Hello, and welcome back to Full Coverage! Thanks so much for reading today, I always appreciate your time.
In the spirit of the big game this weekend, I want to remind everyone to check out Mike Sykes’ definitive fashion X sports newsletter, The Kicks You Wear. Mike has everything you need to know about the Super Bowl.
As an aside, I just got a chance to watch the trailer for Ryan Murphy’s “Love Story,” and it looks like the team finally nailed Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s buttery blonde. It has too much tousle in some scenes, but actress Sarah Pidgeon’s colour certainly looks better than in some of those promo pics. Oh, and they got the Manolos right, too.
Today, I’m going to get right to it and talk about beauty’s partnerships (or lack thereof) with the NFL.
How Serious Is Beauty About Sports?
E.l.f. Beauty’s Super Bowl ad starring Melissa McCarthy for its Glow Reviver Lip Oil. (Courtesy of E.l.f. Beauty)
Roughly two years ago, in the midst of Caitlin Clark mania, technology correspondent Marc Bain and I penned a column about beauty and fashion’s brewing relationship with female athletes. Brands saw untapped potential in sports stars and their fans, and were chomping at the bit to get a piece of them. Mielle was the first to collaborate with Angel Reese when she was playing college ball at Louisiana State University and Glossier launched its foundation range with a slew of WNBA players.
Flash forward to 2026, and some of these partnerships are still going: Sephora, for example, signed multi-year deals with hometown team the Golden State Valkyries and became the official beauty partner for the new 3×3 Unrivaled basketball league; this week, Ulta Beauty announced its own play called the Ulta Beauty Roster, a collective of professional female athletes the retailer is backing in honour of National Girls and Women in Sports Day.
But beyond the WNBA, the beauty mania I expected with other sports hasn’t happened.
Sunday marks television’s biggest event: the Super Bowl, and our fashion friends are pulling out all the stops. Thom Browne, will be showing his Autumn/Winter 2026 collection at the GQ Bowl, instead of at New York Fashion Week, and Abercrombie & Fitch will hold a presentation over the weekend. Breitling has come onboard as a luxury partner, and indie Westernwear brand Tecovas is running an ad during the game’s stream on Peacock.
On the ad front, beauty and fashion brands are showing up pretty equally. Brands like Unilever’s Dove and E.l.f. will return again — the former with its standard messaging of championing women and sports, the latter with a more creative spot on Peacock showcasing Melissa McCarthy in a telenovela (it’s supposed to be a nod to Bad Bunny’s half-time performance) to shill its Glow Reviver Lip Oil. Who can forget its disruptive ad with “White Lotus” star Jennifer Coolidge in 2023? The label practically wrote the modern-day playbook for fashion and beauty lines to follow when it comes to Super Bowl advertising. Indies like Eos and Tree Hut are doing exactly that by trying to get in on the action with both national spots on Peacock and regional linear TV buys in key markets.
But it’s notable that L’Oréal, the world’s biggest purveyor of cosmetics, has decided to sit out the game again after a spot for Cerave with Michael Cera in 2024. Procter & Gamble’s personal care and beauty divisions are also opting out, including Mielle, which became the textured hair sponsor of the NFL at the end of last year. We won’t even get to settle for those Procter & Gamble Head & Shoulders commercials featuring former Pittsburgh Steeler Troy Polamalu for our beauty football fix.
It’s too easy to say that more beauty lines can’t afford the high price tag of activations (a Super Bowl commercial can run $10 million dollars or more), or that they simply don’t care about a game that yielded 122.7 million viewers last year, nearly half of them women. Maybe L’Oréal and P&G should care more — they certainly have the money — but beauty hasn’t built the infrastructure it needs to be successful with the NFL.
As Mike reminded me, the NFL has embraced fashion in a way that goes deeper than any of the other big four US sports leagues (including the NBA, NHL and MLB). It shows in the kind of activities it has planned for the Super Bowl but also in its hiring of Kyle Smith as the league’s fashion editor. Smith has been integral in finding the right players to work with like Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow from a fashion POV. It also may seem easier to work with a player on a tunnel walk outfit than it is to make him do a Get Ready With Me skincare routine. But why?
If Harry Styles can wear 111Skin eye patches in album promotional images and Hudson Williams of “Heated Rivalry” can talk about his five-step Is Clinical skincare routine pre-Golden Globes, couldn’t charismatic athletes like Burrow, Sam Darnold or Eagles’ quarterback Jalen Hurts do the same? They wouldn’t need to be trailblazers: The Los Angeles Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani is the face of Japanese skincare line Decorté.
Instead of its Glow Reviver Lip Oil, what if E.l.f. came up with something out of the box for its sleepier E.l.f. Skin brand and got America’s football sweethearts in on it? It could be just as engaging — if not more — than any Allstate or Uber Eats ad.
What I’m Reading
Sephora has yet another K-beauty (J-beauty and T-beauty) challenger in the States. [The Business of Beauty]
Ryan Murphy’s new show “The Beauty” isn’t a classic, but it does raise interesting questions about the ethics of jabs and gendering of beauty. [Financial Times]
Investors are bullish on beauty robots. But do shoppers want them? [The Business of Beauty]
The bush — and then some — was back at couture week, where Charlie Le Mindu’s hair-sprouting show made the Skims merkin look conservative. [Dazed Beauty]
Goop could have been Gen X’s Rhode, but misaligned retail partners and slapdash rebrands have failed to pay dividends. My friend Rachel Strugatz dissects the brand’s often-confusing strategy. [Puck]
Thanks y’all,
Priya
