The Spate beauty trend tracker, produced in collaboration with Vogue Business, surfaces the brands, ingredients, and formats registering the strongest year-on-year growth with consistent upward momentum, and the sheer breadth of this latest edition is worth pausing on. Dozens of categories. Dozens of months of rolling data. The picture that emerges is less a snapshot than a slow-moving current.
How the Spate Beauty Trend Tracker Works
Before diving into the trends themselves, it helps to understand the machinery behind them. Spate’s forecasting methodology is built on over 1 trillion search signals, 515 million TikTok posts, and 105 million Instagram posts, analysed on a rolling basis. The company claims 72% prediction accuracy on its future outlooks, which sounds modest until you consider that the beauty industry’s own track record for spotting the next big thing is not exactly stellar.
Spate’s working theory is that a trend appearing on both TikTok and Google simultaneously is a stronger signal than one showing up on a single platform. The logic holds: TikTok ignites, Google confirms. When consumers start typing a product name into a search bar, they are usually ready to buy, not just browse. Spate’s social media data refreshes weekly, which means the tracker is less a historical report and more a live read of where consumer attention is actually going.
The client roster reinforces the tracker’s credibility. Spate’s beauty and personal care platform counts Sephora, e.l.f. Beauty, and Kendo Brands (LVMH) among its users, alongside wellness names like Thorne and Himalaya Wellness. These are not companies known for throwing budget at unproven intelligence tools.
The Trends Themselves: Patches, Peptides, and a Lot of Zinc
Across wellness, the dominant theme is wearable supplementation. Dopamine patches, GLP-1 patches, and NAD+ patches all appear across multiple rolling periods, suggesting the demand is not a passing moment. The Spate beauty trend tracker has flagged these consistently enough that brands still sitting on the sidelines of the patch format are probably watching a window close.
Skincare tells a similar story of regenerative ambition. PDRN serums, which tap into polynucleotide-based skin repair, are a useful illustration of how early Spate’s signals can arrive. The company has previously cited PDRN as a case study: the ingredient registered a popularity index score of 544,500 with 1,400% year-on-year growth before most brands had a formulation in development, according to Spate’s own forecasting guide. By the time a trend reaches mainstream editorial, the early-mover advantage is largely spent.
Haircare keeps returning to the scalp as the unit of analysis. DHT blocker shampoos, scalp serums, exosome hair therapy, and red light therapy hats appear across multiple timeframes, pointing to a consumer who has absorbed the message that the follicle environment matters at least as much as the strand itself. The K-beauty influence is visible here too: brands like Dr. Groot and Aromatica surface repeatedly, carrying dermatological credibility into a category that once lived or died on fragrance and lather.
Fragrance is having a genuinely interesting moment. Gourmand scents, particularly marshmallow, birthday cake, and brown sugar profiles, dominate the growth charts. Middle Eastern houses, among them Arabiyat Prestige and Assaf, are pulling consistent search volume, reflecting both a diaspora audience and a wider consumer curiosity about oud and high-concentration oils. Meanwhile, perfume discovery sets keep appearing as a growth signal, which suggests the category is still converting explorers into collectors rather than loyalists.
Nails are the category that most clearly reflects TikTok’s role as a visual commerce engine. A joint analysis by Spate and NIQ on TikTok Shop found that health and beauty is the platform’s top-selling category, with facial skincare and lip cosmetics leading within it. Nail content, with its satisfying before-and-after format and short production time, fits the platform’s logic almost perfectly. The tracker reflects this: gel systems, semi-cured strips, magnetic polishes, and precision tools all show sustained search growth, with brands like Gaoy, Vettsy, and The Gelbottle riding the at-home manicure wave.
Makeup skews toward hybrid performance: long-wear concealer, cool-toned blush, peel-off lip tint, and cushion foundation recur as growth signals. The through-line is a consumer who wants coverage that behaves like skincare, and does not require touch-ups. Lipstick printers, associated primarily with YSL Beauty, represent the more theatrical end of the personalization spectrum, where technology meets a consumer who genuinely wants to dial in their exact shade rather than choose from a gondola of pre-made options.
Bodycare is quietly becoming a serious category. AHA body lotions, kojic acid formulas, and Epsom salt lotions all point to a consumer treating the body with the same ingredient literacy previously reserved for the face. Brands like Luna Daily, with its microbiome-balancing positioning, and La Mer, anchoring the premium end, illustrate how wide the opportunity has become.
The Spate beauty trend tracker does not tell you which of these will become the next cult product. What it does tell you, with reasonable confidence, is which ones consumers are already curious about before the marketing machine has caught up. That gap, between early search interest and brand execution, is where the money tends to be made or missed.
