Has The Beauty Tech Boom Gone Too Far?

With the rise of 24/7 social selling, Al influencers and the metaverse, our beauty bags are fast becoming savvier than smartphones. But what does this mean for our beloved industry? Is the technology designed to bring us together actually pushing us further apart?

- Victoria Jowett

Charlotte Tilbury is in my living room. There she is, by my sofa, blowing me a kiss (Pillow Talk lining her lips, of course). Then, I blink, and she’s over by the television, one hand on her hip, smiling as if I am about to take her picture. It’s all very fun having her here and all, but she’s not much use. So with a quick swipe, I switch to wandering around one of her rose-gold shops, uncapping lipsticks, and watching her advisers apply their recommended products. I decide to try on a champagne gold eyeshadow, with a peachy nude lip. It doesn’t work so, in a flash, it’s wiped off and replaced with a chocolate smokey eye so perfect I want to step out of my living room, pop on a nice dress and head out dancing.

But then, it’s gone. I close down my phone and I am back in my living room, alone, with a bare face and empty hands. Such is the power of beauty tech today that I was able to do an entire virtual shopping experience from my smartphone. I didn’t need an app, a headset, or an in-depth tutorial from an IT expert to do so. I just opened my phone and scanned a QR code. Genius, right? Well, it’s just the beginning...

BATTLE OF THE BRANDS The world’s tech brains have certainly been busy lately. While we were in lockdown doing jigsaws, they were innovating the next big developments in the metaverse, the growth of blockchain technology, and even machine learning (yep, really). And the beauty industry has been listening, figuring out how to bring this technology to its customers.