Star Struck Style

Back in April, I published this post predicting that makeup was on its way out. Well, it looks like I was right. Today, it’s been reported that Kylie Jenner offloaded 51% of her namesake business to Coty just a few days before Jupiter’s ingress into Capricorn. I’m sure that she didn’t make the decision for herself, but it was a good business move. Makeup in general is experiencing a serious decline in sales after a generation of girls who learned to paint their faces from drag queens on YouTube has moved onto other things.

I also predicted that Jupiter’s move would make “authenticity” come back into style. I wrote that the “focus of the industry will turn toward a fresher face, led by skincare instead of the current skin-phobia that inspires us to hide behind a mask of makeup.”

There are other factors at play, too. The current backlash against unbridled capitalism has people taking a second look at the conglomerates that run the cosmetics business, including LVMH. If I was a teenage girl and I saw the owner of LVMH’s Sephora standing side-by-side with Donald Trump at a ribbon cutting ceremony, I’d want to wash whatever I bought at the store off my face, too. I’m a fifty-something man and that photo makes me want to pour bleach into my eyes. Donald Trump does that to me. Maybe I should buy shares in Clorox.

Anyway, I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that with Jupiter’s move into Capricorn, we’re at the cusp of a new Grunge-like backlash in fashion. In 1989, the last time we experienced a stellium in Capricorn, the seeds of the Grunge movement were sown. The fashion business is about to eat it itself alive, and the decline in cosmetics sales (the only really bright spot in fashion retailing over the past few years), is a harbinger of things to come. A major correction in the stock market is overdue, too, and that will only complicate the issue. Remember that the Savings and Loan crisis occurred in 1989. Like planetary cycles, these things repeat.

On the bright side, the Grunge Era was sort of fun while it lasted . . .