush, contour and recently minimalist foundation sticks and a blurring matte foundation, Anastasia Beverly Hills is dipping its toes into skincare. The venture was a long time coming for product developer and brand president Claudia 'Norvina' Soare.
'I've wanted to do skincare forever,' said the daughter of the brand's eponymous founder during a one-on-one interview for this article. 'The challenge is people always ask what a makeup brand knows about skincare. And then also our retailers have a fear. Let's say I told them, here's a vitamin C serum from ABH. It's too big of a jump, right? So, in the many, many meetings you have with them, they tell us repeatedly to tie it back to makeup.'
That left the beauty veteran with one option: an all-in-one product that can tap into either end of the spectrum. The original concept? A primer. 'But not just another primer,' she adamantly said.
'There are so many primers,' she continued. 'They're so competitive, and I think a lot of time, people don't care if they're cheap or expensive. It's extremely risky in my opinion. I knew I needed to make something that is like the Swiss Army Knife of skincare and makeup primer.'
And that's when HydraPrime SPF 50 ($48) was born.
'I told myself it's going to be an amazing SPF,' she declared of the lightly scented blend of uplifting citrus and fresh herbaceous undertones. 'It's going to be no white cast, no stickiness. It's also going to be packed with skincare, and there will be major clinicals. It's going to be literally a skincare treatment for your face.'
In addition to coinciding with the kickoff to summer, the launch is timed perfectly, as the SPF market is a buzzy one as of late. From emerging sunscreen brands like Ultra Violette and Good Weather Skin, to established beauty brands like Augustinus Bader and a headline-making Tower28, it's rare to find an entity in this space that hasn't tapped into sun care.
According to an industry report, the sunscreen market, worth $19.2 billion in 2025, has gone up by $1.4 billion since last year. The report cites increased awareness of skin cancer prevention, focus on anti-aging skincare regimens and expanding recreational activities as reasons for the category rise. It also states that mineral-based formulas are shaping industry standards, while multifunctional products that combine sun care with traditional skincare are gaining substantial traction.
For Soare, what started as a primer and led to an SPF resulted in what she finally calls a 'jack of all trades,' all-in-one product that also includes moisturizing properties.
'Calling it just a primer almost cheapens how major the formulation is, and all the actives that we have in there and all the things it does,' Soare says, of the derm-approved, vegan, non-comedogenic formula. 'It's not to say that primers aren't important, but this does so much more.'
Packed with barrier-strengthening ectoin, brightening niacinamide and soothing bisabolol, the SPF component made the formulation 'super challenging, like beyond,' Soare said, explaining, 'I started the process in 2020, believe it or not. And then I finished it. And then it takes 18 months to test, so by the time it was done, I forgot about it.'
User wearing new Anastasia Beverly Hills HydraPrime SPF 50 multifaceted skincare Photo courtesy of Anastasia Beverly Hills Standing Out In A Saturated Space
But now that it's here, HydraPrime SPF 50 fills two major gaps for the brand: all-in-one convenience for travel and on-the-go lifestyle, and the untapped ABH consumer.
'If I go on vacation, I would obviously take my cleanser, and now with the new product, this and cleanser are all you need,' Soare said. 'It's also a great product for guys. This isn't just for the girlies who wear makeup. If your boyfriend wants it, anybody can wear this product. It'll be our first touch into a broader audience. We don't really speak to people who don't wear makeup. ABH never has this chance to do that, so that for me is exciting on its own. It's a little scary, but it's very exciting.'
With its makeup benefits out of the way, Soare breaks down how the HydraPrime SPF 50 will serve the skin.
'It's about having up-to-date, major ingredients that are really going to take things to the next level,' she says. 'This will really be able to combat wrinkles, anti-aging and darkness, moisture and texture, which are, like, all my problems. I get a lot of the dark spots and melasma, and I want to be able to prevent that. So the SPF is preventing sun damage, and it's also helping with all of these things that have pretty much ravaged my face. I want people to know that you can wear it every day as a standalone product.'
When it comes to 2025 skincare trends, we've seen a rise in tinted formulas, namely with SPF. Merit, E.l.f., Beauty of Joseon and Supergoop! each recently launched tinted, multifaceted sunscreens. Soare, however, said that was lower on the priority list when it came to her latest formulation.
'In order to have that many actives and make it clinical skincare, it was going to be really challenging to also add tint to it,' she explains of HydraPrime SPF 50's formula. 'That was number one, just from a practical reason. And then number two, imagine buying a skincare serum, but it has tint in it—you'd be like, what ? I want it to be taken seriously as skincare, because it is skincare. And if I put makeup in it, then it just becomes a makeup product.'
