Slow beauty explained
INDUSTRY INSIGHTS
Before CV-19, many of us felt a growing unease with an unsustainable pace of life, and our throwaway culture. An always-on, buy more-more-more lifestyle wasn’t making us happier or healthier. As a reaction to this, counter-trends kept emerging such as hygge or lagom, designed to help us carve out moments of peace and authenticity away from our seriously busy lives.
In line with these counter-culture movements, the beauty industry has gradually been seeing a shift towards a slower, more considered approach. The slow beauty trend has been talked about on and off in the beauty press for a number of years, such as in this 2019 Glamour article, as a result of backlash against of the high churn fashion industry. The circumstances of 2020 have accelerated this trend, with consumers rethinking the products and brands they want to invest in, as we have all been forced to stop and consider what really matters.
So what is slow beauty?
The slow beauty trend actually links together a number of trends in the market under one movement. What they all have in common is being more considered in how you think about, purchase and use beauty products.
Holistic Slow Beauty
For some slow beauty is thinking about beauty is a much broader way than just using products. It’s an all-encompassing lifestyle, and must include great nutrition to “nourish the body from the inside out”.
Wendy Rowe, author to the book Eat Beautiful, writes that diet and wellness (e.g. reducing stress) are key to seeing improvements to your skin, as well as incorporating skin supplements and exercise such as mood-boosting yoga and dance.
You shouldn’t expect to see skin benefits immediately, as the approach is about maintaining a long term healthy lifestyle which will deliver a slow and sustained benefit to your complexion and overall sense of wellbeing.
Ethical and Conscious Consumerism
Slow beauty is also about making sure your beauty choices are sustainable and ethical. Brands must have a clear environmental policy which is transparent about how green their packaging is (e.g. compostable or “naked” in the case of Lush) and what ingredients they use, with vegan and clean almost becoming hygiene factors. Even if a brand has work to do in this area they are expected to be open to consumers about this.
Slow beauty continues to evolve in this space, with brands now expected to demonstrate full inclusivity, alongside a positive contribution to society and the world around them. Cosmetics Business noted in their trend overview for 2020 (pre CV-19) that consumers are increasingly holding brands to account, especially Gen Z consumers:
“The expectations on brands across all sectors are growing greater, but within beauty, consumers have raised the bar for everything from efficacy to ethics, and in the year ahead, their demands will evolve even further”
Post CV-19 slow beauty ethics will be key for consumers, as we have all had time to reflect on what and how much we buy. So how will it continue to evolve?
Next gen environmental thinking: Harpers Bazaar sees the next phase of ethical beauty purchasing as a focus on waterless formulations to reduce water consumption, with major beauty producers such as L’Oreal and Unilever all making commitments to drastically reduce their water consumption over the next decade
Buy better / buy less / buy local: Customers will not only cut back on excessive consumerism, but may also look to buy from smaller and homegrown brands. Sylvie Moreau, President of Coty Professional, recently predicted that local-ism will be an output of more considered purchases, as consumers spend more time in their own countries and support homegrown / smaller businesses as a show of solidarity post CV-19
Self Care
For those of us who haven’t quite mastered the art of meditation or mindfulness, slow beauty routines play a role in taking a quiet moment to ourselves to de-stress. This aspect of slow beauty has become even more relevant in lockdown as beauty rituals are used to reduce anxiety levels.
There are lots of brands out there now who encourage self-care techniques as part of their application to relax, such as Kyushi whose brand ethos is “Mindful skincare to help balance your skin & mind”. The face oils are designed to be applied slowly while inhaling the aromas as part of a ritual to lower stress levels.
Bathing beauty rituals have also seen a massive boom in sales during the pandemic. The Telegraph recently reported that Asos.com had seen a +350% increase in self-care products like bath salts and bombs during lockdown, with consumers using bathing products create a moment of escapism in uncertain times. Slow beauty encourages us all to be kind to ourselves, even if its just taking 10 minutes a day to enjoy a moment to relax and forget the stresses of the day.
Our final thought…..
Slow beauty can’t be defined as just a beauty ritual or product type, a lifestyle, or what you look for in a brand when you make purchase decisions - its all these under one, wide-reaching movement. What is clear is that a slow beauty ethos will be at the heart of a broader wellness trend for the foreseeable future.
THE BEAUTY BRAND COACH