Chicago Influencers Join Forces with Sephora as Part of Sephora Squad

CHICAGO (WLS) — Attitudes are shifting around beauty at every age and major brands are taking notice.

Each year, beauty retailer Sephora designates a group of online beauty influencers as ambassadors.

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This year’s “Sephora Squad” includes three women in their 50s and two of them are from the Chicago area.

Tanja caught up with the pair to talk about how beauty and confidence come from within.

“It’s been surreal,” Tracy Reed said. “I’ve pinched myself more than a million times. I wake up each day and I can’t believe that this is my life.

Englewood native Tracy Reed has worn many hats: FBI analyst; stay-at-home mom; school teacher.

But the 56-year-old never imagined that “social media influencer” would be her next career pivot.

It started by embracing her natural hair color.

“I’ve been gray since I was 22,” Tracy said. “It’s hereditary.”

During the pandemic, Tracy decided it was time grow the gray out and document the process.

” So I laid out, and I took a picture with my hair all sprawled out on the back,” Tracy said.

And the photo went viral. Her audience quickly grew. It turns out, Tracy wasn’t alone.

Claudia Fabian, a 57-year-old makeup artist from Bolingbrook, has long relied on the beauty industry for her livelihood. However, by 2020, she found herself weary of attempting to conceal the natural signs of aging.

“A colleague warned me that such a move could be career-ending. They advised against it, but I was determined, thinking, ‘No way. I have a greater mission, and I’m pursuing it.’ It turned out to be the best decision for my career,” Claudia explained.

Both women skyrocketed to Instagram fame and became close friends this year when they were selected as two of just three women in their 50s to join the 2025 Sephora Squad.

It’s a year-long, paid partnership, where beauty influencers create content as ambassadors for the retailer.

“We’re tokens, and I’ll take it,” Claudia said. “You know, it’s a step in the right direction to have visibility for women, you know, in their forties and fifties and beyond.”

“This is true,” Tracy said. “I would agree. But if the tokens are going to disrupt the narrative, I’ll be a token, because it gives hope. (COVER) It sheds light on an issue that society has with what aging and what beauty looks like, and I believe that we are blazing a trail.”

And for both women, the message matters.

Tanja: What does it mean to you to have that visibility and to be identified as being beautiful in the fullness of who you are and how God made you?

Claudia: It is freeing. It is such a free feeling not to be a slave to struggling to look ten years younger and just to accept what is. And there’s so much beauty in accepting yourself.

Tracy: I never equated aging with not being beautiful. So, I was like, ‘Bring it on! I’m ready for this’… I think age is just beautiful because it represents another day of life.”

Claudia calls it “aging in peace.” Both women say they are selective about the brands they partner with, promoting only those whose values align with their own. Anti-aging is a catch-phrase that doesn’t fly for this pair.