This month, we’re looking at how sport, fashion, and beauty are collapsing into one another. From the WNBA shaping style to Gap rewriting its playbook in beauty. Plus, ONE/SIZE proves a single product can power a category, and our team breaks down how science-driven brands balance credibility with approachability.

Here’s what caught our eye.

Industry roundup

The WNBA: fashion’s most overlooked frontier

The NBA may have popularized the tunnel walk, but the WNBA is driving fashion’s next cultural wave. 

WNBA merchandise is up 68% year-over-year, Vogue Business.

Players like A’ja Wilson, Angel Reese, and Sabrina Ionescu are bridging sport and style with partnerships spanning Nike, Coach, and Off-White. 

The WNBA is quietly redefining the intersection of fashion and sport.

Read the full story in our latest fashion report

From the HYPER team: Oren’s take, Clayton’s take

Sports are entering fashion and fashion is entering….. beauty?

Gap re-enters beauty

Gap Is reentering the beauty market this fall with branded products (body mists, lotions) alongside third-party names like Mario Badescu and TonyMoly.

With high-profile collabs (Doen, Cult Gaia) and viral campaigns (Katseye Milkshake) Gap is rewriting its playbook and leaning hard into cultural relevancy.

America’s #1 makeup product this year: a setting spray

According to YipitData, ONE/SIZE’s On ‘Til Dawn waterproof setting spray was Americas top-selling makeup SKU in the first half of 2025.

What started as a social-first launch has become a retail juggernaut, proving that a single product, executed brilliantly, can carry an entire beauty line.

Our recent addition, ONE/SIZE. We’re excited to get started. 

Creative breakdowns

Too clinical, or just clinical enough?

For science-driven brands, web design carries a unique tension: how to project credibility without creating distance.

The solution doesn’t lie in clean layouts or polished visuals but rather designing interactions that make expertise feel accessible.

Zima leans on interactive visuals, making trial data digestible on its homepage.

Caldera approaches it through rich educational content. Skincare routines built into PDPs make the products feel easy to use, without losing scientific authority.

In both cases, credibility meets usability, and the science feels less distant, more human.

Words from the wise

Chuong, Co-Founder & COO at VAAN, on Q4 Timing

As we head into the “Super Bowl” of retail, one of the hardest parts of e-commerce is timing. 

Full redesigns rarely align neatly with the retail calendar, and when they collide with holidays or big collabs, the margin for error shrinks fast.

That’s why we’ve been advocating for parallel pathing:

• Push forward on the redesign.
  

• Run optimization tracks in parallel on PDP flows, cart upsells, and mobile nav.
  

You protect performance during sensitive periods and capture live insights that inform the redesign itself. It’s not the easiest way to work, but for ambitious brands with a lot on the line, it’s usually the smartest.

as always, thanks for tuning in!
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