Beautycon returns in September in Los Angeles.

The once-beloved beauty festival — which drew hordes of tween shoppers and even Cardi B — is back, under recent ownership.

The event attracted beauty lovers for years before it began publicly facing hardships in 2020, including layoffs and a civil suit. (It was founded in 2011 by Marina Curry and Jonathan Burford as a conference for YouTubers and influencers before Moj Mahdara took it over in 2014.) Acquired by Essence Ventures in 2021, it’s back with a recent team, a reimagined beauty-filled festival coming Sept. 16 and 17 in partnership with Walmart — and a fresh tagline: rally the rising beauty rebels.

“We’re really going to take an activist stance on particular components,” said Caroline Wanga, president and chief executive officer of Essence Ventures. “Yes, it’ll bring together influencers. Yes, it’ll bring together brands. But what’s different here is that we’ll play a job — as I do in every other of the brands in Essence Ventures — of taking the definition of beauty out of the hands of brands and putting it within the hands of the individuals to define for themselves that brands now engage with. That might be a really loud a part of the role we’re going to play, and it is identical playbook we’ve used with each of the opposite brands that sit inside my portfolio.”

Wanga also oversees Afropunk and Essence Studios.

“This may not be the Beautycon that just hangs out with brands and desires be friends with beauty influencers and have conferences where people can get samples,” Wanga continued. “Yes, a few of that personality will still be there. However the goal here is to resolve what I’d personally call one among the largest unspoken health crises which might be happening straight away, which is these manufactured, photoshopped, product-induced, profile-filtered images of beauty which might be inconceivable to perform as a human. But so many persons are chasing them due to how advertised they’re. And after they can’t get to that level of beauty, regardless that it’s inconceivable, they think it’s them, and so they begin to diminish their value in life, resulting in … all the pieces from mental illness to suicide.”

Wanga sees the brand new Beautycon playing a job in “restoring health to the sweetness conversation by giving it back to the patron.”

There’ll still be beauty product samples available to goers, she assured: “We are going to keep the activism, but we’re not taking out the enjoyment…I know the way necessary samples are to the people, right? But imagine this concept of samples being available, but there being a unique requirement about what’s in those samples being discussed and often called you get that sample. If this sample has had any type of issues with it, how can we ensure that the patron is educated on what’s in that sample? Not only what you want concerning the product, but what it’s good to concentrate on from a health perspective. That’s what puts the patron at the middle.”

L.A. is just the primary location; expect Beautycon to achieve other cities, too, including internationally, each in-person and online.

“What I’ve set forth for our team as a challenge is to not be limited by geography, push for the things that may sit across the spectrum from physical to virtual,” added Wanga. “And keep in mind that this brand represents greater than Black. And the story of beauty around the globe is just as much the story of beauty here within the U.S., after which the team will do their work to find out what locations and formats align to that as we proceed to construct the brand.”

Tickets for the L.A. event go on sale on June 15.