Aquaphor has become this summer’s hottest accessory.
The no-frills beauty staple—once relegated to the bottom of your bag, the glove box, or a bedside drawer—is now dangling from key chains and bedazzled with tiny rhinestones. Over on Etsy, you can even buy Aquaphor bag charms and custom caps.
TikTok’s 114 million Aquaphor-tagged videos have thrust the old-school salve back into the spotlight. “I don’t know how many times I have to explain this to people, but there is nothing that Aquaphor will not fix,” one TikTok creator explains. “Do you have a scrape? Aquaphor. Do you have a burn? Aquaphor? Broken heart? Aquaphor. Severed leg? Aquaphor!!!”
Another TikToker rubs the ointment on her eyelashes and eyebrows, smears it across her lips, dabs it on the bridge of her nose and cheekbones, and uses the excess to slick back her hair. “Aquaphor = summer makeup routine,” the closed-captioning on the video reads.
Aquaphor has leaned into the hype, frequently reposting TikToks from its legion of Gen Z fans. “When my daughter Aquaphora asks how she got her name,” one repost reads. Fans are setting up Aquaphor charcuterie boards and sharing Aquaphor-themed promposals. Meanwhile, the brand’s parent company, Beiersdorf, beat Q1 earnings expectations by $40 million.
How did a bathroom cabinet staple earn this kind of cultural cachet? “Aquaphor hooked Extremely Online shoppers through a riff on the ‘high-low’ model beloved by luxury fashion brands,” Faran Krentcil recently wrote for The Business of Fashion. “A tactic that combines ultra-prestigious products with a breezy, common message to assuage the guilt of the wealthy and to charm the cynicism of the working class (TL;DR: by making everyone feel seen, regardless of their bank balance).”
We’ve heard of the “lipstick effect,” in which affordable luxuries like lip products see an uptick in sales during economic downturns. Now, lip balms are more than just cheap, everyday essentials—they’ve evolved into miniature status symbols.
