Priya Raghunathan
Creators and culture
Creator Practice · Culture Signal · Culture desk
About
Follows the people and decisions behind Korean beauty, from formulators and founders to the retail and media choices that carry ideas across borders, reporting the culture without collapsing it into trend language.
Reporting starts from direct conversations with the people making the decisions, checked against retail data and Korean-language coverage before a pattern is called a trend. Casting, awards, and industry news run only once their connection to beauty or style is established, and stories without that connection are left out.
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Published work 12 articles since 2026
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Is 'Sterling Point' a Real Place? All About the Teen Drama's Filming Locations
Prime Video's new drama sends its inheritance mystery straight into Muskoka, Ontario's real cottage country, and the show's creator built it out of her own summers there.
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Korea's Senior Beauty Boom Skipped the Perfume Counter
South Korea just confirmed it has crossed into a super-aged society, and its beauty industry is racing to build products for that consumer, but the resulting boom in active-senior skincare and haircare has no fragrance counterpart, while the country's niche perfume market is driven almost entirely by shoppers in their twenties and thirties.
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Olivia Dean's Arena Ticket Has a Second Destination
Every ticket for Olivia Dean's Australian arena tour includes a contribution to the Australian Music Venue Foundation. The arrangement resembles a proposed grassroots levy, but remains an artist-specific commitment with no published distribution results yet.
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Seoul Named a Perfume After the Shower, and Left the Soap Out
Seoul brand Nonfiction released a perfume called In the Shower in 2020, built entirely from Campari, bitter orange, patchouli and guaiacwood rather than any soap or laundry note, treating the shower as a mood rather than something to mimic, years before a 2026 European trend piece marketed a literal just-showered scent as new.
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Lancôme's Longevity Ingredient Came With an Equity Stake
Mitopure did not travel directly from supplement research to a Lancôme jar. Timeline launched it in skin care in 2023, L'Oréal took a minority stake in 2024, and the five-part Lancôme line reaches Japan after that investor relationship was already in place.
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Glass Skin Survived Its Own Funeral at Copenhagen Fashion Week
Collina Strada's glitter-heavy Copenhagen debut got credited with killing off dewy, translucent "clean girl" makeup, but the week's own Danish labels, By Malene Birger and Stine Goya among them, kept working in glass skin's barely-there register, a technique with roots in Korean skincare culture.
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Greta Lee's Crisp White Collar Is From Last October
Greta Lee wore the photographed Winter 2025 look in October 2025. The Row's Winter 2026 collection continues the formal-shirt language, but the evidence shows continuity, not a new celebrity endorsement.
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The Loose Strands Were Cut Before the Ponytail
The controlled wisps in many polished Japanese updos are not simply pulled free at the end. Their length, weight, and connection to the fringe are often built into the haircut first.
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The Heart Study Behind 'Three Superfoods' Also Named Kimchi
A wire claim that three superfoods extend life expectancy and prevent heart disease traces to a February 2026 cardiology study that actually credited diet quality, not any specific food. That study's own list of healthy plant foods named kimchi, a detail that disappeared along with the life expectancy claim by the time the finding reached French readers.
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At 18, He Could Claim 'Prince.' He Took a Tractor Instead
James, Earl of Wessex, became eligible to style himself Prince James eight months ago; this summer he is driving tractors on King Charles's organic Sandringham farm instead, following his parents' long-stated policy and his sister's precedent.
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The Korean Word That Stopped Avoiding Looks
Coined in the early 2000s to praise Korean men for warmth of character rather than appearance, the slang term hunnam drifted over two decades into a plain synonym for handsome, according to the columnist who traced its etymology back to a word for pleasant warmth.
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Behind Japan's Eyebrow Boom, a Quiet Korean Import Deal
JULIA IVY, the company driving Japan's fast-growing HBL eyebrow salon network, has quietly run Japan's exclusive distribution of TROIAREUKE, a Korean skincare brand owned by Seoul-based MK Universal, since June 2024, a business line the wire coverage of its salon growth never mentioned.
