Why is our industry so fascinated by ‘unicorn beauty’?

Image result for frank body shimmer scrub
Frank Body Shimmer Scrub

It’s been reported that Frank Body’s unicorn-inspired shimmer scrub has 50,000 long waiting list. You read that right – 50,000 people have put their name down for the Australian brand’s unicorn-inspired body scrub and the line is steadily growing longer.

It’s near-impossible to not have noticed that lately beauty brands have released an absurd amount of unicorn-themed products, with the only requirement being they make the area they’re applied to blindingly iridescent.

Popsugar’s ‘50+ Beauty Products Magical Enough for Real-Life Unicorns’ is a testament to the sheer slew of this trend’s influence. Lip glosses, highlighters, nail polishes, eye shadow, skincare, and, of course, too many holographic powders to count are littered throughout the list.

And this isn’t just an ‘edgy beauty brand’ thing, either. Lancome, Burberry and Farsali can all be considered traditional, but they’re also all jumping on the shiny bandwagon with their latest collections. Farsali has even gone so far as to name their latest oil-free antioxidant serum and primer ‘Unicorn Tears’.

Described as ‘heavenly sweet with an uplifting aroma’, ingredients include a cocktail of plant extracts (vaccinium angustifolium – blueberry, lyceum barbarum – goji berry, sambucus nigra – elderberry), glycerine, phenoxyethanol and a good dose of mica and Red-based synthetic dyes derived from either petroleum, coal tar or animal sources.

Image result for iridescent highlighter
@jcharlesbeauty / Via instagram.com
Related image
@unicornlashesuk / Via Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sounds about as magical as NYX’s ‘Unicorn Fur’ lip shade, Pacifica’s mildly named ‘Unicorn Horn’ nail lacquer, Jeffree Star’s slightly disturbing ‘Unicorn Blood’ lipgloss and FCTRY’s troll’s delight ‘Unicorn Snot’ glitter gel.

According to statistics from Pinterest, ‘unicorn makeup brushes’ have been saved over 35,000 times, while there are over 5,700 unicorn beauty tutorials on YouTube. We didn’t bother counting the posts on Instagram, but we’ll safely put it somewhere around a couple of million.

unicorn beauty More:
FromNicLove / Via etsy.com

Every brand with a themed product will claim they’re the trend-starter, but the obsession with this one it goes deeper than a cute tagline. Trends have a habit of being cyclical, and considering millennials have taken reigns these days, it seems they’re circling back to their Disney-ridden childhood and dragging their obsession with cosmetics with them.

Unicorn beauty is a car crash combination of the heavy Kardashian look that’s captivated an entire generation and millennial nostalgia with a healthy dose of ‘I want to be different’ thrown in.

It’s kitschy, fun and initialising. Hipster culture has given our millennial consumers the desire to be unique, with the urge to standout behind the well-versed idea that everyone is magical one way or another.

Whatever it is, it looks like it’s here to stay, with beauty blogs predicting ‘mermaid makeup’ is going to be the next unicorn. You stay weird, beauty industry.

Related:

Leave a Reply

Back to top