Welcome in, today is Wednesday, July twenty-ninth, and we begin with Unilever's first half, reported by Cosmetics Business. Unilever's underlying sales rose four point eight percent in the first half, with turnover of twenty-five point six billion euros, up half a percent, on volume-led growth. That comes from Cosmetics Business, which reports the group's strongest first half in a decade and links the performance to the continuing benefit of the food divestment. It is the first clean read on Unilever without food, after the British group completed that sale in March and pinned its growth case on beauty, personal care, wellness and home care. Per the same reporting, the forty-four point eight billion dollar deal folds Unilever Foods, including Hellmann's and Marmite, into McCormick's portfolio. Beauty and Wellbeing accounted for twenty-five percent of group turnover for the half, with underlying sales up five point nine percent. That account also puts the thirty so-called Power Brands, spanning beauty, wellness and home care and including Dove, Vaseline and Sunsilk, at seventy-eight percent of turnover. Chief executive Fernando Fernandez said the group delivered a strong volume-led performance with a significant step-up in the second quarter, which he called the best volume quarter at Unilever in over a decade. He pointed to strong growth in India, Indonesia and Latin America, and to North America again outperforming its market. Industry reaction leans celebratory and largely internal, with some in the trade reading the loudest momentum as sitting in home care and personal care rather than in the division the group is betting on. Speaking to WWD Beauty after the results, Fernandez framed the company's World Cup activity as a play for awareness and brand differentiation rather than a two-month sales window. Also today, Gap is back in fragrance. Global Cosmetics News reports Gap Inc. has launched Gap Beauty, reintroducing the brand's original scents, Dream, Grass, Heaven and Om, in a modernised collection positioned against evolving consumer preferences and tied to the retailer's broader lifestyle strategy. That account frames the launch as a return to a category the retailer had left, rebuilt on existing scent equity rather than a line created from scratch, which makes it a live test of whether heritage recognition actually converts at retail. Marketing-side reaction leans toward reading the move less as a fragrance bet than as a low-cost customer-reacquisition play, with some framing the reactivation of a generation that already carries the brand association as cheaper than buying new attention, and physical stores as the intended destination. A recurring framing in the channel places the relaunch inside a widening nostalgia cycle rather than treating it as a one-off, with some practitioners noting other consumer brands reaching for the same era-specific cues at the same time, and questioning how long the tactic stays differentiating. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. Reliance Retail has launched AJIO Beauty, folding cosmetics, skincare and personal care into its AJIO fashion platform in India, per Global Cosmetics News. Glossy reports Peach and Lily is launching a fifty-nine dollar senolytic moisturizer, built on zombie-cell science, across more than fifteen hundred Ulta Beauty stores. Align Ventures has closed a one hundred twenty-five million dollar early-stage second fund aimed at beauty, wellness and consumer, WWD Beauty reports, and just led California Naturals' Series B. Traackr's second-quarter read on beauty brands in social has Rhode up a spot on its summer activations, with the number-one brand holding for a second straight quarter, per WWD Beauty. And finally, Henkel Consumer Brands has appointed Doctor Fatih Koyuncu chief supply chain officer, with responsibility for global supply chain operations, per Global Cosmetics News.