The Valentino Vendetta fragrance campaign is the most cinematic thing in beauty this August: Dakota Johnson and Alexander Skarsgård appear in a short film directed by Romain Gavras and shot by Inez & Vinoodh, all magnetic pull and heat, built around two new scents that reward closer attention than the visuals alone suggest.
The campaign introduces Vendetta Donna and Vendetta Uomo as a pair bound by temperament if not by formula. Donna, created by master perfumer Dominique Ropion in collaboration with Andrew Everett, is described in the original release as a floral gourmand woody scent anchored to tuberose in what the brand calls its most carnal expression. Uomo takes a different route. According to Global Cosmetics News, master perfumer Marie Salamagne built the masculine fragrance around ginger, Italian citrus and a cinnamon liquor accord, with patchouli and woody notes grounding the whole. The result is a contrast between something close to skin and something you smell arriving: a pairing designed to read as antagonism, or at least as tension.
The Valentino Vendetta fragrance campaign and the season’s other arrivals
Fragrance is doing a lot of the heavy lifting across beauty in August, and a pattern emerges when you set the month’s releases side by side. Byredo’s new Suede Osmanthus, a Harrods-exclusive, opens on peach and magnolia before giving way to suede, oud and labdanum: a classic bait-and-switch, the fruit as introduction to the leather. Valentino‘s two new scents do something similar in their own idiom, staging a bright or floral opening against a darker woody base. The season, it seems, wants to end in shadow.
Vivienne Westwood’s new Boudoir eau de parfum offers a more explicitly nostalgic version of that trajectory. The fragrance takes inspiration from perfumes Vivienne herself loved, opening with bergamot, orange blossom and damask rose before settling into vanilla, tobacco leaf and sandalwood. Its packaging carries Westwood iconography, which means the bottle itself functions as a piece of the brand’s visual language before it is ever opened.
Aesop’s Antithesis Intense Body Cleanser sits somewhere adjacent to this conversation: a reworking of the brand’s existing Coriander Seed Body Cleanser, now sharpened with black pepper and patchouli to produce something spicier and more insistent. It is a small compositional adjustment that shifts the register of an already familiar product considerably.
Skin and makeup: what the market is still saying about SPF
Skincare in August is still talking about sun protection, even as the light changes. Medicube’s No Cast Just Dew PDRN Sun Serum promises hydration and a dewy finish without white cast or greasy residue, the twin anxieties that have historically made daily SPF application feel like a compromise. Beauty of Joseon’s new Hydra Shield Body Sun Lotion SPF 50+ combines fermented brown rice and ceramides in a lightweight formula that similarly leaves no white cast or sticky finish. Both products are making the same argument: that SPF compliance is primarily a texture problem, and that solving the texture is the whole brief.
On the makeup side, Chanel’s limited-edition Coco Mademoiselle collection moves an existing fragrance identity into the makeup bag with a mauve-lilac Rouge Coco lipstick, a nine-shade smoky eye palette and a delicate pink Le Vernis. YSL Beauty, meanwhile, is bringing a cushion foundation to the UK for the first time with its Skin Affair Soft Glow Cushion Foundation, available in 31 shades and housed in a refillable compact.
Fara Homidi, a brand that has developed a following partly through its visual identity, launches its first mascara this month: the Pool Slick Lash Lacquer, shot by Zoë Ghertner and fronted by Paloma Elsesser. It arrives in Fara Homidi‘s signature acid-yellow packaging, with a glossy, smudge-proof formula. A first mascara is a category extension that tests whether a brand’s aesthetic coherence can survive the practicalities of a functional product. On the evidence of the campaign alone, it travels well.
