These days, you’ll notice something if you walk into any Boots or Sephora. Foundation and lipstick are no longer piled on the shelves closest to the entrance, which retailers reserve for items they believe will sell the quickest. They have an abundance of serums. Five years ago, only a dermatologist would have casually used terms like hyaluronic acid, niacinamide, and peptides in little glass bottles. Teens who browse TikTok these days are familiar with it.
It’s difficult to ignore how swiftly this occurred. Makeup was not so much overshadowed by skincare as it was. As of 2023, skincare products accounted for about 44% of the global beauty market’s revenue, and this percentage has continued to rise. Meanwhile, makeup has been stagnant. Not quite collapsing. One bare-faced selfie at a time, I’m simply becoming irrelevant.
It’s the kind of change that creeps up on an industry based on disparate presumptions, and generational factors play a part in the explanation. In the past, marketing relied heavily on transformation: hide what you don’t like, contour your cheek, or cover up a flaw. Younger customers appear to want the opposite because they were raised online and are wary of anything that seems like a sales pitch. Instead of hiding their skin, they want it to look good. Because everyone is aware that a flawless complexion cannot be removed at the end of the day, it seems to have become a status symbol of its own, perhaps even more impressive than a flawless cat-eye.
Whether the platform intended it or not, TikTok deserves a lot of credit in this case. Reading a glossy advertisement is not the same as watching a fifteen-second video that explains what retinol actually does to collagen production. Even though there is some brand influence, it feels more informative than persuasive. On TikTok Shop, beauty has taken over as the most popular category, and a startling portion of that money is spent on skin treatments rather than color cosmetics. It appears that brand executives and investors don’t think this is a fleeting trend. In recent earnings cycles, Estée Lauder and L’Oréal have both increased their emphasis on skincare lines in an attempt to attract the same anti-aging, science-forward clientele that was previously a niche.
Additionally, there is an economic layer to consider. The cost of premium skincare products can be ridiculously high, with individual serums often costing well over fifty dollars. However, consumers continue to purchase, viewing it less as a luxury and more as a medical expense, placing it in the same mental category as a multivitamin or a gym membership. It’s still unclear if that holds during more difficult economic times. When consumers learn more about ingredient marketing and discover that a fifteen-dollar moisturizer frequently performs almost the same function, some analysts question whether the premium skincare bubble will eventually burst.
More than any one product, the underlying philosophy has changed. The remedy used to be makeup. These days, skincare serves as the foundation, sometimes even taking its place. As I watch this develop, it seems less like a beauty fad and more like a subtle reinterpretation of what it means to look good
