As with any industry, as trends and technology changes, so does the way things are done. And this is particularly obvious with the beauty industry. It’s such a fast-paced and adaptive world that brands are forced to either change and keep up or sink behind and become obsolete. Transform have looked into what has caused a lot of these changes and why.
Starting with one of the more obvious ones – technology. It has massively changed and developed over the past 100 years. The beauty industry as a whole is now worth a lot more money and therefore means a lot more people invest both time and money into it. Technology not only means that way people consume fashion and beauty information has changed but it also means that the ability to change the products and methods themselves can be adapted and improved.
It also means that the industry as a whole is now moving a lot faster than it was when it was first starting out. Including the use of ecommerce to sell the product, which has introduced the “race to the bottom” meaning companies are constantly fighting to be the cheapest available. In the 1920s products were considerably less available and any products tended to be used for “more important things”. Trends tended to focus around looking more youthful and attention-grabbing, all for the purpose of being your most attractive self in order to secure a husband.
There are more people involved in the fashion and beauty than ever before, the industry as a whole is a lot more accessible which in turn brings in more people from different back grounds and different life experience. A mere 50 years ago the only way to break into the industry was to be scouted at a fashion show or in a catalogue, now you can be found through Instagram and other social media, which means that people that can’t afford to travel and be near to the fashion world, can still be a part of it and begin their career. This, in turn, means there is a lot more creativity.
In the late 1900s more and more celebrities started to influence the trends that people tended to follow – think Madonna and the signature pointy bra. Focusing on the 1980s, women were allowed more and more rights and therefore had more chances to express themselves. This manifested itself in the more of exaggerated and colorful makeup looks becoming the norm.
As we go into the 1990s and the 2000s more ingredients were discovered to have useful properties and there was a noticeable shift away from using animal products to using more synthetic and manmade ingredients.
The overall trends have changed so much over the past 100 years, even in the past year the focus has been on skincare and really taking care of yourself and the skin your in.