The rise of the VSCO girl
The Gen Z is leading a strong change in the beauty market with a shifting in their spending preference from make-up to skin care products, such as serums and face masks.
The shift is particularly evident in the US, where in 2019 high end make up sales feel 7%, while skin care products sales rose 5% vs. 2018.
Piper Jaffray’s annual survey of teens showed that last year spending in cosmetics feel to a 19 years low down a fifth to rad $106 spend per person each year.
A growing number of wealthier teens indicated that they are not wearing make-up at all, up from 12% to 20% in the last 5 years.
The change was reflected in the rise of the “VSCO girl”, a teenage fashion trend that went viral last year. Named after the photo edit app VSCO (https://vsco.co), the VSCO girl favour lip gloss and facial spray, a strong contrast to the Kardashian aesthetic.
Part of the extraordinary success of Glossier (glossier.com) was a philosophy of “skin first, make up later).
On online chat platform Reddit, members of a group called Makeup Rehab post about their experience of no-buy challenge in which they aim to go months or years without adding to their make-up collections.
Details about VSCO girl here: