Key Takeaways:
What if the most exciting product in beauty was never designed for the shelf at all? Before the packaging is finalized. Before the claims are market-tested. Before retail buyers assign a gondola. What if consumers could touch innovation at the exact moment it leaves the lab, in its most raw, flexible form—when a formula is still deciding what it wants to become?
That’s the provocation behind Leaked Labs, a new platform from Alexis Androulakis and Dr. Christina Basias Androulakis, founders of The Lipstick Lesbians. After five years spent decoding the global manufacturing ecosystem for their 1.75 million combined social media followers, the duo has moved on to something more radical than education: collapsing the timeline between formulation breakthroughs and consumer access. Fast-tracking innovation into consumers’ hands, Leaked Labs launches drops of formulas directly from partner labs and R&D teams.
The thesis is simple. Beauty innovation already exists; it just moves too slowly, according to Alexis. She told BeautyMatter that with Leaked Labs, “innovation” will be launched years before it would with a traditional brand.
The Beauty Bottleneck
In the traditional pipeline, a product can sit for 12 to 24 months before reaching retail. Packaging must be engineered and manufactured. Claims substantiated. Safety tested. Retailers require PDP imagery, merchandising logic, and margin modeling. Each layer adds polish, but also friction.
“There are so many things that go into bringing something to market in these huge, conglomerate-style retailers that it's almost impossible for them to move as quickly as TikTok trends and consumer demand are moving,” Alexis added.
Meanwhile, culture accelerates in real time. Trends erupt on social platforms, saturate feeds, and sometimes fade before they ever hit physical shelves. Leaked Labs aims to make products available before their retail stage. This is beauty’s beta phase made visible.
Well-received Leaks will become permanent, shoppable additions. But while community feedback is essential, Leaked Labs isn’t crowdsourced chaos. “Until we get feedback from the collective beauty community, we won't decide to make a leak a core item,” said Christina. Some products may never be permanent; others will need some adjustment.
Leak 001: Amplify Flexi Powder
The first drop, Leak 001, aka Amplify Flexi Powder ($34), does not arrive in a pan. It arrives as blendable pigment discs cut from a flexible sheet, which Alexis dubs “literal lasagna.”
The format begins as a wet slurry—a traditional emulsion—that is dehydrated into a thin, flexible membrane. The Lipstick Lesbians describe the product as a “dual emulsion system,” meaning multiple phases coexist in the formula. Once misted with water or setting spray, the disc transforms. After being activated into a gel, the product will dehydrate back to its sheet form within just three minutes.
The reactivation hinges on a seaweed-derived polymer, carrageenan, which swells upon contact with moisture, forming a gel. Emollients like squalene and glycerin support what Alexis describes as a “biomimetic marriage” with the skin.
Dry, Amplify Flexi Powder behaves like a soft-focus, oil-loving powder that grips to foundation or natural skin oils. Activated, it becomes an intensified gel shimmer with extended playtime.
The founders repeatedly used the food metaphor to demystify the patented technology. “It’s like a dehydrated piece of pasta that, once you wet it, it gets mushy and soft.”
The discs shape was chosen for usability, but the sheet format allows endless variation. Crucially, Amplify Flexi Powder resists categorization. It’s not labelled strictly as eyeshadow or highlighter. “That’s why it’s called Amplified Flexi Powder, because you have the option,” said Christina.
Used dry, the product delivers a sheer wash. Add a mist, and it amplifies. The silver shade can mute or intensify, pink carries the highest pearl load, and bronze tones shift warmer or more copper, depending on activation.
This is the kind of format that brands hesitate to commercialize. Education is required. Retail testing is risky. Consumers may not immediately “get it,” but Leaked Labs leans into that uncertainty.
The packaging underscores the lab-first ethos: simple tins, minimal branding, label tabs instead of elaborate decoration. But as the couple emphasized, “the corners that are being cut are not in safety.”
Stability testing, compatibility checks, and microbial safeguards remain intact, while elaborate packaging is replaced with stock packaging.
Amplify Flexi Powder feels closer to how a founder may first encounter it at a trade show, raw and full of potential, rather than polished in its final form.
Who Decides What Survives
When asked who ultimately determines what becomes permanent, Alexis joked, “I meditate with the products.”
Behind the humor lies a deliberate filter. Alexis evaluates innovations through what Christina describes as her "encyclopedic knowledge and sensorial library.” As Alexis puts it, “Does this fit a hole in the market? Is this a new format that doesn’t exist?”
The seed for Leaked Labs was planted at a Makeup in NewYork trade show when a manufacturer allowed them to post an unnamed product online. No brand. No marketing deck. Just Alexis swatching. It went viral. That moment revealed a power shift. Consumers weren’t responding to a logo. They were responding to an informed translation.
The Lipstick Lesbians began by teaching audiences to decode manufacturing regions and formulation nuance. Leaked Labs extends that mission beyond education into participation.
Bringing Joy Back to Beauty
Beyond speed and disruption, there’s an emotional undercurrent driving the platform. “At the core, it's bringing some joy back to beauty,” said Alexis.
In a market crowded with incremental launches and algorithm-friendly sameness, Amplify Flexi Powder feels intentionally strange. It demands interaction. It evolves depending on how you use it. It refuses to sit quietly in a pan.
In the future, Leaked Labs will evolve beyond the products a manufacturer presents, and will eventually lean into the products Androulakis has developed herself.
Leaked Labs doesn’t position itself as perfection, but as possibility. Instead of pretending innovation arrives fully formed, they are asking consumers to experience it at its most experimental stage—flexible, reactive, unfinished. In doing so, it reframes what a beauty launch can be. Not a finished statement, but an opening move.