Morphe's Newest Venture, Morphe 2 is Teaming up with D'Amelio Sisters, Charli and Dixie

Mega beauty brand, Morphe Cosmetics, has officially announced their newest collaboration with Tik Tok stars Charli and Dixie D’Amelio. Morphe 2, the sister brand aimed for teens and adolescents, will be debuting the D’Amelio sisters in their new campaign on July 30th.

Charli, who is best known for her dancing, and Dixie, who recently debuted her first single “Be Happy”, are seriously all over Tik Tok, and now the beauty industry! With the D’Amelio sisters having millions of followers on Tik Tok, Charli with 74.3M and Dixie with 31.4M, it’s a great marketing tactic to get these two Tik Tok sensations on board with the growing cosmetic brand. The line will consist of easy to apply makeup products such as jelly eye shimmers and foundation tints. These products are perfect for the young teen learning how to apply makeup, or honestly for any age appropriate Gen Z going for the natural look.

This is the first step Morphe 2 is making, and rather a big step I might add. The D’Amelio sisters have a following that continuously grows, and with the hope of their fans taking part in the new collab, Morphe 2 featuring Charli and Dixiei may easily be a hit. With their campaign being known as, “Light, Multipurpose Makeup”, it’s safe to say that Morphe 2 is wanting their customers to feel beautiful with their natural face. I don’t think we’ll find any caked faces or smokey eyes in the Morphe sub-brand.

I know almost every celebrity, or influencer, thinks they can become a makeup mogul, but I think this collaboration is a great opportunity to teach young girls (and boys) to feel comfortable in their skin. Makeup is to enhance the beauty that you were born with, and I hope Charli and Dixie continue to be a positive influence for Generation Z. You can find all the information for the campaign here.

Photo Credits:

https://www.dazeddigital.com/beauty/head/article/49879/1/charli-and-dixie-d-amelio-team-up-with-morphe-on-a-new-make-up-brand

https://www.insider.com/charli-dixie-damelio-makeup-morphe-date-products-line-2020-7

https://wwd.com/beauty-industry-news/beauty-features/charli-dixie-damelio-morphe-1203682213/

Report: Kaitlin Gallagher

Let's Talk Trends: Health Trends

As quarantine shuttered everything throughout the country, people were left with only themselves to rely on for their health needs. No gyms, no restaurants, and grocery store wipeouts, caused people to turn to social media for different, innovative ways to meet their fitness and health needs.

One of the most popular apps used to get this information? TikTok. In short videos of 60 seconds or less users could find fun new workouts, easy recipes, and tips and tricks to staying healthy while in your house. But an excess of information does not mean correct information! TikTok users are not required to have any sort of credentials for the type of content they will be informing users on – so many of the health information is coming from someone unqualified in any form of health education.

TikTok’s platform has a unique set of viewers, as many are in a much younger demographic than other social media. Typical viewers on TikTok can range from 8 years old to 25 years old, making a large portion of their users extremely susceptible to misleading information. “Diet Hacks”, “How to Lose Weight Fast”, and other seemingly easy ways to “promote” a healthy lifestyle, are actually promoting eating disorders to many of our youth. Many of us are already aware of the body image issues that social media can cause. Constantly having a feed of seemingly “perfect” people can make one extremely insecure about themselves. But giving others ideas on unrealistic and impractical ways to “achieve” these goals, are leading many down an unhealthy path.

One of the many promoted is intermittent fasting. The idea of intermittent fasting is to restrict your daily eating to a certain time frame, so you are typically not eating late at night or early in the morning. Many have taken this idea to the extreme and promote only eating once a day. Everyone needs energy and the idea of eating one meal a day or less is unsustainable and irrational. For a developing child especially, nutrient intake and a sustainable diet are so important. However, many on social media platforms idealize this type of fast, encouraging many to use it as the secret to fast weight loss.

Along with eating restrictions, “miracle” foods are a hot topic on social media. Low calorie, tasty snacks and supplements are the top hack for many influencers. When looking at the ingredient breakdown on many of these “miracle” foods however, it seems you are typically trading off calories for chemicals.

Report: Jordyn Kelley

TikTok Has A Whole New Look.

TikTok is mostly known for doing viral dance trends and making funny videos. But TikToker, Wisdom Kaye, has a bit of a different approach. Kaye has more than 2 million subscribers on TikTok, and has become known for his sense of style. Kaye is often seen wearing 1970's fashions, but with his own modern twist. “There is something I love about looking like I am from a different time period,” he tells Vogue. “I think it stems from my love for surrealism—the juxtaposition of the contemporary world against the classic ’70s aesthetic just sits right with me.” Kaye says his love of fashion began during the beginning of his high school days. "I wanted to change my appearance to fit in, so I thought the best way was through conformity." However, Kaye's mindset quickly changed. "As the years went by, I just stopped caring what everyone thought about me, and I started experimenting more."

Kaye names Saint Laurant, and designer Heidi Slimane as big influences. Kaye first joined TikTok at the beginning of the year, and began posting complications of his outfits. “I posted a couple on TikTok and Twitter, and they actually blew up on Twitter first," he says, "After a while, they racked up over a million views. At that point I saw potential and started making more creative content on TikTok that went beyond just a standard outfit compilation.” Today, Kaye posts at least once a day, and says that he is never short on ideas. Kaye is mostly known for his "style challenges." Every so often, he will find comments challenging him to come up with an almost impossible to create outfit, like a red and green outfit without making it look like Christmas. Then, Kaye will respond and make the outfit in a video. He also offers fashion tips for men.

Report: Anna Bechtel

"Savage"

Beyoncé and Meg the Stallion astonished the world with their shake to the music industry. The remix to the rapper's viral hit "Savage" on Thursday, April 29th, had the beehive (fans) emphatically freaking out over their unique collab on several media platforms.

"And this is why she's queen," one listener wrote on the popular social media of Twitter, along with Queen Bey's verse in which she name drops Onlyfans, TickTock, And her beautiful mother Tina Knowles-Lawson, in which she claims to get her “savagness” from. This sparked a lot of different interests in people to step into their own “savage”power.

For instance, Kerry Washington declared “Savage" the song could not get any better which was a tweet written for Beyoncè where she pays homage towards the queen. I think it’s safe to say many fans can agree, her adding a touch of her magical voice on the song helped to drive the song to number one!

Report: Stacey Rattray

How TikTok Has Changed Music's Path To Success

In the first quarter of 2020 alone, the massive social media app TikTok had 315 million downloads. In total, the platform has upwards of 2 billion downloads. Needless to say, this short-form video app is experiencing impressive growth. And it only seems to be improving as more people are staying home amidst the pandemic and have nothing better to do than scroll through the app and learn the latest dance craze.

A large part of the entertainment on TikTok is its music discovery. TikTok provides a kind of music-listening demo to its audience with its 15-60 second videos, and when a particular sound goes viral, it’s great news for the song’s artist. This is because virality on TikTok leads to a boost in streams on other platforms, such as Spotify and Apple Music. Take Arizona Zervas, with a jaw-dropping 2472% increase in Spotify monthly listeners since his breakout hit on TikTok, “Roxanne,” or Doja Cat, with the use of songs like “Say So” and “Cyber Sex” on the platform launching her into stardom. Roddy Rich’s “The Box,” another viral dance song, beat out Justin Bieber’s “Yummy” for the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100, despite Bieber’s widely ridiculed instructions to fans on how to boost streams. These are only a few examples of huge success stories as a result of TikTok’s influence.

TikTok's "anybody can get famous, fast" narrative only fuels its trends as millions of people will learn the choreography to a catchy dance or lip sync to an upbeat song in the hopes of getting thousands of views. Many artists have noted this path of success and attempted to curate their songs specifically for TikTok virality. For example, Megan Thee Stallion started the “Captain Hook Challenge” herself by posting a choreographed dance to her page and encouraging others to learn it, while Drake’s “Toosie Slide” features explicit dance instructions within its lyrics and the support of already-famous influencer Toosie, making it an instant TikTok recipe for success.

It is clear that TikTok has had a huge impact on the music industry and the process of reaching fame. It almost seems that for a song to even compete with other current hits, TikTok virality is a crucial component. The answer to what song awaits TikTok fame next lies in the hands of its millions of users, and the creativity or whomever wishes to launch the next viral trend.

Report: Grace Carlos

How Fashion Turned to TikTok

Who would have thought that by posting a 30 second video on an app could get you a ticket to the most popular and exclusive fashion shows? Tiktok, a social media platform, is known as a creative outlet for people who want to express themselves by posting a brief video of anything to music, such as dancing, singing, fitness routines, or baking. One 15-year-old, Charli D’Amelio, was lucky enough to make a career from the app and build a large following base, 41 million followers to be exact. The TikTok star was front row for this seasons Prada fashion show, posting several videos of her dancing in front of the runway’s floral backdrop.

Aside from Charli’s success from the app, TikTok has sent three representatives to this year’s New York Fashion Week: Cosette Rinab, Taylor Hage, and Tyler Gaca, to broadcast scenes from the fashion shows. These shows included Dior’s fall 2020 show, Tory Burch and Rag & Bone. The Tiktok artists also created “get ready with me” videos, which showcased the newest clothes from each fashion show attended. Fashion shows have flocked to the app to cast TikTok artists, such as Neon Eubanks, who was recruited for the Celine fashion show.

Fashion is using the application to showcase their newest lines and perform trending challenges to gain viewers and momentum. Ralph Lauren turned to TikTok to create a hashtag challenge during the US Open resulted in more than 100,000 video submissions, and totaled in over 790 million views. As the pandemic pans out and stores remain closed, TikTok seems like the best platform to sell and promote products, while also having fun with it.

Report: Woo Jong Kim