This Gen-Z influencer is one of the established and breakout names informing beauty and, more importantly, culture today. More from the series →
If there’s anyone who has made the most out of a year in quarantine, it’s skinfluencer Hyram Yarbro.
When the pandemic hit the U.S. in March 2020, Yarbro had been in the process of building an audience on his YouTube channel. And he had just made the decision to start posting on TikTok. “I initially thought it was going to just be a fun outlet to do silly videos just for fun,” he said. He now has 6.8 million followers and has had a breakout year clearing breakouts.
Yarbro is now making the rounds on “Good Morning America” and “The Drew Barrymore Show,” sharing his skin-care wisdom, and brands are scrambling to work with him. His longtime favorite, CeraVe, enlisted him for a partnership after his seal of approval fueled the brand’s popularity among Gen Z. He’s since worked with a wide range of brands and is doing his part to make skinfluencer product collaborations as prevalent as influencer eyeshadow palettes. Recent collabs with his name on them have included sets with Kinship and Inkey List.
“I think we can all say that 2020 was definitely the year of skin care,” he said. “It was exciting, because I was seeing a lot of younger people becoming really excited by skin care and starting to learn [about] and invest time into really taking care of their skin.”
Yarbro now gets recognized when he leaves his house in Hawaii. “Having a large audience watch your videos sometimes feels a little disconnected,” he said. “It’s a little hard to grasp the reality of how many people are watching. But being able to see [followers] in public just cements the positive power and the positive influence I’m able to have.”
Yarbro said he turns down about 95% of the brands that approach him and has specific criteria for those he teams with for partnerships. “I tend to be very particular about what ingredients I like, not only in my [own] skin care but [also in] what ingredients I’m comfortable recommending to my audience,” he said. “I always want to recommend formulas that are as accessible to as many people as possible, and with that, I want to factor sensitivities and irritation.”
The buzzy new ingredients he’s excited about include tranexamic acid, succinic acid, mandelic acid, polyhydroxy acids and common K-beauty ingredient centella asiatica.
As for his focus in 2021, “I think I found a good balance [on platforms] right now,” he said. “[I like to] make content that makes people laugh and puts a smile on people’s faces on TikTok. And then, if they do want to pursue further in-depth skin-care information, that’s really where my YouTube content comes into play.”
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