Latest news with #Adore
Perth Now
4 days ago
- Business
- Perth Now
Popular retailer opening stores in Perth shopping centres
Online cosmetics retailer Adore Beauty is ramping up its bet on bricks-and-mortar by opening two stores in Perth just weeks apart. Adore will open the 180sqm store in Westfield Carousel on Thursday, with the second location at Booragoon — slightly bigger at 189sqm — coming two weeks later on July 10. It marks Adore's first venture outside its home State of Victoria, where it opened two shopfronts in Southland and Watergardens earlier this year. Adore chief executive Sacha Laing said WA was its fastest growing market in terms of sales. He teased of at least two more stores in Perth over the next 18 months. 'WA was a focus for us, particularly given the speed of the growth in that market,' Mr Laing told The West Australian when asked why Perth beat Sydney. Adore opens its first Sydney store in August. 'When I had the opportunity to secure two locations in the Westfield centres in Booragoon and Carousel, I was like, 'Great, Perth will be our next market that we open in'.' Adore opened its first retail store this month at Westfield Southland. Credit: Supplied The ASX-listed retailer launched as online-only in 2000 and last November first unveiled plans to open more than 25 stores in the next three years. Mr Laing said it was on track to have 20 stores nationally by the end of 2026 after penning deals with 'several of the country's largest landlords'. He is confident about Adore's push into bricks-and-mortar despite social media platforms, like TikTok, becoming an increasingly popular storefront, especially for young consumers. 'In Australia, only 13 per cent of retail sales in the beauty category are done online, so 87 per cent of retail sales in the beauty category are done in physical stores,' Mr Laing said. 'When we look at the opportunity to grow the Adore network . . . there's this huge market that we haven't previously addressed.' Adore Beauty chief executive Sacha Laing at the Watergardens store in Melbourne. Credit: Nicole Squelch While Adore has more than 14,000 products available across 300 brands online, customers will be offered a smaller, curated selection from about 90 brands at Carousel and Booragoon. But for customers who are after a product that is out of stock or only available online, the store's digital kiosk — or what Adore calls the endless aisle — will allow them to pay for it in-store and delivered to their homes. Mr Laing said the stores were deeply immersed in digital, meaning it will mostly be paperless, with screens displaying product descriptions and prices on shelves. '(Being digitally-led enables Adore to) expand ranges really quickly,' he said. 'We could double the size of a brand overnight if we wanted to. We could double the size of a category overnight if we wanted to.' The Perth stores will also offer in-store treatments and dermal therapists. Adore's physical stores are set to challenge major industry players Mecca — which holds the biggest market share in cosmetics in Australia at about 21 per cent — and Sephora, the beauty chain owned by French luxury goods giant LVMH. Sephora and Mecca already have stores in Carousel, with the latter also in Booragoon. According to IBISWorld, Australia's $6 billion cosmetics industry is forecast to grow 2.5 per cent over the next five years. Mr Laing reckons the market is 'big enough for us all'. 'Our product mix and our category mix are quite different. When we think about the competitive set or the overall landscape, there's department stores, there's the value offerings of some of the other mass market beauty retailers, and there's specialty beauty retailers . . . but the market is quite fragmented and what that enables us to do is find our own space,' he said. Adore — founded by Kate Morris — reported revenue of $195.7 million in the 2024 financial year, with net profit hitting $2.2m. That compared with a loss of $559,000 the prior year. Meanwhile, Mecca's latest accounts released earlier this month revealed it had raked in just over $1.2b in revenue in the year to the end of December 2023, up from the $971.5m recorded the previous year. Adore has had a troubled life on the Australian Securities Exchange, with its share price tumbling since listing in October 2020 from $6.91 to 64¢ on Tuesday. Asked if he watched the share price, Mr Laing said 'absolutely'. 'My job is to create shareholder value and to attract new investment interest in the business as well,' he said. 'Acquiring new customers through our online channels and through our physical stores, improving the frequency of new customers and growing the overall revenue line of the business, will inevitably create great profit growth. 'Growing profitability, fundamentally, is what will drive the share price.' Mr Laing took on the top job at Adore last September, replacing Tamalin Morton. He has more than 25 years of experience in the retail industry, having held executive roles at David Jones and Country Road Group. He also led youth fashion retailer General Pants Co and accessory brand Colette by Colette Hayman, which was saved from administration early last year. The reporter travelled to Melbourne as a guest of Adore Beauty.
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First Post
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- First Post
'Materialists' star Dakota Johnson on having an intimacy coordinator on the sets: 'If I am showing my body...'
Intimacy coordinators have become a norm on Hollywood sets in the post #MeToo era as they ensure actors feel safe while shooting sex scenes. read more 'Materialists' star Dakota Johnson says she found it great to work with an intimacy coordinator during a movie shoot as doing intimate scenes is 'not sexy'. Intimacy coordinators have become a norm on Hollywood sets in the post #MeToo era as they ensure actors feel safe while shooting sex scenes. Johnson, who worked on the racy trilogy 'Fifty Shades', shared her experience of working with an intimacy coordinator on Amy Poehler's 'Good Hang' podcast. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The actress said, 'First, I think it depends on, who is the character, and who is the character supposed to be to the audience,' she explained. 'Is she a super idolized hot girl? Is she a housewife? Is she lonely? Is she scared? Is she conservative?' She added, 'So, that's obviously character work, but then certain prep would go into it. I want to feel good in my body if I'm showing my body. My mom raised me to be really, really proud of my body and love my body. So, I've always felt so grateful for that, especially in my work because I can use it and it feels real.' After impressing with her directorial debut Past Lives, director Celine Song has managed to get a great star cast for her rom-com Materialists in the form of Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal. While the promotional material has garnered excitement among the audience, let's find out whether Materialists has struck the chord with cinegoers or not. In today's world, the majority of people have a practical mindset for every aspect including marriages, relationships and others. Lucy (Dakota Johnson), a sharp and smart individual works as a matchmaker for an agency named Adore. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
Sydney Morning Herald
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Celine Song blew us away with Past Lives. Is Materialists a perfect match?
Materialists ★★★★ M, 117 minutes Celine Song burst onto the film world in 2023 with her debut, Past Lives, an achingly beautiful tale about connections missed (in this life, if not in past or future ones). Her follow-up, Materialists, is similarly obsessed with romantic matches made and not made, but this time the focus is mathematical rather than metaphysical. Lucy (Dakota Johnson) works as a matchmaker in New York City. She's the kind of person who will stop a likely candidate in the street, hand over her business card, and tell them to call if they're interested in meeting one of the fine specimens on the books of her firm, Adore. Her gig is a throwback to the DBA years (dating before apps), but the underpinning logic of it is no less data driven: it's a numbers game, she tells people. At a wedding (the ninth she has orchestrated, which makes her a superstar in her firm), Lucy meets Harry (Pedro Pascal). The secret to a successful match, she tells him, is similar background, similar interests, a match on desired height and income and physical compatibility. It's all about the maths. What about you, he asks her, what are you looking for? 'The next person I date will be the person I marry,' she says. 'He will be obscenely rich.' Harry ticks the boxes, as Lucy would say. Her ex-boyfriend, John (Chris Evans), does not. He turns up at the wedding, too, waiting tables to make ends meet while waiting for the big acting break that's destined never to come. He's 37, but still sharing the crappy, cramped apartment he was in when they dated in their 20s. Money is why they broke up, or rather her exhaustion at the lack of it, his exhaustion at her exhaustion. Nothing much has changed. In all of this, it's not hard to detect distinct echoes of Jane Austen. Modern Manhattan is not so different to middle England in the early 19th century. It is still a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife – so long as she has a BMI of no more than 20, is aged between 24 and 27, and isn't going to expect him to settle down too soon.
The Age
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Celine Song blew us away with Past Lives. Is Materialists a perfect match?
Materialists ★★★★ M, 117 minutes Celine Song burst onto the film world in 2023 with her debut, Past Lives, an achingly beautiful tale about connections missed (in this life, if not in past or future ones). Her follow-up, Materialists, is similarly obsessed with romantic matches made and not made, but this time the focus is mathematical rather than metaphysical. Lucy (Dakota Johnson) works as a matchmaker in New York City. She's the kind of person who will stop a likely candidate in the street, hand over her business card, and tell them to call if they're interested in meeting one of the fine specimens on the books of her firm, Adore. Her gig is a throwback to the DBA years (dating before apps), but the underpinning logic of it is no less data driven: it's a numbers game, she tells people. At a wedding (the ninth she has orchestrated, which makes her a superstar in her firm), Lucy meets Harry (Pedro Pascal). The secret to a successful match, she tells him, is similar background, similar interests, a match on desired height and income and physical compatibility. It's all about the maths. What about you, he asks her, what are you looking for? 'The next person I date will be the person I marry,' she says. 'He will be obscenely rich.' Harry ticks the boxes, as Lucy would say. Her ex-boyfriend, John (Chris Evans), does not. He turns up at the wedding, too, waiting tables to make ends meet while waiting for the big acting break that's destined never to come. He's 37, but still sharing the crappy, cramped apartment he was in when they dated in their 20s. Money is why they broke up, or rather her exhaustion at the lack of it, his exhaustion at her exhaustion. Nothing much has changed. In all of this, it's not hard to detect distinct echoes of Jane Austen. Modern Manhattan is not so different to middle England in the early 19th century. It is still a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife – so long as she has a BMI of no more than 20, is aged between 24 and 27, and isn't going to expect him to settle down too soon.
Yahoo
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Materialists' Review: Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal Bring Affecting Soulfulness to Celine Song's Perceptive Romantic Drama
If you watched the trailer for Materialists with sinking expectations while thinking, 'Wait, the director of the exquisite Past Lives made this utterly generic rom-com?!' — come on, you know you did — you can breathe a sigh of relief. Deceptive marketing aside, playwright turned filmmaker Celine Song's assured second feature is a refreshingly complex look at modern love, self-worth and the challenges of finding a partner in an unaffordable city, which once again treats three points of a romantic triangle with equal integrity and compassion. There's much talk about unicorns in the dating field in Song's script, and her film could be called the same — a glossy, good-looking drama veined with humor, introspection and questioning intelligence, driven as much by insightful writing as star charisma. Not that those stars don't bring a lot to the table, especially Dakota Johnson, doing her best work since The Lost Daughter. More from The Hollywood Reporter Ariana Grande, Pedro Pascal, Sabrina Carpenter Sign Open Letter Supporting Federal Funding for LGBTQ Youth Suicide Prevention Kinky Romance 'Pillion' Starring Alexander Skarsgard, Harry Melling Sells to Multiple Territories 'The Last of Us' Creators on That Finale Death, Ending and Season 3 Changes Johnson stars as Lucy, a matchmaker with a strong track record at Adore, a high-end firm that specializes in finding partners for well-heeled New Yorkers, ameliorating the risks of playing the field unassisted. The profession instantly sparks thoughts of a cute Jane Austen throwback, but one of the distinguishing qualities of Materialists is the way that Song, who worked at a dating agency while getting her theater career off the ground, treats it as a real job. And a demanding one in such a famously competitive city. The writer-director finds a playful entry point by starting not in Manhattan but in a majestic rocky landscape where the only signs of life are a hot caveman returning from foraging and placing a makeshift ring on the finger of the woman waiting for him. Unless there's a Cro-Magnon stylist at work somewhere, his meticulously trimmed beard is a giveaway that this fanciful prologue is the product of someone's marriage-obsessed imagination. Romantic unions generally prove more complicated in present-day New York, where Lucy's consultation with a pair of clients she matched suggests the gulf in partner requirements that can yield two radically different responses to the same first date. 'I would never swipe right on a woman like her,' says the guy indignantly, pointing out the ways in which she didn't quite adhere to her profile. The woman, Sophie (Zoë Winters), thought the date went gangbusters. She's appalled to learn that she didn't measure up, despite being willing to overlook his shortcomings in terms of height, hairline and salary level. 'I'm just asking for the bare minimum,' she fumes. 'I'm trying to settle!' Similar amusing consults are intercut throughout, usually from Lucy's P.O.V. and showing only the client. There's the expected representation of middle-aged men whose chief requirement is fit (no one with a BMI over 20), attractive and with a cut-off age around 29. But Song refuses to stack the deck, including a comparable number of women whose rigid demands significantly narrow the market. One such woman is Lucy herself, who seems to have made peace with being single, given how hard it is to snag a dude who's smart, handsome, in shape and earning north of $500K a year. Those men, in her game, are known as unicorns. The beauty of Johnson's performance is the light touch she brings to that calculation, never letting Lucy be reduced to an off-putting gold-digger, even if her approach to marriage is that of a business deal in which the terms must be right. Despite the odds against making matches that stick, she has managed to notch up an impressive nine weddings of clients she connected. That makes her the star of the all-female firm and the MVP of her savvy boss Violet (Marin Ireland), who observes that working with the loneliness and rejection of their clients makes them better than therapists. Lucy also has a gift for talking brides with cold feet off ledges, as evidenced when her latest success story, Charlotte (Louisa Jacobson), balks on her wedding day. When Charlotte, in a very funny moment, reveals the true reason she wants to marry her fiancé, Lucy turns that unflattering confession into a soothing reassurance about the bride's right to feel valued. At that same wedding, Lucy catches the eye of the groom's brother, Harry (Pedro Pascal), as she's casually putting out feelers for new clients. But he's more interested in her than her service. A brief, flirty exchange at the singles table reveals Harry to be the complete package — suave, witty, affluent and well put-together, or as Lucy puts it, 'a unicorn.' He's perceptive about the tricky balance of her role as a matchmaker, never making her clients feel they need her but positioning herself as a luxury good: 'If they can afford you, why not?' Just as Lucy and Harry start hitting it off, however, her ex, John (Chris Evans), a struggling actor making ends meet as a cater-waiter, interrupts. Their subsequent conversation during his break suggests lasting affection on both sides. But Lucy is a pragmatist, recalling an anniversary fight with John when they were broke and unhappy. Since he's still driving the same clapped-out car and sharing the same run-down apartment with two annoying roommates, John's stock remains low. That's not a problem when Lucy starts dating Harry, even if it earns her some side-eye from an Adore colleague for taking a unicorn off the market. Without drifting into trite rom-com territory, Song illustrates the seductiveness — especially in a city where the wealth divide is as chasmic as New York — of swanky restaurant meals with a date who picks up the check with barely a glance, arrives with an armful of flowers, owns a $12 million penthouse and asks where in the world she would most like to go, not as a hypothetical but an invitation. What elevates the movie is that all this stuff of airy romantic fantasy stays unexpectedly grounded in the real world. Perhaps taking a cue from Joachim Trier's inspired use of Harry Nilsson on the soundtrack of another not-quite-rom-com, The Worst Person in the World, Song plays out those honeymoon-phase scenes to 'I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City,' one of a handful of choice needle-drops. (Not least among them is the great John Prine's duet with Iris DeMent, 'In Spite of Ourselves,' a wryly optimistic song about love overcoming incompatibilities.) Even as the movie settles into a predictable pattern of Lucy being torn between two men offering her very different futures, it's never simplistic. When Lucy tells Harry he could land a 25-year-old, he says he's looking for 'intangible assets,' not material wealth, of which he has plenty. Song's script avoids glibness in dealing with the transactional aspects of partnering and the commodification of certain attributes. There's a frankness here that's refreshing as Materialists explores ideas of personal value and increasing one's worth — including via the obvious path of cosmetic surgery. Some might find the introduction of a major conflict — when a different date turns nightmarish for Sophie, causing Lucy to question her certainties about what makes a good match and berate herself for failing to spot red flags — to be a heavy-handed nudge toward a resolution. But there's no arguing with the effectiveness of a beautifully played scene between Winters and Johnson that builds to a shattered but furious Sophie calling Lucy a pimp. Each of the three leads has moments of raw tenderness, fragility, even fear that add depth to the drama. Johnson plays Lucy's disillusionment as something bone-deep, almost lacerating, not just a crisis of conscience; Pascal reveals the underlying sadness and self-doubt hiding behind Harry's smooth veneer; and perhaps best of all, Evans distills a key theme of the movie when John questions whether he's worthless and disposable, his words not too distant from Sophie's. Especially for someone relatively new to filmmaking, Song's thoughtfulness as a writer is matched by unerring instincts as a director — nailing the balance between tonal variation and fluidity; getting superb work out of her actors; making judicious use of Daniel Pemberton's gentle, melancholy score; and delivering a sweet, satisfying ending that keeps a lid on the sentiment. That this wrap-up happens on the stoop of an apartment building provides a nice callback to Past Lives. It also establishes that Materialists, like its predecessor, is every inch a New York movie, an aspect enhanced by the light and textures of cinematographer Shabier Kirchner's crystalline visuals. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 13 of Tom Cruise's Most Jaw-Dropping Stunts Hollywood Stars Who Are One Award Away From an EGOT 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now
