Colour of our skin

Britain is chang­ing colour. Based on lat­est fore­casts from think-tank Pol­i­cy Exchange, near­ly a third of the pop­u­la­tion will be made up of peo­ple from eth­nic minori­ties by 2050.

Yet cos­met­ics com­pa­nies have been woe­ful­ly slow to grasp this oppor­tu­ni­ty to offer the wide palette of shades required to sat­is­fy diverse cus­tomers.

For decades, Fash­ion Fair and Iman, plus MAC with their “all races” ethos, were the only options for women of colour. Even today, for some foun­da­tion shop­pers there’s unac­cept­able seg­re­ga­tion.

In June, actress Thandie New­ton took chemists Boots to task of the “ghet­toiza­tion” of make-up by quick­ly tak­ing dark­er shades of new ranges off the shelves in order to focus on bet­ter sell­ers. “The right shade is there for every­body, but you can only get it at spe­cialised shops,” she says.

So just how far are research and inno­va­tion in colour push­ing inte­gra­tion for foun­da­tion cus­tomers?

Pre­mi­um brands are rethink­ing their colour spec­trum, invest­ing in the more-com­plex colour blend­ing required for dark­er and Asian com­plex­ions. When YSL launched Le Teint Touche Eclat Foun­da­tion in 2012, the com­pa­ny start­ed by iden­ti­fy­ing 7,000 skin tones, chose 700 shades that gave the widest cross-sec­tion and con­densed the range to 22 final choic­es, in some instances almost tripling the options avail­able else­where. Oth­er for­ward-thinkers include Bob­bi Brown, whose updat­ed Skin Foun­da­tion Sticks now boast 24 shades.

This is cer­tain­ly progress, although not alto­geth­er altru­ist. To be suc­cess­ful, cos­met­ics com­pa­nies have to look beyond the tra­di­tion­al geog­ra­phy of skin tone and take heed of the chang­ing eco­nom­ic glob­al envi­ron­ment.

Accord­ing to Euromon­i­tor research, cas­es in point include Brazil, which is the third biggest beau­ty econ­o­my in the world, while the so-called MINT coun­tries of Mex­i­co, Indone­sia, Nige­ria and Turkey are tipped as the next pow­er­house economies, with beau­ty spend­ing in Indone­sia alone already soar­ing by 146 per cent between 2008 and 2013. For savvy retail­ers and cos­met­ics com­pa­nies, the colour palette is key.

“Today there is more move­ment of peo­ple around the globe, mak­ing the demo­graph­ics of mar­kets much more diverse and mul­ti-eth­nic,” says Vic Casale, co-founder of Cov­er FX, who held “skin clin­ics” to match real tones when devel­op­ing their vast array of foun­da­tion shades and under­tones. “Offer­ing prod­ucts to match that diver­si­ty is no longer an option – it is a neces­si­ty.”

Depart­ment stores are mak­ing strides too. Har­rods shop­ping app is avail­able in Chi­nese, while Har­vey Nichols has a strong pres­ence in the Mid­dle East and Turkey. Estée Laud­er has 77 lan­guages rep­re­sent­ed at UK coun­ters with tech­nol­o­gy includ­ing iPads to cater for lan­guages not spo­ken by their sales staff. Fur­ther­more, they employ a cul­tur­al rel­e­van­cy team to exam­ine key trends with­in the beau­ty pop­u­la­tion by loca­tion and nation­al­i­ty, aim­ing to bet­ter serve region­al shop­pers’ needs.

As cus­tomers become not only more eth­ni­cal­ly diverse, but also demand­ing, it’s time for beau­ty com­pa­nies to gal­vanise and play catch-up if they want to see true beau­ty democ­ra­cy – and sales – at the counter.