Beauty Access: Popup Cafe & Donation Drive

Every organization has a moment where the concept becomes real. For Beauty Access, it was March 2025, inside a sun-filled space on Ludlow Street in the Lower East Side.

The Beauty Access Cafe was a one-day pop-up, powered by Haus Labs by Lady Gaga, built around a simple question: what if community and impact didn’t have to be two separate things? Guests came in, donated unopened beauty, skincare, haircare, and hygiene products, stayed for a custom matcha latte and a pastry from Cloudy Donut Co., a local Black-owned bakery, and left having been part of something with a clear destination. Every product collected went directly to the Lower East Side Girls Club.

Over 1,000 products donated. 400 organic RSVPs in one week.

The event was covered by Essence, and it marked the first time Beauty Access partnered with a brand to bring this model to life. Haus Labs was the right first partner because they understood what the event was actually trying to do. This wasn’t a brand activation with a donation box in the corner. It was a community gathering where giving was the whole point, and the brand was genuinely part of building it.

That event is also where Beauty Forward was born. The infrastructure to systematize what happened that day, to make it repeatable, scalable, and documented, is what Beauty Forward exists to do. The Cafe proved there was demand. Beauty Forward is the answer to it.