Beauty remains the gateway to luxury retail
The beauty industry is evolving, and it’s always innovating, and trying a lot of techniques and different products and different formulations. You need to adapt,” says makeup artist Justin Louise Soriano, while giving a demo at last week’s “Beauty Addict: Race Off to Beauty” event organized by Rustan’s.
One way Soriano adapts to the times is by picking up a thing or two from TikTok, where various trends nowadays originate. He confesses, for instance, that he wasn’t initially receptive to a technique many users of the social media app are sharing, showing the makeup base being followed by a cream product before the usual application of powder. But after much thought and keen observation, he eventually followed the trend.
The annual beauty event itself is an innovative strategy that gives an experiential retail experience by combining marketing, entertainment and shopping to attract the new generation of consumers.
Jackie Avecilla, marketing communications manager of Rustan Commercial Corp., tells Lifestyle that when they started the “Beauty Addict” campaign in 2012, the company’s customer base bordered on the “older, more mature” set that grew up shopping at the upscale and luxury retail destination founded in 1952.
Avecilla recalls raising this point during one of their meetings: “Beauty is our gateway to target the younger crowd, because makeup is always about a teenager or a young working professional in her 20s, or a fresh graduate and what they can easily afford. Maybe they can’t afford designer bags or clothes right away, but they can definitely afford a MAC lipstick, or maybe even an Hermès fragrance for a starter.”
That was about nine or 10 years ago. Today, she declares, “Happy to say that we’ve been very successful in doing that. When we have the ‘Beauty Addict’ events, we see that it’s the younger set that comes, and it’s really festive, with a party atmosphere, very young compared to other more traditional Rustan’s events.”
Freebies and expert talks
This year’s event, which took place Sept. 5 at Rustan’s Makati, had an elite racing theme. Participating brands included L’Occitane, Diptyque, Malin+Goetz, Grown Alchemist, L:a Bruket, Saturday Skin, RMS Beauty, Stila, Phyto, Aveda, Chanel, Clarins, La Prairie, Sisley, Anastasia Beverly Hills, MAC, Jo Malone London, Tom Ford, Nuxe, and Maison Margiela.
Just like in a motorsport race, guests were invited to navigate a course complete with “pit stops” set up at the dressed-up counters of participating brands that offered fun activities, freebies and premium products at discounted prices. More activities happened at the main stage, notably the makeup master classes that Soriano and fellow expert RB Chanco gave under beauty brand Laura Mercier.
Some tips from Soriano: To conceal eye bags or dark circles around the eyes, try using a color corrector or choose a concealer in shades of honey or peach before applying the main concealer. Apply some around the nose to make it look narrower. “We want to cover the redness around the area because that redness makes your nose look bigger and wider.”
For those whose T-zone, the area from the forehead down to the nose and chin, tends to get oily, his advice is to avoid using cream-based products that will only encourage the build-up of oil, and opt instead for powder. He also advises to put concealer around the corners of the mouth “to create a lip lift” before applying lipstick or lipliner.
Additional tips from Chanco, who talked about mastering the bold red lipstick: “Dip the lipstick in loose powder before using it for a matte look. But if you’ve already applied the red lipstick, you can do the Laura Mercier way of applying loose powder over the lipstick for that instant matte.”
