I'm ACTUALLY Beauty's Nostradamus

Hair care, the new economy of maintenance and the luxury of time. Here's my prediction on where the industry is headed in the next 3-5 years

I’m excited to share Slutty Founder’s first sponsored post!

Today’s read is made free thanks to The Potion Studio—a female-founded, climate-adaptive, textured haircare brand reshaping how we think about maintenance and everyday ritual. All thoughts are my own, pinky promise 🤞🏾 .

→ Our readers can take 20% off of their entire purchase (no minimum, expires 5/9/2025) at The Potion Studio with the code: SLUTTYFOUNDER

Now onto today’s read….

I texted a girlfriend during this year’s Oscars like:

“13 year old me would never believe I got my blow dry down to under 30 minutes.”

Really, I did it in less than 2 commercial breaks.

To take it further, I don’t think I ever imagined a day where I could wash my hair spontaneously on a Sunday, or in some riskier instances—before heading out for a night.

While I personally de-subscribed from classifying my hair texture on the now widely accepted 2–3–4A/B/C scale (get through this article without mentioning phenotypical hierarchy and its parallels to white supremacy, get through this article without mentioning phenotypical hierarchy and its parallels to white supremacy…😬) —the reality is: for most of my relationship with beauty, taking care of my thick, dense, curly hair was a constant negotiation between my patience and someone else's professional intervention.

Sometimes I would reserve two days to complete a full hair routine. Day one for washing and blow drying, day two for my flatiron—my arms and wrists needed a break!

It’s only in reflective moments like that Oscar’s blow dry text that put into context for me how far beauty has come. From slathering drugstore clay masks over the dots on my legs to soothe the earliest signs of my teenage KP, to doing hot oil treatments on my hair with whatever worked best from the kitchen or beauty supply—so much of self care up until the late 2010s was either improvisational or exclusionary. If you wanted results at a higher level you had to outsource — to a hairstylist, a derm, an esthetician; mastery wasn’t something most of us could own at home and on our own volition.

Which brings me to my thoughts on where I think this saturated and fatigued industry is headed in the next 3-5 years.

The future of beauty will be built inside of categories we once had to outsource—where maintenance is finally becoming something consumers can own without the overwhelm.

The Self-Sufficiency Shift

Emerging beauty founders who see the future likely aren’t getting into skincare today —the promise of it feels too complete (for now) and beauty no longer belongs to brands that promise correction.

As I see it, the rituals we once handed off to specialists and experts are becoming the very spaces consumers are reclaiming for themselves.

Beauty today isn’t about fixing what’s broken—it’s about owning and enhancing what you already have on your terms and at your pace.

We’ve already seen this wave inside of skincare.

Searches for at-home devices (like LED masks, micro-current tools etc.) have spiked +62% YoY as consumers seek high-level skin maintenance without clinic visits (*Source: Spate 2024 Consumer Search Data) while 68% of consumers report that they prefer investing in high-performance products they can use themselves, rather than spending on services or appointments (Source: McKinsey Beauty Report 2023).

The kind of products you once needed an appointment to access are now normalized in our everyday routines. You can already see the early signals: at-home blow dry tool sales (think Dyson, Shark, Revlon) grew 14% year-over-year in 2023, even as overall beauty tool sales slowed down (NPD Group, 2024). Consumers aren’t just buying products—they're investing in professional-grade tools to replicate expertise at home.

High-Skill, High Frustration: The Real Tension in the Hair Category

The shift toward self-sufficiency in beauty treatments that were traditionally expert-dependent creates a significant market opportunity.

That said: the category I predict is poised to lead the industry’s new era of self-mastery will be hair care, especially as beauty continues to move away from labor and correction.

Until recent years, hair has been a high-skill, high frustration ritual especially if you had textured hair (which, by the way, about 70% of the global population does—something the industry only now seems to be figuring out).

The LTV Promise

The hair care space is still catching up to the industry's delayed acknowledgment of this massive demographic, with the global textured hair care market alone valued at $10B, with textured-haired consumers spending nearly 2x what straight-haired consumers spend, due to product disappointment (Voyant Beauty, 2024).

Conversely, in a 2023 McKinsey Beauty report, hair care was listed as one of the few beauty sectors with "resilient consumer spend," even amidst broader discretionary cutbacks.

Consumers aren’t just spending—they're prioritizing hair care even when budgets tighten.

For brands that actually solve real needs, the opportunity isn’t just to gain a customer—it’s to gain a high-value relationship. In other words, this efficacy gap still leaves an enormous white space and brands that truly serve textured hair consumers have the opportunity to win not just single purchases, but deep loyalty and long-term customer value.

Hair Care in 2025 Mirrors Skincare in 2018

7 years ago, skincare went from:

➡️ From corrective to preventative.

➡️ From cluttered to science-backed simplicity.

➡️ From narrow ideals to formulating for real, diverse skin realities (ex: the post-Topicals era realization that if products are effective enough for melanated skin, they’ll work fantastically on all skin).

Today, hair care stands at that same inflection point, with three developments that similarly echo skincare's earlier revolution:

➡️ The 'skinification' of hair: Consumers are now scrutinizing hair formulations with more discernment. Peptides, hyaluronic acid, and niacinamide—once exclusive to facial serums—are becoming standard in hair care.

➡️ A growing awareness of scalp health: Scalp care is projected to grow from $14.73B in 2025 to $24B by 2032 (Coherent Market Insights, 2024), likely reflected by our collective understand that scalp care is the starting point to hair quality and growth. This shift signals that consumers are thinking more long-term about hair health, not just styling. This recognition mirrors the skin barrier awareness movement that transformed skincare.

➡️ Democratized and adaptive formulations: Today’s most standout hair products adapt to hair porosity, texture and environmental conditions AKA “works on all hair textures” is actually becoming less of a marketing fantasy and a real promise. Textured hair care will fully migrate from niche to standard — out of the ethnic hair care aisle and into the regular aisle.

Environmental Intelligence and the Rise of Hybridized Haircare

I’m not talking green-washing for marketing’s sake.

Hair care is one of the few beauty categories where environmental factors aren’t just marketing buzz words. Humidity, radiation, hard water and pollution aren’t abstract anxieties —they're realities that factor directly into our hair health and the top factors referenced by consumers as directly affecting their hair’s manageability. That’s what makes the rise of environmentally intelligent haircare feel earned and not opportunistic.

Brands that recognize this shift early will lead the next wave, and truthfully, we’re still just scratching the surface.

As always, indie brands remain the blueprint. Aziza El Wanni’s The Potion Studio, is the first brand I’ve seen take a climate-adaptive approach to textured hair care through a minimalist system—addressing the environmental stressors that shape the real-world hair experiences in our day to day.

Another prediction: hybridized formulation—once something I associated with brands trying to be everything to everyone—will increasingly become a marker of strong formulation.

You can already see this shift across the market with skincare serums that brighten, hydrate, and barrier protect or with makeup that hydrates and covers up simultaneously. Even in fragrance, there's a growing preference for oils and hair mists that layer seamlessly across functions.

As my own hair needs have evolved under Los Angeles’s harsh water and bone-dry air, TPS’ Rose Bomb Spray has been a natural savior, working its way into my hydration routine (I’m on my third one in under 6 months, I’m obsessed and the scent is unmatched).

The Potion Studio, Rose Bomb Leave In Conditioning Spray

At first, I didn’t realize the full scope of what it was doing, acting simultaneously as a heat protectant, a leave-in conditioner, and a hydration mist, all without the buildup or residue I typically associated with each of those separate products. I chalked up my healthier strands as just a cute byproduct of better hydration, without even considering how much protection it was quietly offering against other stressors—like my flatiron.

It’s then that it struck me: good formulation often naturally hybridizes a product (even if it isn’t a direct brand callout).

Hybridization, when focused on the right ingredients, will become a signal of intelligent and intentional formulation, and it will become an expectation, not a reflection of broad positioning, as it was formerly.

Another category quietly shifting under the surface: hair removal

Waxing used to require regular (and painful) appointments—then came the introduction of the hard wax method over the “regular” wax. We found out after years of enduring that heinous smell that Nair was poisonous. And when laser hair removal first started to come onto the scene, it wasn't much better (I remember wanting to cry in defeat because NO ONE offered laser hair removal treatments for my skin tone— meanwhile my light-skinned girlfriend was on her 5th round, while I was relegated to a hairy ingrown cooch for the next few years, until the market kind of decided to give a shit about me—oh, how 1960).

Hair will continue to dominate beauty conversations for the reasons mentioned above—but while most brands are focused on how to grow it or maintain it, few are innovating around the equally painful and emotionally frustrating experience of how to remove it (especially for darker-skinned consumers, who are more likely to experience ingrowns, scarring, and hyperpigmentation).

At home waxing brands like Sugardoh are starting to chip away at the salon's grip on the category—but there’s still an enormous white space for tools and innovation around hair removal that feels safer, smarter, and more inclusive. Mark my words on this.

Maintenance is the highest form of luxury

Because beauty maintenance requires a resource even more precious than money: time.

Time used to be one of the hidden costs of beauty either through the learning curve of self-mastery (I mentioned above that my at home hair routine would at times take me 2 days if I couldn’t get to a salon) or the constant outsourcing of your upkeep.

Today, the future of beauty is about bringing high-performance treatments into the home. The tools, technologies, and formulas we once had to seek out in professional settings are becoming increasingly accessible—and increasingly ours to master.

Confession: I don’t own a red-light mask and in a way, that makes me feel anti-luxury. God knows I’m far from needing one, but even the Slutty Founder herself isn’t immune to the pressure of performing beauty as ritual.

Because now, it's not just about having access—it's about demonstrating time as luxury through ritual and routine. Cameras on!

We used to outsource beauty quietly through routines tucked in our calendars — nobody knew how long you spent at the hair salon unless you told them.

Today, the ability to show that you have the time, tech, and knowledge to maintain yourself has become part of the performance.

Mastery is no longer private. And now, it’s at home.

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