What Top Makeup Brands Are Doing on TikTok in 2026
> Over the past seven days, makeup brands moved beyond routine product demos into serialized launches, creator proof, founder-led worlds, seasonal artistry and real-world community storytelling. TikTok favored looser narrative experiments and cultural hooks, while Instagram carried more polished demonstrations and conversion messaging. The clearest shift is from showing products to building contexts people want to follow.
What makeup brands posted from October 10–17, 2026
This review covers recent TikToks and Instagram Reels from more than 20 makeup brands, including Rare Beauty, NYX, Fenty Beauty, Maybelline, Charlotte Tilbury, Rhode, MAC, Haus Labs, Huda Beauty, Saie, e.l.f., ColourPop, Tower 28, Tarte and others.
The week was unusually dense: Halloween content collided with holiday launches, fall shades, collaborations, brand trips, pop-ups and early promotional messaging. That pushed feeds away from a single dominant format. Instead, brands built several distinct content systems around the same product or campaign.
The biggest shift: launches are becoming stories, not announcements
The strongest campaigns did not publish one reveal and move on. They divided the launch into chapters: mysterious mood-setting, process footage, founder or collaborator context, a complete reveal, demonstrations and subsequent social proof.
Huda Beauty made manufacturing the teaser
Huda Beauty’s factory video follows a palette through an identifiable production line, using workers, machinery, powder pressing and completed palettes as the reveal. Camcorder timestamps, handheld footage and natural reactions make it feel like privileged access rather than a conventional product film.
That approach creates proof and anticipation simultaneously: the audience sees that something real is being made, but the video still controls when the finished product appears. Huda then supported the launch with founder-led announcement content, creator unboxing and shade-focused clips across TikTok and Instagram.
about-face separated desire from information
about-face’s earlier teaser withheld the packaging, shade names and product format. It sold only the nocturnal world and shimmering result. This week’s reveal reversed that construction: bright background, exposed compacts, named shades and direct texture swatches.
This is a meaningful launch pattern: the teaser gives people a reason to wonder, while the reveal answers every practical question. Trying to make one video perform both jobs would weaken each.
Saie turned a collaborator into the product’s origin story
Saie’s Bellini eyeshadow campaign treats Hannah Chody as more than launch talent. One post follows her through hair, makeup, wardrobe and the campaign shoot; another explains her long search for the right shade, includes product-development footage, demonstrates application and ends with retail availability.
The product therefore enters the feed with a human reason to exist. The collaboration supplies narrative, process and tutorial content—not merely borrowed reach.
TikTok and Instagram are playing different roles
Brands frequently reuse campaigns across both platforms, but the most thoughtful executions alter the creative job.
TikTok is the experimentation and personality layer
Recent TikToks were more likely to use:
- A humorous narrative test rather than a formal claim
- Product-free or product-light workplace culture
- Founder and celebrity fragments
- Episodic cliffhangers
- ASMR, props and native visual jokes
- Casual backstage access
- Event diaries and social-team perspectives
Rare Beauty’s brow-gel post is a good example. A creator applies the gel to her cowboy brother, sends him horseback riding and then discovers him hiding the product in his shirt. The efficacy claim is embedded in a family joke and an activity rather than delivered as advertising copy.
Maybelline uses a similar principle at a larger campaign scale. Comedian Zarna Garg discusses marathon training while joking about her low step count and 28-year marriage; Maybelline’s longevity message becomes part of her story, with the lip product appearing during the run.
L’Oréal Paris went even further toward episodic entertainment. Its high-reach teaser shows a woman preparing to film a documentary about her “breakup” with lip filler. There is no physical product reveal—the post ends by deliberately leaving the premise unresolved.
Instagram is still doing more explanatory and conversion work
Instagram Reels more often provided complete application sequences, shade details, collaboration context, retail messaging or save-worthy instruction.
NYX illustrates the split particularly clearly. Its TikTok uses skeleton hands, stacked blush compacts and pure tapping sounds for a Halloween ASMR loop. Its Instagram Reel turns a kitchen strainer, pigment and rhinestones into a step-by-step Halloween face hack, explicitly asking viewers to save it.
Rare Beauty’s recent Instagram collaboration content is likewise polished and complete. One Reel gives Selena Gomez and Shay Mitchell a hotel-and-travel world for the BÉIS collaboration; another shows the raspberry cheek and lip products across multiple complexions.
The distinction is not absolute. Fenty published a nearly two-minute Instagram foundation wear test with bare-skin application, a public check-in and a final verdict. It looks polished but retains the structure and texture of credible creator UGC.
Product proof is getting more contextual
Basic before-and-after demonstrations remain common, but several brands placed the proof inside a more memorable scenario.
Maybelline: marathon training supplies a natural durability test.
Rare Beauty: horseback riding turns brow hold into a visual joke.
Fenty Beauty: a creator checks foundation after leaving home, rather than ending immediately after application.
MAC: product demand is proven through archive history and audience comments, not only a swatch.
MAC’s Spanish Fly comeback is the standout. Makeup artist and beauty historian Erin Parsons explains the shade’s original 2000 launch, shows archival material and comments asking for its return, swatches the duochrome lipstick and jokingly claims credit for bringing it back.
MAC had spent the preceding week teasing the archive, asking what should return and introducing the wider Frost range. The latest post delivers the narrative payoff. This is less a nostalgia reference than a full content franchise built from product history.
Product texture has become content—but plain pack shots are not enough
Close-up swatches, reflective powders, marbled creams and tactile packaging appeared throughout the week. However, the broader recent-format data did not show simple cinematic product footage clearly outperforming creator-led transformation or shade-comparison formats.
ColourPop makes the product-only approach work by supplying visual discovery. Its Fallen collection Reel moves from extreme macro texture to organized arm swatches, magnified pigment details and a full autumn flat lay. The viewer learns something with every shot.
e.l.f. takes the opposite approach: a very short stop-motion loop framed as an iPhone camera view. Products appear one by one inside a drink carrier, synchronized with shutter sounds. There is no face, voiceover or in-video CTA.
The common principle is motion with a payoff. The products are counted, revealed, magnified, scooped, swatched or transformed. A beautiful object sitting still is less competitive than a beautiful object doing something.
Halloween is becoming an artistry system, not just themed packaging
NYX, MAC, Benefit, Urban Decay and about-face all entered Halloween territory, but their approaches differ sharply.
NYX is publishing a broad seasonal content engine: SFX transformations, practical hacks, spooky ASMR, lip combinations and a competitive makeup-show format. MAC combines Halloween artistry with its editorial MACzine concept. Benefit attaches existing products to accessible costume solutions, while Urban Decay connects its high-impact formulas to goth and chrome looks.
The important distinction is utility. “Halloween-themed” branding alone is weak; saveable techniques, complete transformations and recognizable creative constraints give the seasonal post a reason to circulate.
Brands are increasingly showing the people and machinery behind the feed
Behind-the-scenes content used to mean campaign B-roll. This week it expanded into several more specific forms:
- Factory production at Huda Beauty
- Collaborator preparation and product development at Saie
- Celebrity campaign production at Charlotte Tilbury
- Social-team labor at Tower 28
- Intern appreciation at Tarte
- Long-form founder conversation at Milk Makeup
Charlotte Tilbury’s Christina Aguilera post moves from dressing-room preparation into elaborate holiday sets, product moments and campaign performance. It maintains luxury spectacle while exposing the production process.
Tower 28 goes in the other direction. Its video jokes about the social team “doing the absolute most” while directing attendees at a pop-up. No individual product leads the post; the employee, crowd and act of making content become the entertainment.
Tarte’s office video similarly contains no makeup demonstration. The founder surprises interns with pumpkin-shaped bagels, thanks them and joins in office banter.
These posts humanize the organization, but the wider format data is mixed: generic workplace culture and event diaries were not unusually strong categories overall. The better examples contain a concrete episode—a surprise, a difficult shoot, an unusual guest or a recognizable social-media joke—rather than merely showing that employees exist.
Long-form beauty content is returning—selectively
Milk Makeup published a nearly four-minute in-car conversation between co-founder Zanna Roberts Rassi and Victoria Beckham. The discussion ranges from accents and New York to Beckham’s schedule, handbag and on-the-go makeup habits, with product integration woven into the conversation.
This is not evidence that every brand should suddenly make four-minute Reels. Long conversational beauty videos were not a broadly dominant breakout format in the surrounding TikTok landscape. Milk’s execution works as a branded show because it has a recognizable guest, a specific setting and a repeatable editorial premise: commuter beauty.
The shift is not simply toward longer videos. It is toward formats that earn their length.
Founders are being used in three different ways
Founder visibility is no longer one undifferentiated tactic.
The founder as cultural magnet
Rare Beauty’s event coverage centers Selena Gomez at the Rare Impact Fund Benefit without showing a physical product. The brand is reinforcing its purpose and founder world rather than making a direct sale.
The founder as aesthetic shorthand
Haus Labs uses rapidly cycling Polaroid-style images of Lady Gaga holding the Sun Dipped Bronzing Veil, accompanied by her shade choices. The format communicates taste and identity more than technique.
The founder as host or editor
Charlotte Tilbury narrates and appears inside an elaborate campaign universe, while Milk’s co-founder hosts a conversational series. Here, the founder is not merely famous; she provides the format’s voice.
This distinction matters because founder appearances alone were not an unusually strong content category in the wider recent data. The founder needs a role: host, expert, protagonist, source of access or symbol of the brand’s mission.
Real-world activations are becoming content capture systems
Tower 28 documented its pop-up from announcement through merch, attendees, giveaways and the social team’s perspective. Patrick Ta turned a first global brand trip to Thailand into a multi-post travel diary. Makeup by Mario shared a Paris community dinner. e.l.f. covered a state-fair activation, while Glossier promoted a Los Angeles treasure hunt.
The strategic change is that events are no longer represented by one recap. Brands are designing them to produce multiple perspectives:
1. Teaser and invitation
2. Creator or founder arrival
3. Product or merch detail
4. Crowd participation
5. Employee perspective
6. Recap and social proof
Tower 28’s feed demonstrates the progression particularly well. The prior week focused on announcing and driving attendance; the latest week shifted toward the lived event and the people producing it.
Holiday content arrived early—and it is competing with fall and Halloween
Charlotte Tilbury, Glossier, Milk Makeup, Benefit, Patrick Ta, ColourPop, Fenty Beauty and e.l.f. all posted holiday sets or limited-edition products. Tarte moved even further down the commercial calendar with a concentrated Cyber Week preview.
Tarte’s feed is notable for its volume and message discipline: numerous short Reels repeat the same discount through different visual jokes, product applications and office scenarios. Its blush Reel keeps the sale text on screen while a creator applies the product in a compact demonstration.
This saturation may increase message recall, but the observed engagement on many sale-led posts was modest relative to creator stories and entertainment-led launches. The lesson is not that offers are ineffective; it is that an offer does not automatically supply a compelling video premise.
The strongest brand strategies this week
Serialized launch
Huda Beauty, Saie and about-face split anticipation, process, reveal and proof into distinct chapters.
Entertainment proof
Rare Beauty and Maybelline embedded durability claims inside memorable real-world stories.
Archive equity
MAC made product history, audience demand and expert narration part of the launch itself.
Platform adaptation
NYX used TikTok for sensory play and Instagram for a saveable transformation tutorial.
Community world
Tower 28 turned one physical activation into announcements, diaries, humor and social proof.
Founder role
Haus Labs, Rare Beauty, Milk and Charlotte Tilbury gave founders different narrative jobs.
What changed compared with the previous seven days
The clearest shifts were campaign-stage changes rather than a total reinvention of brand style:
Teasing moved into revealing. about-face exposed the product after withholding it; Huda Beauty progressed into manufacturing and launch footage.
Announcements moved into lived experiences. Tower 28’s pop-up promotion became attendee and social-team content; Patrick Ta’s travel teaser became an active Thailand diary.
Campaign glamour moved backstage. Charlotte Tilbury followed polished holiday material with more preparation, conversation and on-set access.
Product heritage reached its payoff. MAC’s archive questions and Frost previews culminated in the Spanish Fly return story.
Launch claims became proof. Fenty moved from founder-powered TikTok Shop excitement in the preceding period toward wear testing, shade matching and routine integration.
Collaborations became worlds. Rare Beauty x BÉIS expanded beyond showing the makeup set into travel, packing, hotel and founder imagery.
What brands appear to be learning
A product demonstration is now the baseline, not the differentiator. The brands creating the most distinctive work are adding one of four assets around it: a story worth completing, access viewers would not otherwise have, a person with a defined role or a visual process that rewards attention.
The week’s content also shows that “native” does not have to mean cheap or chaotic. Huda’s camcorder treatment, MAC’s archive documentary, Saie’s collaborator vlog and Charlotte Tilbury’s backstage montage all feel platform-aware while remaining unmistakably branded.
The emerging model is a mixed feed: short sensory loops for reach and repetition, credible creator proof for consideration, founder or archive storytelling for brand equity, and event or workplace episodes for continuity. Makeup brands are not abandoning product content—they are surrounding the product with a reason to care.
