Cait Starke, Pearlfisher

It’s difficult not to scroll through the news and feel dirty. These days, chaos feels like the new, deeply uncomfortable norm. I promise, this isn’t an article about politics—but it won’t leave you feeling any cleaner.

This is about how the $446 billion skincare and beauty industry¹ is merrily stepping into our (maybe) Mad Max moment. We’re here to talk about the shift from Clinical Minimalism to Mad Science.

How We Got Here: The Branding of Widespread Anxiety

When the state of the world is a mess, culture tends to lean into chaos. Think the post-2008 recession era of Kesha’s TikTok, with its deeply smudged eyeliner, the endless rainbow shrill of Nyan cat, and the emergence of YOLO. It’s a form of joyful nihilism and cathartic release.

If the party rock anthems of the early 2000s were the Millennial Roaring 20s, is our generation primed for a similarly chaotic liberation? One that starts with skincare.

Welcome to the new wild west of modern beauty branding, where skincare sits at the crossroads of science lab minimalism and candy-colored chaos. On one end, you’ve got brands like The Ordinary, Peter Thomas Roth and Dr. Barbara Sturm: clinical, restrained and data-driven, wrapped in white labels and sans-serif fonts. On the other end, next generation sensory overload brands like Starface, About-Face and Youthforia: loud, edgy, playful, and not the least bit afraid of looking like a hot mess.

Messy, Yet Clean!

The twist? These days, the messier the branding, the cleaner and more efficacious its ingredients.

When The Ordinary launched in 2016, it disrupted the industry with its radically transparent pricing and packaging. Their serums, named after active ingredients and potency—Niacinamide 10% + Zinc 1%, Glycolic Acid 7%—were a direct challenge to luxury skincare’s mystery and markup. It looked like medicine, it read like science, and it worked. Others followed suit. Paula’s Choice leaned into direct, no-nonsense explanations, while brands like Dr.Jart, Dr. Barbara Sturm and Dr. Dennis Gross earned a clinical edge with dermatologist partnerships and a pharma-adjacent aesthetic.

More than aesthetics, clinical minimalism signaled efficacy. In a world overwhelmed by marketing gloss, cleaner expressions felt like truth.

But what was once disruptive now feels like more of the same. The same application droppers, the same grayscale labels, the same Helvetica-like fonts. In social media, those sterile visuals fade into the background. In the world of branding, simple can cue the most dreaded of labels—basic. In culture, the Clean Girl cohort is meeting a similar fate.

Maybe our desire for that perfectly clean 10-step beauty regimen that “actually works, we promise” was just a reflection of our own desire for control in a world that feels deeply out of our control. We all know how that turned out.

Meet the Chaos Goblins

Enter the skincare rebellion. Brands like Starface, with its sunshine-yellow acne patches shaped like stars, threw subtlety out the window. Zits are gross, sure. They’re also inevitable. Embrace the hormonal chaos of being a human, but do it with a hydrocolloid patch that is clinically proven to help draw out impurities and reduce inflammation

Then there’s skincare brand 4AM, which launched as unapologetically “anti-wellness.” Co-founders Sabrina Sade and Jade Beguelin were “tired of the notion that consumers have to be perfect wellness specimens, dedicating their lives to drinking green juices, sweating at hot yoga and hiking trails.”² Their brand not only leans into the party lifestyle by partnering with brands like Patron or 818 Tequila, but offers products with active ingredients that combat the effects of alcohol, of overtime, of all manners of goblin-mode induced sins to our skin.

Other brands are leaning into the aesthetics of discord. Like Youthforia, which launched foundation oils and blushes in neon, jelly-like packaging that glows like a Lisa Frank rave. Or about-face with its lawless kerning, eyeliner-as-typography, and its BDSM-inspired collaboration with Halsey. As a makeup collection, “Safeword” embraces the world of black electric tape, wet vinyl, and glitter. It’s beauty “without the fallout”—and oh yeah, it’s vegan.

These brands look like creatures of chaos, but their ingredient lists tell a different story.

This new wave of beauty might scream “fuck yea,” but its backbone is surprisingly rigorous. Youthforia’s viral blush oil, for example, is certified safe to sleep in, a claim backed by third-party toxicology testing. Brand Topicals jokes with a product it calls “Faded,” but that Faded Brightening + Clearing Serum was designed with dermatologists to treat serious concerns like eczema and hyperpigmentation.

The aesthetic may have flipped, but the emphasis on efficacy has not.

5-Alarm Signaling in a Saturated Market

Branding has always been about signals. For years, a minimal, white-and-silver label meant “This is serious.” Now, playful chaos might be saying the same thing—but with a wink. Loud, chaos-coded design can mean transparency, innovation, and even deeper ingredient literacy.

On TikTok and Instagram, a bright tube with slime-green jelly might stand out more than another beige serum bottle. If it sparks curiosity, it might even lead users to learn more about what’s inside.

Beyond product, storytelling can (and should) embrace the highs and lows of our everyday lives. is the assumption that consumers need to be spoon-fed softball messaging that hides the nitty gritty. Consumers are grown-ups, and there’s fun to be had in treating them as such. Take a page from the Unwell playbook, which recently launched a content network with podcasts like Extra Dirty with Hallie Batchelder, a self-proclaimed shit-talking podcast for dishing all the dirt and the details of living in NYC. Unwell is first and foremost an advanced hydration brand. One that’s realized bad girls need to stay hydrated, too.

If the wild ones’ everyday lives are getting wilder, the brands that match their energy are the ones that are destined to stand out.

Ride the Chaos. Embrace the Inner Goblin

We’re excited to see more brands blend both ends of the spectrum, ditching the idea that science has to look sterile. They’re inviting consumers into the lab, but glitter bombing them on the way in. Brand identity is primarily a storytelling device. These days, that story can be electric, messy, and still hyper-credible.

In the end, it’s a beauty and skincare design trend that indicates how consumers want to engage with brands at large: with unrestrained joy, with brutal honesty, with ingredient integrity, and without compromise. The future as we see it isn’t clinical or chaotic. It’s both.

Because in 2025, purity doesn’t whisper in Helvetica—it might arrive in holographic slime, shouting, “I passed clinical trials.” And we’re totally here for it.

References:

1. McKinsey, The CPG Beauty Boom (2024)
2. Beauty Independent, An Anti-Wellness Skincare Brand, 4AM Makes Products For Party People https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/youthforia-biobased-makeup-clean-beauty/

About the Author

Cait Starke is head of strategy at Pearlfisher, a brand design agency. For more than a decade, Starke has been building meaningful connections between brands and people. She’s delivered transformational work for brands and organizations including General Mills, Heineken, PepsiCo, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Levi Strauss.

As Head of Strategy at Pearlfisher New York, she drives strategic excellence across a comprehensive strategy offering. She delivers lucid thinking across design strategy, brand positioning, portfolio strategy, innovation, naming, brand voice and brand experience.