Are VSCO girls upending the US beauty industry by ignoring Kylie Cosmetics and going KonMari?
- The new generation of young women is ignoring advice from the Kardashians and is instead going for a minimalist look that would make Marie Kondo proud
This growing subset of consumers, widely known for their love of Hydro Flasks, scrunchie hair ties and the VSCO photo-editing app, embraces a minimalist approach to consumption that has extended to beauty routines.
These young women aim for a dewy, fresh-faced aesthetic that relies more on hydrating facial sprays, creams and neutral lip balms over traditional makeup, such as foundation, eyeliner, mascara and multiple shades of lipsticks.
Memes illustrating favourite products among VSCO girls, often referred to as a “VSCO girl starter pack”, feature Carmex, Burt's Bees, and Glossier lip balms and glosses, Mario Badescu facial sprays and various face masks, among other items.
This is bad news for the cosmetics industry, which is now experiencing a sharp decline in sales growth. The category experienced a compound annual growth rate of between 7 per cent and 9 per cent in the three years leading up to 2017. Last year growth fell to 4 per cent, and analysts and cosmetics companies are expecting continued contraction this year.
“Consumers are spending more on skincare at the expense of makeup”, and skincare routines tend to require fewer items, UBS analysts wrote in a research note published on October 11, 2019 that sought to explain the cosmetics slowdown.
The UBS note did not directly cite VSCO girls as responsible for the shift toward skincare. But the correlation between the shopping behaviour of these consumers and the woes of major makeup companies is hard to overlook.
Interest is falling in makeup-heavy routines
The slowdown in makeup sales comes after cosmetics companies thrived for years on soaring interest in trends such as contouring, a makeup routine promoted by the Kardashians that involves using varying shades of foundations and highlighters to accentuate certain facial features.
“There has been a noticeable shift in beauty from cosmetics into skin care,” Kayla Marci, market analyst at retail data firm Edited, told Business Insider’s Bethany Biron. “Trends like heavy contouring have fallen out of favour as consumers take a more natural approach to their skin, focusing on getting the base clean and healthy.”
Google searches for contouring peaked in 2015 before falling 44 per cent in 2017, followed by a 26 per cent drop in 2018, according to UBS. Likewise, customer engagement – in the form of Instagram comments – with major beauty brands and retailers such as Mac, Fenty Beauty, Kylie Cosmetics, Ulta and Sephora, has taken a nosedive.