The Gym Girl's Guide To Wearing Make-up

Athleisure beauty products are muscling in on the cosmetics market – but isn’t wearing make-up while you sweat, well, terrible? Not necessarily... If you choose the right products

- Amelia Jean Jones

What are your gym-bag essentials? Trainers? Check. Wireless headphones? Sure. Lipstick? Apparently so. Yep – actual make-up in the gym. To work out. And it’s on the rise: the hashtag #gymselfie has been used over 1.7-million times on Instagram as women seek to look more polished as they pump iron.

“Obviously, women don’t need to wear make-up to work out,” explains Emily Hines, co-founder and CFO of Sweat Cosmetics in the US, a cosmetics line designed specifically for women with active lifestyles. “But those who live an athletic lifestyle will typically wear the same make-up on their faces at 8am on their way to the office as they will while rushing to their post-work yoga class. So you’re going to need beauty products that are designed to last longer in tougher [read: sweatier] conditions.” In fact, market research giant Mintel recently noted that 39 percent of women were frustrated that colour cosmetics didn’t last the distance or survive their sweat session.

The market researchers NPD Group echoed this, revealing that from March 2016 to February 2017, long-wear make-up sales increased across the board. The star performers were eyebrow products, which increased by 105 percent, lip colour by 33 percent, powder by 41 percent and foundation by 15 percent.

“The needs of customers are constantly changing based on their shifting lifestyles,” says Katia Beauchamp, CEO and co-founder of Birchbox (a beautybox subscription service in the US) and its gym-friendly make-up brand Arrow. “We developed Arrow because we knew that as women increasingly view wellness as part of their lives, they’re going to need cosmetics that can both cool them down and give them energy at the same time as standing up to sweat.”