Inside Revlon's Reset Under CEO Michelle Peluso

Rather than chasing the next viral startup, Peluso's turnaround plan begins with heritage. "We're so fortunate to have these incredibly beloved brands from generation to generation," she says. Alongside its namesake Revlon lines (Color Cosmetics, Professional and Colorsilk), its portfolio includes Elizabeth Arden, Creme of Nature, CND, Cutex, Mitchum and the Juicy Couture fragrance line. "Our job is to bring that forward in modern and fresh ways."

The clearest proof of concept has been Elizabeth Arden, which recently celebrated its 115th anniversary with an immersive pop-up in New York's SoHo that reintroduced the ideas of its founder — beauty as science, wellness and empowerment — to a new audience. The same playbook has already paid off in China, where Elizabeth Arden has outpaced category growth for two consecutive years, per the brand, thanks to a digitally savvy team and ambassadors like actor Xin Zhilei. "They've made the brand younger, more fun and more relevant, while still rooted in its DNA," Peluso says.

If Elizabeth Arden is the test case, Revlon Color Cosmetics is the emotional core of the revival. Once synonymous with glamor — think '80s-era ads starring Cindy Crawford and Iman, accompanied by the tagline: "The most unforgettable women in the world wear Revlon" — the brand had diluted its identity chasing minimalism and "no-makeup makeup".

Peluso wants to bring it back to color. "That trend is on its way out," she says of the barely there looks and clean girl aesthetics that have graced social media feeds since the Covid pandemic. "Full-beat color and more transformational looks are on the rise. Revlon can't and shouldn't try to be the 'no-makeup makeup' brand — that's not our heritage."

To pinpoint where the brand should play, Peluso's team built a proprietary global demand map for color cosmetics — an analytics model combining hundreds of behavioral and psychographic variables across regions to identify the largest and fastest-growing spaces for opportunity. One of those spaces, dubbed "E-glam", represents consumers seeking "efficient glamour": women who love color and sensorial texture but seek it in an accessible, time-saving format. This insight has become the backbone of Revlon's NPD and storytelling roadmap. According to Revlon's internal data, 57% of consumers now favor high-impact looks for events, suggesting that the long-dominant no-makeup trend may be giving way to bolder self-expression.