Mintel, the market research company that predicts consumer trends, has predicted 4 top beauty trends for 2010. The recession, innovation and resilience have helped to shape these new trends, which incorporate new ways to merge science, nature and sustainability along with more eco-friendly formulas and packaging.
Trend 1: Mood Beauty. This trend capitalizes on the intersection of psychology and wellbeing with beauty products that offer psychological benefits and act on neurotransmitters. Look out for textures, temperatures and sounds that affect mood as well as innovations like make-up that ‘switches on and off’.
Also watch for cosmetics that claim to induce positive moods or improve sleep quality with night care treatments.
Trend 2: Nu Natural. This new vision of natural is less focused on certification and more focused on results, efficiency and safety. Watch as beauty products evolve from the trend towards organic ingredients, while revisiting attributes like authenticity, provenance and local production.
Claims like “free from” and “sustainable” will become more common and will contain synthetically derived actives like peptides, hyaluronic acid, ceramides or collagen.
Trend 3. Pro-Tech’T. Watch for a continued emphasis on protection; not just against UV rays, but also against physiological and man-made factors. Immune-boosting and skin-defending claims will become more prominent. Ingredients from extreme environments such as the Arctic, Alpine or Desert will grow. Healthcare actives including rhodiola rosea, griffonia and superoxide dismutase are expected to appear in more products.
Trend 4. Turbo Beauty 4G. This trend continues to capitalize on advances in biochemistry for higher-tech beauty products. Look for more quasi-medical results and “mix-it-yourself” solutions: at-home kits and cures that offer alternatives to cosmetic surgery and non-invasive procedures.
Products will increasingly include medical- or pharmaceutical-grade actives and next-generation nanotechnology.
