Ingredients are taking center stage in the beauty industry as consumers expect brands to be more transparent and develop more sensible product.
As Victoria Buchanan, a trend analyst and in-house beauty specialist at The Future Laboratory, puts it, “today’s beauty landscape is still a mass of contradictions as we continue to debate science versus nature and digital versus realness.”
“But one thing is for certain,” she adds in her remarks for the beauty futures report, “consumers are fed up with relentlessly chasing perfection and are recalibrating their expectations of what beauty can, and should, deliver to prepare themselves for 21st-century living.”
Ingredients of note
Most of the ingredients singled out in The Future Lab beauty futures report are best suited to skin care. The number one ingredient on the list is cannabis. As marijuana becomes increasingly legal for an array of uses, the consultancy has observed that “the narcotic derivatives of the cannabis plant” are being used in “moisturizing and anti-oxidising products for acne- and eczema-prone skin.” Brands and farmers alike have expressed excitement about this newly available ingredient over the past year.
Tallow, or rendered fat from cows and similar animals, is number two on The Future Lab’s list of ingredients to watch. As an example, the report points to indie skin care brand “FATCO’s range of lotions and creams [which] feature organic tallow from grassfed cows as a core ingredient.”
Givaudan’s neurophroline ranks third on the list. The award-winning ingredient is being called an anti-stress ingredient, since it “block[s] cortisol production and boost[s] endorphin release, improving skin tonality and luminosity,” as The Future Lab notes.
Several natural ingredients and a distinctive pigment made the list too. You can find the complete list of ingredients to keep an eye on in the full beauty futures report. That report from The Future Lab covers a number of other topics too, including market insights, industry trends, brand strategies and more.