When you think beauty, you might think lipstick and eye shadow, but the cosmetics industry is much more than just makeup. It's also hair care and dermatology, not to mention science and technology.
The cosmetics industry has always relied on advances in chemistry and biomedicine, whether to ensure that we're getting safe products for our bodies or for a competitive advantage over rivals. L'Oreal, the world's biggest cosmetics company, has been experimenting on the science side for over a century, but for the past decade it's also been tapping into the latest advances in tech.
L'Oreal's chief marketing and digital officer, Asmita Dubey, says that thanks to the way people are adopting AI, and generative AI in particular, L'Oreal has now reached a "tipping point" in its technology journey. "The future of beauty is physical, digital and virtual," she tells me in an interview.
As someone who's spent hours on the internet researching skin care products and wishing there were ways I could go deeper to ensure I don't waste my money, I get what she means. Tech is making beauty feel more accessible and personal to me. Ideally it will help me move away from patterns of overconsumption to feel more confident and like I'm making safe and sustainable choices.
This was my biggest takeaway from trying out a number of L'Oreal's latest products at the Vivatech conference in Paris last month. The company is in the process of introducing these to customers. And from hardware to software, the demos I experienced opened my eyes to new beauty regimes. Here's what I got to see for myself:
Beauty Genius AI app
Just like most other companies in the world, L'Oreal has been working out how to best use the latest advances in generative AI to its advantage. It's integrating AI across the company, but for its customers, it's created an all-in-one personal assistant called Beauty Genius.
Beauty Genius is your always-on-call pocket stylist.
The idea is that the app can help you assess changes to your skin, "try on" cosmetics using your phone's camera and chat with you to help you find the perfect product to meet your needs.
The company has integrated all the data it's accumulated through internal clinical testing with user feedback from anonymized online reviews and customer service conversations to create a powerful dataset relating to 750 different products. It plans to use this to provide personalized recommendations that will meet your specific skin care needs.
I had a brief demo of Beauty Genius and it pushed me out of my comfort zone by suggesting lipstick shades that would suit me that I hadn't previously been bold enough to consider. The app is still in beta, and will be tested thoroughly by a group of L'Oreal customers before being released publicly. I'm keen to see whether it'll be able to help me navigate some of my more complex skin issues, which are an ever-evolving battle.
Air Light Pro Infrared hair dryer
Every hotel room has a hair dryer, but not one like this.
L'Oreal's infrared hair dryer.
L'Oreal's Air Light Pro is the first product the company has built in conjunction with a startup. It worked in partnership with Zuvi, a hardware company better known for making drones, that will dry your hair using just infrared light and wind.
Not only will it help you avoid heat damage to your hair, the company says, it doesn't require as much power as a regular hair dryer. L'Oreal promises a 31% reduction in energy consumption.
"[It] embodies what I believe about sustainability and tech," says Guivre Balooch, who runs L'Oreal's tech and innovation lab.
As someone with extra-long tresses who avoids heat styling whenever possible, I'm keen to give the Air Light Pro a proper shot. I'll have to wait to try it out on wet hair to see whether it measures up, but in a brief demo, I appreciated the teal-hued light and hearty gust it cast.
L'Oreal hasn't yet said when the Air Light Pro will be available to buy, but I hope when it is that it'll be more affordable than Dyson's hair styling devices, which are proficient but too pricey for many.
Bioprinted skin
Call me ignorant, but one thing I didn't know about L'Oreal was that the company stopped testing products on animals in the 1980s -- before any legislation required it. It also manufactured the first ever reconstructed human epidermis to test on and made it available across the industry in order to cut down on animal testing.
L'Oreal's skin printer.
The latest development in this space is 3D-printed skin, which is extruded in a kind of toothpaste-textured patented material before fusing together. I watched a piece of skin slightly smaller than a contact lens being printed in front of my eyes in just a few minutes. I was then able to hold and it did indeed feel like human skin -- although it was more baby soft than most skin I've come into contact with.
L'Oreal can change the color of the skin and replicate a variety of skin textures with it, although it hasn't yet succeeded in replicating skin with hair on. The company hopes to bring down the cost and to learn more about product interactions with different skin types.
Lancome Reenrgie Nano-resurfacer
The idea of puncturing your face with a collection of tiny needles might sound intimidating. But it's designed to be a relatively simple and safe procedure that's suitable for many skin types.
The Nano-Resurfacer could save you a trip to your facialist.
Later this year, L'Oreal will start selling the Lancome Reenrgie Nano-resurfacer, a device that looks something like a chrome electric toothbrush without a head, which can gently penetrate the skin with 400 nano-tips before you apply your serum. The idea is that the product you then apply to your face can be more efficiently absorbed into your skin.
I didn't try the device on my face, but I ran it over the back of my hand and was surprised at how soft it felt. I was expecting a slight pinching sensation, but it felt more like a tickle.
L'Oreal hasn't yet said when it will be available or what the price will be, but it's easy to imagine the nano-resurfacer being a popular product that will make at-home facials much more effective.
Kiehl's Derma-Reader
Among the new products L'Oreal unveiled at VivaTech was one that's already in stores. I was keen to try it out.
The Derma-Reader delivered me both good and bad news.
The Kiehl's Derma-Reader is a face-scanning machine that takes a series of photos of your visage in order to capture 16,000 data points about your skin. Almost immediately, it will give you an in-depth assessment of what's going on in your epidermis, pointing out problem areas you might want to attend to.
When I tried it, the Derma-Reader told me things I do know -- that I struggle with redness and texture -- and some things I wasn't aware of, like the fact that I apparently have crow's feet. After being reckless with skipping SPF in my youth, I was worried about UV damage, but it turned out not to be anywhere near as bad as I thought (while serving as a reminder to always wear sunscreen).
The idea is that once you have a diagnosis, you'll be able to work out which Kiehl's products you need to buy. While I wasn't sold on the idea of immediately investing in a new skin-care regime from a brand I haven't used before, I did appreciate the assessment of what was going on with my skin. Armed with that information, I can think about how I want to care for it as it ages.