How beauty brands learned to speak ‘Sephora tween’

On a Thursday night in February, more than 200 moms and tweens packed into Townhouse, a speaking venue in Greenwich, Connecticut, for a talk by esthetician Nicole Caroline. Over the past year, an influx of Caroline’s clients had come in asking for skincare recommendations for their Sephora-obsessed kids: is the Drunk Elephant Retinol A-Passioni that my 12-year-old wants safe for her? What about the Glow Recipe Watermelon Glow Toner? That kids as young as eight had access to enough funds to...