Key takeaways
- TikTok is driving real-time shifts in beauty preferences for autumn/winter 2025.
- Trends like ‘cinnamon brunette’, ‘toasty makeup’, and embracing pale skin are gaining traction.
- Brands that treat TikTok as a strategic tool can anticipate demand and shape product development.
- Social media data is becoming essential for seasonal storytelling and campaign planning.
“Autumn has always been a season of transition in beauty, but what’s different in 2025 is the speed at which consumers are signalling their preferences online,” said social media expert Alex Brown.
According to Brown, who is CCO and co-founder of Campfire – a social media agency that works with brands like St Tropez, L’Oréal and The Inkey List – catching these TikTok beauty trends early allows beauty companies to turn them into brand opportunities.
How TikTok is influencing seasonal beauty preferences
“TikTok has become the cultural early-warning system that tells us, almost in real time, what shades, products and aesthetics will define the season,” he said.
“Brands can move from reacting too late to anticipating demand,” Brown continued. “The winners this autumn will be those who treat TikTok data as a strategic resource, guiding product development, informing seasonal launches and shaping creative narratives in real time.”
Using Campfire’s TikTok trend detection tool, Spark, which tracks emerging trends across beauty and lifestyle, Brown has revealed what beauty trends users are searching for on TikTok right now.
Emerging hair, makeup and skincare trends to watch
Hair care & colour on TikTok
When it comes to hair trends, Brown said we are seeing the rise of the ‘cinnamon brunette’.
“Engagement with this trend jumped by 87k views in just one 72-hour period recently,” he noted, “reflecting a shift from the bleached tones of summer to richer, darker shades that feel more in tune with autumn.”
For brands, the opportunity “isn’t just to push darker hair colour,” he said. “It’s to align seasonal storytelling, salon partnerships and campaign imagery around the idea of depth and richness of the colour of the moment.”
Makeup trending on TikTok
In a similar vein, ‘toasty makeup’ also reached +12.4 million views.
According to Brown, this trend “isn’t just a passing hashtag; it’s an indication that bronzed, warm tones could continue into consumers’ autumn beauty vocabulary.”
“This suggests that cosmetics brands should do two things,” he continued. “First, they could consider repositioning bronzing products and warm-toned palettes as essentials that translate through to autumn rather than summer-only products. They could also seek to build marketing narratives around the cultural mood of comfort, glow and warmth that people are actively seeking at this time of year.”
Skin care & body care trends on TikTok
“Perhaps a more disruptive shift that beauty is seeing is around complexion,” says Brown.
He explained that ‘pale skin’-focused content reached 135 million views in the past three months, which means that more creators have made the decision to move away from the pressure to fake tan through winter and embrace their natural skin tone.
“Some consumers are refraining from their affinity for false tan and leaning into authenticity rather than concealment,” shared Brown. “For product developers and retailers, this could mean expanding shade ranges, diversifying imagery and considering how skincare can support the confidence to embrace natural skin tones during colder months,” he said.
Using social media data to guide product development
According to Brown, these trends are predictive signals of how beauty behaviour will play out at retail over the coming months.
“This is where TikTok is often misunderstood by cosmetics brands,” he concluded.
“It’s not just a place to activate campaigns; it’s a cultural lab where shifts in taste are visible weeks – sometimes months – before they appear in sales data. That makes them invaluable assets to those tasked with planning marketing efforts and aiming to get ahead of viral moments where the market becomes saturated with a certain type of content.”
