Should children be using beauty face masks? Dermatologists say no, but a growing number of companies are targeting a new generation of kids who have grown up with TikTok skincare and make-up routines.
Drunk Elephant is popular amongst Gen Alpha shoppers – Drunk Elephant
The cosmetics industry and parts of the internet have been abuzz since the launch of Rini earlier this month, a beauty company pitched at children as young as three and backed by Canadian actress Shay Mitchell.
Its bundle of five child hydrating face masks, including “everyday” varieties named Puppy, Panda, and Unicorn, sells for around 35 dollars (30 euros) on its website.
Another growing US-based brand, Evereden, sells products for pre-teens such as face-mists, toners and moisturisers and claims annual sales of over 100 million dollars.
Fifteen-year-old American YouTuber Salish Matter unveiled her brand Sincerely Yours in October, drawing tens of thousands of people- and police reinforcements- to a launch event at a New Jersey mall.
“Children’s skin does not need cosmetics, apart from daily hygiene products- toothpaste and shower gel- and sun cream when there is exposure,” said Laurence Coiffard, a researcher at the University of Nantes in France who co-runs the Cosmetics Watch website.
Child-focused beauty products are part of a broad society-wide trend. Many girls in Gen Alpha- a marketing term for youngsters born between 2010 and 2024- are adopting skincare, make-up, and hair routines more typical of older teenagers or their mothers.
The most precocious have become known as “Sephora Kids”- a reference to the popular French beauty retailer- as they seek to copy popular TikTok or YouTube influencers, some of whom are as young as seven.
Coiffard cited research showing child users of adult cosmetics and creams had a higher risk of developing skin allergies in later life, as well as being exposed to endocrine disruptors and phytoestrogens which can disrupt hormone development.
Molly Hales, an American dermatologist at Northwestern University in Chicago, spent several months posing on TikTok as a girl of 13 who was interested in beauty routines. After creating a profile and liking several videos made by minors, the algorithm of the Chinese-owned site “saturated” her and fellow researcher Sarah Rigali.
The duo went on to watch 100 videos in total from 82 different profiles. In one, a child smeared 14 different products on her face before developing a burning rash. Another showed a girl supposedly rising at 4:30 am to complete her skincare and make-up routine before school.
The most popular videos were titled “Get Ready with Me,” with the routines featuring on average six different products, often including adult anti-ageing creams, with an average combined cost of 168 dollars.
“I was shocked by the scope of what I was seeing in these videos, especially the sheer number of products that these girls were using,” Hales told AFP. Her research was published in US journal Pediatrics in June.
Several “disproportionately represented” brands, such as Glow, Drunk Elephant, or The Ordinary, market themselves as healthy, supposedly natural alternatives to chemical-laden competitors. The top 25 most-viewed videos analysed by Hales contained products with an average of 11 and a maximum of 21 potentially irritating active ingredients for paediatric skin.
The pitch from new child brands such as Rini, Evereden, or Saint Crewe is that they are orienting tweens and teens to more suitable alternatives. “Kids are naturally curious and instead of ignoring that, we can embrace it. With safe, gentle products parents can trust,” Rini co-founder Mitchell told her 35 million Instagram followers.
Hales said she had “mixed feelings” about the emergence of the trend, saying there was a potential benefit of providing less harmful products to young girls. But they are “really not necessary” and “perpetuate a certain standard of beauty, or an expectation around how one needs to care for the health and beauty of the skin by using a very costly and time-intensive daily routine,” she said.
The products risked “steering girls away from better uses of their time, money, and effort,” she added.
Pierre Vabres, a member of the French Society of Dermatology, believes there is also a pernicious psychological effect of exposing children to beauty routines- and then seeking to sell them products. “There’s a risk of giving the child a false image of themselves, even eroticised, in which they are ‘an adult in miniature’ who needs to think about their appearance in order to feel good,” he told journalists in Paris this month.
An Hermes handbag that once belonged to Jane Birkin was sold for $2.86 million (2.45 million euros) at auction in Abu Dhabi on Friday, just months after the record-breaking sale of her first bag from the French brand, Sotheby’s said.
Jane Birkin with one of her signature Hermes bags – Sotheby’s
Hermes first created the design for the British singer and actress in 1984 and it has gone on to become a modern and highly prized classic, sought by fashionistas the world over. The first prototype was sold for 8.58 million euros ($10 million) at a Sotheby’s auction in Paris in July, smashing previous price records for a handbag.
The one sold on Friday was a ‘Birkin Voyageur,’ which was gifted to the former wife of French singing legend Serge Gainsbourg in 2003. The final sale price was around six times times higher than the estimated price range of $230,000-$430,000 given before the sale.
“Jane Birkin’s handbag legacy continues to captivate collectors,” Sotheby’s said in a statement sent to AFP, adding that bidding took place over 11 minutes between six collectors. The new owner was a phone buyer and has not been identified.
The handbag was one of four owned by the late celebrity, who used to sell them to raise money for charitable causes. It has a handwritten inscription in French inside from Birkin that reads: “My Birkin bag, my globetrotting companion.”
A third Hermes bag owned by Birkin is set to go under the hammer on December 15 at the Hotel Drouot auction house in Paris. It was entrusted by the late star to her friend and biographer Gabrielle Crawford, who is selling it to help fund the future Jane Birkin Foundation, Drouot said in a statement.
Produced in very limited numbers, the modern Birkin bag manufactured by Hermes has maintained an aura of exclusivity and is beloved by celebrities such as the Kardashians, Jennifer Lopez, and Victoria Beckham. The most expensive fashion item ever sold at auction was a pair of ruby red slippers worn by actor Judy Garland from The Wizard of Oz in 1939, which sold for $32.5 million in 2024 in Dallas, Texas, according to Sotheby’s.
Artificial intelligence (AI) continues its march to transform businesses’/consumers’ lives with customer advocacy platform Mention Me launching ‘AI Discovery IQ’, a free-to-use tool that “helps brands reach target consumers in the new age of generative AI search”.
Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP/Archives
It claims to allow brands to “instantly audit how discoverable they are within popular AI systems” such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity.
According to Mention Me, 62% of UK consumers now turn to generative AI tools for product recommendations, brand discovery and comparisons, “bypassing traditional search engines entirely [so] businesses are under pressure to respond to this behaviour change,” said the platform’s CEO Wojtek Kokoszka whose platform works with firms including Charlotte Tilbury, Huel and Puma, “helping marketing teams to boost consumer awareness and sales”.
With AI, it says the modern customer journey, powered by natural language prompts instead of outdated keyword strings, means consumers are 4.4 times more likely to convert if they find a brand through a large language model (LLM).
“The rise of ‘agent-mode’ assistants and AI-driven voice search has pushed brands into a new world of digital visibility. Despite this, most brands have little to no insight into how they appear in AI-generated answers”, said Kokoszka.
AI Discoverability IQ claims to give brands an overall LLM discoverability score, specific details on areas such as technical website elements, content and structured data, and actionable recommendations to improve their AI discoverability.
Its tool generates “measurable, trackable outputs” like AI Visibility Score, brands’ prompt-based results, and a side-by-side comparisons with their competitive set. This means brands “can react quickly to improve their discoverability scores” with Mention Me’s wider suite of products and unique first-party data.
It’s also “innovating and evolving” its platform to include more capabilities, such as the ability to benchmark against competitors, to drive further improvements for marketing leaders in the age of AI.
Mention Me CMO Neha Mantri said: “AI Discoverability is not yet a named practice within most marketing teams; the same way SEO wasn’t in the early 2000s. But when up to 31% of consumers say they’re more likely to trust responses from generative AI than traditional search results, this needs to change. Mention Me is naming the problem and providing a solution at just the right time.”
A host of celebrities and high-end brands have donating goods to ensure Savile Row’s latest annual ‘Pop-Up Crisis’ store will continue to support the Crisis charity event that has so far raised over £650,000 since 2018.
Image: Crisis charity
Across 8-13 December, the pop-up store at 18-19 Savile Row in London’s Mayfair will sell a curated selection of designer clothing, past stock and samples from luxury brands.
Celebs donating goods include Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Naomie Harris, David Gandy, Jarvis Cocker, Louis Partridge, Jamie Redknapp and Emma Corrin, among others, for a week-long event and raffle with all proceeds going to help end homelessness across Britain.
Hosted by landlord The Pollen Estate, the temporary shop is also selling designer goods donated by Savile Row tailors including Mr Porter, Wales Bonner, Crockett & Jones and many other luxury brands from Barbour, Tod’s to Manolo Blahnik and Watches of Switzerland Group.
This year, celebrity model and fashion entrepreneur David Gandy will also be curating an exclusive online edit on shopfromcrisis.com, including donations from his own wardrobe as well as items from friends including Redknapp’s brand Sandbanks, Hackett and Aspinal of London.
Gandy said: “Having supported Crisis for a number of years, I’m delighted to have had the opportunity to curate my own online edit this year with the help of some of my close friends. It means a lot to know that donations from my own wardrobe are going towards such an important cause. Whether you’re looking for the perfect Christmas gift or to treat yourself, your purchase can help make a real difference to people facing homelessness this Christmas.”
Liz Choonara, executive director of Commerce and Enterprise at Crisis, added: “Pop-Up Crisis is such an iconic event in the Crisis calendar and one that we look forward to every year. We’re thrilled to be partnering with the team once again for another week celebrating the iconic craftsmanship and style of Savile Row – with all proceeds going towards our crucial work to end homelessness.”
Politics8 years ago