Fashion brand Sachin & Babi is skipping a traditional runway show this New York Fashion Week season, but the company is using the week’s accompanying buzz to connect with a younger beauty audience.
Sachin & Babi, which doesn’t sell beauty products itself, partnered with cosmetics brand Too Faced to do the makeup looks for its new spring 2019 lookbook, featuring its latest collection. The fashion brand’s behind-the-scenes Instagram posts of the photo shoot, which took place last Thursday, promoted said makeup looks heavily. This was savvy digital marketing for Sachin & Babi: The fashion house has 66,300 followers on the platform, while Too Faced has 11 million. The collaboration was also exclusive: Too Faced sent Pro Squad ambassador Luigi Trejo to create the custom makeup looks, and the brand will not be working with any other fashion brands this New York Fashion Week.
The social media beauty push was a way for Sachin & Babi, which is used to 36- to 65-year-old customers, to reach a more diversified, Gen Z and millennial demographic, according to the brand. It had previously partnered with more established beauty brands like Nars, Shiseido and Bobbi Brown for its traditional shows.
“Sixteen to 36-year-olds don’t engage with Sachin & Babi socially a lot, but because we are a little expensive — they really only dabble in our earrings,” said co-founder Babi Ahluwalia. “Working with a brand like Bobbi Brown is more geared to women my age, whereas Too Faced is all about millennial engagement.”
Since teasing the fashion and beauty content of the photoshoot last Thursday, Ahluwalia has seen 122 percent growth of the brand’s Instagram following, and the average post engagement is up 55 percent. One video posted to the fashion brands’s Instagram account yielded 12,400 views. Sachin & Babi also saw visitors for Instagram Stories double for the first 24 hours. Forty-six percent of those all-new Instagram followers were between ages 25 to 34, and 18 percent were ages 18 to 24.
“Too Faced really helped draw in those younger eyes,” said Ahluwalia. Too Faced, which has been Estée Lauder Companies’ largest acquisition to date — scooped up for $1.4 billion in 2016 — wouldn’t disclose how the Sachin & Babi photoshoot faired on its Stories, as it was integrated with other content, according to a spokesperson. It only shared that Too Faced has “millions and millions” of views on Instagram Stories daily.
This NYFW partnership with Too Faced allowed both companies to leverage “what’s available now,” said Ahluwalia. This is increasingly valid as end-of-season beauty trend reports and seasonal product pushes become less relevant to the bigger beauty industry picture, in favor of buzzier drops, like those of Pat McGrath Labs and Kylie Cosmetics.
Too Faced, for instance, showcased its Peach Kiss Moisture Matte Long Wear Lipstick in how-to tutorials on Instagram Stories to drive new awareness. Other products featured were the brand’s Hangover Replenishing Face Primer, Born This Way Foundation, Just Peachy Mattes Eye Shadow Palette and Better Than Sex Mascara. The Peach Kiss lipstick franchise relaunched on Tuesday with seven new shades and updated packaging on TooFaced.com and Sephora.com, making the social posts timely.
Sachin & Babi also partnered with beauty magazine Allure for one of its lookbook models, Ujjwala Raut, to do an Instagram takeover of the NYFW photoshoot, further spurring beauty engagement.
“Social media has played a huge part in enabling beauty looks to be shared instantly, allowing brands to generate buzz by posting behind-the-scenes looks and products used, in real-time,” said WGSN senior beauty editor Theresa Yee. “Beauty trends are no longer driven solely by what we see on the catwalks.”
Ahluwalia credits the Too Faced Peach Kiss lipstick tease as a driver in overall interest for Sachin & Babi. Compared to its spring 2018 runway show, which had 5.6 percent engagement on Instagram, this new beauty-focused social push has had 8 percent, said Ahluwalia. That photoshoot content will be rolled out sparingly on its e-commerce today, with a greater push in January and February when the clothes hit stores.
