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Top 5 most-read stories October 2021: Beauty personas, circular beauty push and animal-free testing future

02-Nov-2021 - Last updated on 02-Nov-2021 at 12:26 GMT

A round-up of CosmeticsDesign-Europe’s most-read news from October 2021 shows interest in beauty ‘personas’ to watch, the big-brand push towards an environmental impact system, and scientific frustration around the future of animal-free chemical testing.

Big trend forecasts and big brand collaboration

Trend forecaster WGSN revealed the top five beauty ‘personas’ set to shape industry over the next two years, outlining key concerns these consumer cohorts had and what this meant for industry. Leading issues outlined were frugality, sustainability, gender fluidity and creativity.

Big brands Henkel, L’Oréal, LVMH, Natura &Co and Unilever also took the conversation further after the recent formation of a global beauty consortium to develop a brand-agnostic environmental impact system for industry. Executives from all five companies suggested such a system would be critical to the sustainable future of cosmetics.

Animal-free science and green beauty communication

The conversation around animal-free chemical testing also took on new depth, with executives from Unilever’s Safety & Environmental Assurance Centre (SEAC) outlining the frustrations felt amongst the scientific community that they were unable to utilise in vitro methods to their full potential because of regulatory hurdles. Both executives said the issue had big implications for the cosmetics industry and its push to maintain the long-standing animal testing bans in Europe.

L’Oréal’s Garnier brand also took its green beauty agenda further, unveiling a partnership with branded content studio National Geographic CreativeWorks to create a worldwide educational campaign aimed at empowering beauty consumers to live greener.

Natura &Co’s VP of sustainability and group affairs said understanding and communicating the impact cosmetics products had on people and planet was clearly the next chapter in industry’s move towards full circularity.

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