The lash category is on the brink of change
Over the past weeks, Cosmetics Design has been to numerous beauty industry events in the greater New York City area, and it’s clear that a next wave of mascara and lash care is in the offing. Going forward applicators that can deliver product from the very base of lashes to the tip will be important as will lighter, yet well-defined lash looks.
Looks and trends
Naturally sourced ingredients, ‘no-makeup’ looks, and environmentally ethical lifestyle trends are converging.
In conversation with Shiseido’s artistic director and renowned makeup artist Dick Page at New York Fashion Week, Cosmetics Design learned about the fairly bare, mascara-free looks he created for the models walking in both the Narciso Rodriguez and Zero + Maria Cornejo shows. When asked pointedly about trends in the lash category he recalled bygone iterations of mascara applicators with “tiny brushes, designed for the Asian market…to catch every lash.”
Page went on to suggest that sometimes less is best, telling Cosmetics Design that he’s “a little disheartened that people are walking around in the day time with lash extensions.”
Applicators
Korean beauty and Asian beauty, in general, is quite influential. And a new generation of mascara brushes developed with Asian consumers in mind is coming to market and will likely impact the global beauty scene.
This month packaging and dispenser company Albéa is launching a Magic Lash collection of mascara brushes meant to “adapt to many types of lashes, especially Asian lashes” and to create “a fan effect,” explained Marjorie Vincenti, communication project manager with Albéa, at a recent press event.
And at the MakeUp in NewYork show last week, FS Korea was showing clients from the Americas region a new Flatti Mascara collection, featuring “a flat rod, a flat brush, and a flat container,” as Patrick Ng, vice president of operations and business development at FS Korea, tells Cosmetics Design.
Brush makers are showing more plastic bristles; more flat, slim, and sort bristles; as well as curved and angled applicators. All these new options will allow consumers to apply mascara from the very base of the root and more cleanly overall, creating volume through fuller lash coverage.
