Goldman's Teen Vogue Survey Highlights Top Brands for Millennial Women

Goldman Sachs surveyed Teen Vogue's "It Girls" (fashion influencers between the ages of 13-29) to analyze the most important fashion, beauty, and retail brands in today’s marketplace. The LOVE LIST represents the best known, most loved, and most talked about brands by It Girls. BRANDS RISING ranks those best positioned to break out with mainstream women. Beauty maintains its position as the top category but Athletic is outpacing the growth and Nike is at the top of the charts.

Goldman's partner survey is conducted in two parts. It taps into a group of Teen Vogue's It Girls, a trend-focused, in the know, and opinionated group of women and it compares It Girl opinions with those of a national sample of Millennial women to identify which areas have the greatest potential for momentum in the mainstream.

The US beauty market is about $20 bn and nearly half (45%) of it is the cosmetics category followed by skin care (36%). Estee Lauder (NYSE: EL): continues to lead in prestige beauty with four out of the top 10 brands in the prestige cosmetic category, including MAC at the top spot. EL’s flagship Estee Lauder brand is performing well on all metrics while Clinique is trending down yoy on most metrics.

ULTA (NASDAQ: ULTA) continues to stand out among beauty brands, and improved versus last year’s survey. Word of mouth and ownership increased for “It Girls” and the national sample. ULTA (as a retailer) ranks well this year relative to the 70 beauty brands on word of mouth. Both It Girls and the national panel ranked ULTA higher than >90% of beauty brands, with 62% of “It Girls” selecting ULTA vs 46% of the national group.

Athletic is the big story for 2015. Nike (NYSE: NKE) now ranks as the #2 most loved brand by It Girls, while Adidas showed the largest gain in affinity this year of any other brand in the survey. Nike is the most talked about brand among both It Girls and the National sample while word of mouth scores are more than double the athletic group average. After a big year in 2014, brand favorability for UnderArmor (NYSE: UA) seems to have hit a plateau and remains largely in the middle of the pack despite big strides in elevating women’s product and improving distribution.

The LOVE LIST of Top 10 brands, include:

1. Forever 21
2. Pink (NYSE: LB)
3. Victoria’s Secret (NYSE: LB)
4. Nike (NYSE: NKE)
5. Sephora (OTC: LVMUY)
6. MAC (NYSE: EL)
7. H&M
8. Converse (NYSE: NKE)
9. Urban Outfitters (NASDAQ: URBN)
10. Target (NYSE: TGT)

This year's Top 5 BRANDS RISING:

1. Topshop
2. Nasty Gal
3. Brandy Melville
4. Free People
5. Essie

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