This article is part of the Future of Appearance, a collection of articles that investigates what we will look like in 20 years.
Artificial intelligence-driven skincare, weight loss drugs, bioprinted skin, genetic-based aesthetic treatments — the lengths to which consumers can go in the future to ‘look their best’ will be more extreme than ever. Experts warn that these innovations may reinforce current outdated beauty standards, or create an even more extreme ideal. For every consumer who is keen to tinker with treatments and technology to enhance their appearance, there’s an equal number who are burnt out by the ever-increasing pressure to look unnaturally beautiful.
Vogue Business surveyed over 600 consumers and asked them to predict the future of beauty standards: some were hopeful for more inclusivity and natural beauty, while others were hopeful that better treatments and products would arise to improve their appearances — but many were concerned that future generations will suffer as the beauty standard becomes more extreme.
This polarisation presents a challenge for beauty marketers, who are tasked with selling products that improve our appearance while empowering us at the same time.
Traditionally, aspirational marketing material has been interwoven with our expectations of beauty. The idea that if we see a campaign featuring someone we consider beautiful, we feel pleasure. Then, our perception of the brand improves and we’re more likely to purchase from them. But the flaw in this approach is its representation of a narrow image of beauty. In the 2010s, consumers demanded more authenticity and diversity from marketing, which led to brands increasing diversity across body size, skin colour and unfiltered skin (such as fine lines, acne, stretch marks and more). But many of those attempts felt tokenistic, which led to a backtrack in representation.
When beauty standards are only more extreme — backed by the normalisation of cosmetic procedures and weight loss drugs — getting the right message across will be a much harder task.
The best approach is to combine aspirational campaigns, influencer marketing, user-generated content and reviews, says Cherry Collins, global strategy partner of marketing agency Havas Media’s luxury division. “This helps them hit the balance in terms of making the sales, but also to build credibility, trust and engagement,” she says.
Aspirational or relatable?
Consumer psychologists say there’s often a gap between attitude and behaviour — so we may still be drawn to traditional ideals, even if we want inclusivity. There’s also research showing that if a face is too perfect, it can have a negative impact on perception, says Young-Jin Hur, course leader of applied psychology at London College of Fashion, whose research specialises in the psychology of beauty aesthetics.
These contradictions are likely to shape the future of marketing, experts say. It may lead to a disconnect with AI models, for instance, particularly those that represent an unattainable beauty standard.
As consumers grow tired of perfection, the sweet spot will become “achievable aspiration”, says Ellie Bamford, North America chief strategy officer at advertising agency VML. “You can’t project an unattainable ideal as a brand because people will walk away from you. But brands still need that aspirational, striking, high fashion aesthetic to be desirable and tell a story. We are inspired by what we think is entertaining and creative, but it shouldn’t feel like we’re dictating what beauty is,” she says. The social media platforms of the future are likely to integrate augmented and virtual reality experiences, blending the digital and physical worlds, which would open up opportunities for a community-driven marketing approach.
Amid growing polarisation between aspirational and relatable ideals of beauty, more brands will shift their marketing languages from looking good to feeling good, says Emily Safian-Demers, director of insights at creative, e-commerce, and marketing agency Front Row. “In the past, beauty was all about trying to hit an aesthetic ideal. That’s still a part of beauty pursuits, but now it’s also very deeply entwined with wellness,” she says.
How are brands preparing for the future of extreme beauty standards? “We don’t want to hinge the sale on it being about looking a type of way. We want to be able to create a space and create products where our customers don’t feel like they have to do anything outside of what they want,” says Charlotte Geoghegan, head of brand marketing at British cosmetics brand Refy. Now, the question she asks herself is: “How can we centre the customer and how they can feel confident, rather than adhering to some sort of beauty standard?”
Hyper-personalised beauty, hyper-personalised marketing
The future of appearance is personalised: innovations in stem cell generation, DNA-based healthcare, custom-blended beauty products, AI tools that analyse your skin and suggest tailored products and avatars that allow users to customise their looks. And marketing will follow, becoming “deeply more personal”, says Bamford. “Fantasy will start to become reality because of the shift in technology and what that enables us to do. I think we’re going to be more enabled to look however we want to look, and this impact of personalisation is only going to grow. If brands can’t connect to that in a meaningful way, they’ll be left behind.”
At the same time, customers are becoming more educated than ever on the aesthetic treatments and beauty products available to them. Research shows that Gen Z (who will be in their 30s and 40s in 20 years — the target age for aesthetic treatments) conducts significantly in-depth research online before committing. “Customers want to see not just the effects of someone using that product, but also someone who has similar skin or goals to them,” says Safian-Demers. “Rather than a brand saying, ‘This is our product and this is how you use it,’ it gives an opportunity to say, ‘Here is our product — you tell us how you’re using it and how we should be communicating that value to you.’”
Bamford says she expects brands to get more specific about who they’re targeting with their marketing strategies, and how. Refy’s Geoghegan agrees. “A lot of brands go too broad and trend-led, but there’s a lot to be said about going deeper and more niche, which will resonate personally a lot more,” she says. As brands continue to personalise their marketing strategies, the metrics of success may change. “As we’ve narrowed in to focus on the consumer and the community, we’ve lost a little bit of [the virality we used to have]. It’s been a good learning for us — there’s always a panic when you’re not hitting those numbers, but we’re reaching the right people now.”
Instagram content
Brands are likely to continue investing in user-generated content in the future, experts predict, because it allows them to boost representation without approaching it tokenistically or dictating a particular beauty ideal. “By its very nature, it is inclusive; you have a whole host of people who are experiencing a product in a completely different way to anyone else,” says Collins. “Those platforms have the power to include everyone and target communities based on shared values or goals, as opposed to saying, ‘This is for you if you look like this or have this background.’”
Can regulations protect customers from extreme beauty ideals?
Many marketers are concerned with the ethical considerations of marketing an extreme beauty ideal, but have mixed opinions about whether regulations should step in to protect consumers.
Marketing regulations typically exist to protect safety and prevent misinformation. “We’ve seen regulations around beauty marketing in the past. There was a big push for brands to always label when imagery was retouched. Similarly on social media, we’ve seen warning labels around sponsored content. These are all efforts from brands and marketers to communicate authenticity, believability and truthfulness,” says Safian-Demers. “As we think about the future, these threads are intertwining — we might see warning labels applied to marketing content, just like we already have with the products themselves.”
Collins also predicts more regulation around AI in marketing. “If [the models aren’t disclosed as AI], that could push us further back and help reintegrate very traditional views of what the beauty standard has been,” she says.
Many Vogue Business survey respondents expressed concern about how the well-being of young people could be negatively impacted by the extreme beauty standards they see in ads and on social media. At the same time, as aesthetic treatments become more normalised and less detectable, there’s the potential that the anti-ageing marketing claims may become misleading in beauty campaigns featuring brand ambassadors whose results are down to treatments, not products.
“There are a lot of bold claims out there,” Collins says. “The rise of aesthetic procedures has created this competitive environment where traditional skincare brands make exaggerated claims to compete with these medical interventions. But consumer awareness and demand for transparency is growing, so people are becoming more educated around ingredients and efficacy.”
But the growing accessibility of aesthetic treatments and the extremity of beauty standards may lead to less consumer demand for safety, warns Bamford. She already sees this among influencer culture. “There’s a tremendous amount of trust placed in beauty influencers with no credentials whatsoever. And people aren’t bothered by that — what they’re bothered by is being the first to try something,” she explains. “There’s this attractive idea of being in front of the science — it’s aspirational. ‘Have you tried this? It’s brand new. I need it.’ That’s the vibe. Not: ‘Has this been clinically tested?’ or ‘Is it safe?’ No one’s asking those questions.”
Marketers are hopeful that the changes in consumer perception of beauty standards will bring about more exciting approaches to marketing. “There is a real rebellion against the algorithm’s idea of perfection we have been fed — this idea of what you are meant to look like — which has resulted in an incredibly dull landscape of marketing,” says Bamford. “I like that there’s polarisation. We got too trend obsessed, and now it’s coming back to a place where, whatever you want to like, there’s something there for you.”
*Note on our images:
We created all lead images in this series using OpenAI GPT-4o’s image generation tool. To do that, we leveraged the ongoing partnership between Condé Nast and OpenAI and generated images that best reflect the expert insights and predictions about appearance found in this collection of articles.
We are aware of the debate surrounding the ethics of artificial intelligence in image-making, and we share concerns regarding creative ownership as well as that of our own image. In this series, we are talking about a world that doesn’t yet exist, and as AI is in so many ways the tool of the future, we felt it was appropriate to experiment with it in this way.
We guided the visuals entirely through written prompts. No external images or copyrighted materials were uploaded or referenced — every image was created from scratch based on our team’s original concepts.
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