Talking Beauty Revolution

In life, one has classics: things you’ll use forever and never throw away.  Your favourite jeans, your trusty old trainers, your lucky exam pen, your iPod.  You know it works so why should you change it? This is the common mentality with cosmetics too.  Why should I change a product when I have used it for years and I trust that it works for me?  I agree, some items should never be removed from your make-up bag.  The Chanel liquid eyeliner, the NARS blush, YSL’s Touche Eclat will and rightly should remain permanent fixtures.  There is however a need for new influxes to freshen up those classics and 2009 promises to ring change in the cosmetic world from day one.

The cosmetic industry, just like the fashion industry, continues to reinvent relentlessly year after year, season after season, in order to keep on trend and up-to-date in order to survive the rapidly moving fashion world.  Recently it has found a new way to do this: cosmetics have moved out of the beauty salon, and into the laboratories. These days people can be tempted to try something new if it is branded as a new formula or made with some new and improved technology. The latest trend is to add new ingredients to your product, which contain previously undiscovered properties to heal, moisturise and maintain your appearance.  Last year this was pomegranate, the super food and miracle ingredient.  This year it is orchid, a long living and resilient plant, whose qualities L’Oréal are hoping will boost its sales rates as well as our skin.  The senior scientific adviser for L’Oréal, Julie McManus explains the benefits of their new orchid skin care range. “One of the main attributes of the orchid is its ability to store water and its longevity. Because of this it can continually renew and replenish itself and therefore doesn’t deteriorate with age.”  The company harvests the required extracts of the Orchis Mascula through a special in-vitro technology ensuring the sustainability of the Orchid, which is in fact an endangered species.

Not only the ingredients in the cosmetic products are being revolutionized this year but also the packaging too.  The image of a product is as important to a brand as the product itself. Charlotte Tilbury, the makeup artist, known to many in the fashion industry as simply , ‘La Tilbury’, whose vast portfolio ranges from Kate Moss to Alexander McQueen, has launched a new line of cosmetics in association with the John Frieda company.  The line, myface.cosmetics, is inspired by new technology, with all the products resembling iPods.  Aside from the packaging myface.cosmetics hits on an idea totally new to the cosmetic industry, which Tilbury hopes with revolutionize the way we use makeup.

Tilbury has designed a range of makeup which is categorized by skin tone, resulting in a foolproof method of choosing your make up.  Each of the three skin tone categories contains three shades of foundation which correspond directly to three concealers, five lipsticks, five lip glosses and a whole range of eye-shadows, making it impossible to chose a shade that doesn’t suit your skin tone. The eye-shadow palettes each include a ‘bling tone’, containing a high percentage of pearl extract, which enables the powder to mould over your skin like gold leaf. The mascara is the one essential product of the New Year; it’s thick, luscious and the closest thing to false eyelashes on the market.

Another name to be on the lookout for this year is Marian Newman.  This Nail artist to the fashion world started her career as a police forensic scientist and took her love for science and technology with her into the cosmetic world. Tatler Magazine said of her, ‘Marian Newman is to nails what Karl Lagerfeld is to frocks.’ She has worked with Mario Testino, David Bailey and John Galliano, to name a few and has painted nails on more Vogue cover shots that you’ve had hot dinners.  Newman has created the revolutionary brand Marian Newman Nails, a range of innovative and highly original premium nail care products designed for women on the move in need of practical cosmetics. The main products are the INKredibles, nail varnishes which come in a tube and which are painted on in a similar way to a lip-gloss pen.  So not only is it easy to use these products on the go but also the varnish is touch dry in twenty seconds!  The Right Here Nail Oil is an essential for nail and cuticle care combining neroli, red thyme, petitgrain, jojoba, apricot kernel and rice bran oils with vitamin E to give an instantly manicured look to otherwise dry, dull hands. Plus it smells delicious, unlike most nail oils.

Other new concepts to look out for this year in the cosmetic industry are vibrating mascaras, which give added volume to the lashes and intend to remove the “spider-leg effect”, fake tans with dials with which you are able to control the level of colour you want to be, and after sport in-shower muscle rubs. This trend for the latest technology in cosmetics is on the rise so make the most of it. Make sure you revitalise your makeup bag this spring with some revolutionary products, which I do not doubt will soon become your permanent classics.