Beauty Just Got Fun

With more beauty products on offer than ever before, retailers and brands are coaxing our interaction and rousing our playful side.

- Sally Hunwick

PLEASE TOUCH

In case you didn’t get the memo, it’s no longer taboo to stick your fingers into testers and have a play around. It’s not even a bad thing to use in-store samples to update your office make-up for a night out after work. In fact, if you want to walk into a beauty retailer with a bare face and leave with a full face of make-up, that’s now deemed OK.

Beauty has always been there to make us feel better, whether that’s a weekly manicure, a monthly facial or buying a lipstick from the pharmacist to perk us up on our way home. But these days, especially when it comes to product names, packaging and even formulations and application, things have gone from pleasurable to a seriously good time.

And it’s not just the brands inciting the party vibes – in recent years, retailers are encouraging us to get in store, tuck in and play.

IN THE PLAYGROUND

The beauty floor was once a hallowed ground of immaculate, white-coated women and men, who were both revered and anxiety-inducing lest they encourage us to buy more than our credit card allowed. But these days, even high-end department stores are taking down the physical and emotional barriers, and making trialling beauty products easy, even if you don’t want to buy right away.

One retailer taking the fun stakes to new heights is Mecca. In 2018, the beauty emporium created Meccaland, an interactive Melbourne-based beauty carnival where its customers were encouraged to interact with its products.

“We created Meccaland because we wanted our highly engaged community to play in the ultimate beauty playground,” says Jo Horgan, founder of Mecca. “Beauty is fun, and we wanted to showcase our brands and our products in a really interactive, colourful and crazy space.”