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Industry trendwatchers — including us — have spent the past year heralding personalization as the future of beauty technology. We've seen the launch of customized at-home hair color, 3D-printed nail wraps laser-cut to the shape of your nail beds, and companies that use customer DNA to recommend a skin-care routine. With its focus on innovation and information, L'Oréal Technology Incubator is leading the rest of us into the future of beauty. Today, the Incubator unveiled its latest glimpse ahead — and cemented the importance of personalization — with L'Oréal Perso.
This smart device creates custom formulas for lipstick, foundation, and skin care. Naturally, the experience starts with an app. First, the customer will take a photo of her face with the Perso app, which will use AI to identify skin conditions like dark spots, large pores, or wrinkles. Then the app crunches location data to adjust for environmental concerns that affect skin, including pollution, pollen, and UV index. Finally, the user enters her skin-care goals, like eradicating dark spots or dullness. The data is pulled into a custom formula and, using its three-ingredient cartridges, the device will cook up your formulation and dispense it in a single-use dose. The device predicts what your skin will need and creates it for you, no shuffling through your entire serum collection or Googling articles on how to protect your skin from pollution.
"Perso will dispense a specific product using its three active ingredients," Guive Balooch, global vice president of L'Oréal Technology Incubator, tells Allure. "If it's very dry outside with high levels of pollution, you could increase the antioxidants and moisturizer. You can play with SPF. You can basically have something that's precisely made for you every morning."
As for the foundation version, Balooch described one of the "many scenarios" of how Perso could work: "We envision that you could personalize foundation depending on an area of the face. We see that people often use different foundation colors on the bottom of their chin or neck area, so they’ll mix foundations at home to manage the differences in skin tone. Perso will allow you to do that more easily because you can get small amounts of personalized foundation for each area."
The lipstick version will use three shade cartridges to create a customized liquid lip color — and you can use the Perso app to design the shade based on a trend, your outfit, or whatever color you’re hoping to match.
With its adjusting formulas, Perso makes it possible to have more control over your makeup and skin care — which Balooch says customers have asked for. "Consumers have been asking to be part of the process of their beauty and have a stronger relationship with how well it's working," says Balooch. "Here, you become part of the process of your cosmetics."
But how will these high-tech devices like the Perso affect the beauty market? Cosmetic chemist Ginger King says the main draw of tech, for now, is the "fun factor," especially for color cosmetics. "[The customized lipstick] is like having a Bite Beauty Lab in house," she says. "It's also easily achieved because you really only need red, yellow, and blue cartridges to mix colors."
As for skin-care products, she points out that it may be hard for personalized formulas to claim the same efficacy as clinically tested products. King also raises the question of affordability, which is a major factor in beauty buying decisions. (Perso doesn't have a price yet.) And it doesn't launch until 2021, which is a long time for L'Oréal to perfect its research and get customers used to the idea of a device for highly personalized skin-care and makeup routines.
Perso will launch under one of L'Oréal’s existing brands, but their team hasn't released that information. Until then, we suggest spending some quality time with your old-school lipstick tubes and serum bottles. Soon, you may not need them.
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