ISSUE 04: BEAUTY’S AUGMENTED EYE
→ In the past, silk facial patches were used to cover up blemishes and/or draw attention to select features
→ Over time, these silk patches also began to be used to symbolize specific moods and/or personality traits
→ What might the future of beauty entail?
→ How might we use future beauty filters to communicate with others?
Putting on your face for the day may soon carry a new meaning. With the rise of augmented beauty filters, the future of beauty is facing a whole new world of creativity, self-expression, and personalization. This issue takes a look at the past, present, and potential futures of the use of beauty accessories to communicate intention and identity.
A
What Was
Let’s begin our exploration of beauty symbols back in the 1600s and 1700s when both men and women used little pieces of black silk taffeta or velvet and applied them to their faces to cover up unsightly blemishes and scars. You see, scars and blemishes were quite frequent in a smallpox ridden society, and so the use of the small black spots became quite widespread.
Most often composed of simple round dots, the black shapes also came in a variety of more intricate shapes including moons, stars, hearts, and triangles. They were black to highlight the unblemished whiteness of aristocrats’ skin.
These small pieces of fabric (called mouches, the French word for fly [insect]) came in a variety of sizes and shapes and depending on where they were placed on the face, could be used to communicate different moods, intentions, and statuses. If you knew what they meant, you could ‘read’ someone’s face and their symbolized wishes, personality, and intents.
“Allegorical Painting of Two Ladies, English School”, 1650. Photo via: UK Gov
According to one French commentator of anonymous/unknown identity:
“Women who wanted to create the impression of impishness stuck them near the corner of the mouth; those who wanted to flirt chose the cheek; those in love put a beauty spot beside the eye; a spot on the chin indicated roguishness or playfulness, a patch on the nose cheekiness; the lip was preferred by the coquettish lady, and the forehead was reserved for the proud.”
It is said that there was a careful balance that needed to be achieved between placing too few and too many beauty dots on one’s face. Too few and you came across as unfashionable, too many and you would associate yourself with an unsavoury crowd.
As the trend picked up steam, not everyone became a fan of these open symbols for love, and in 1650 the English government began legislating the use of mouches, which they deemed an immoral vice.
Though the use of mouches was regulated, these facial embellishments persisted into the early 20th century, with members of both genders and across social classes displaying their personalities through these ‘facial stickers.’
Eventually, their use simply faded out of fashion as modern cosmetics were developed to hide blemishes and better call attention to features.
B
What Is
Today, skillful makeup application, facial piercings and even facial tattoos are used to accomplish the same things that mouches once accomplished.
Modern companies are reviving the mouche through the use of bold facial stickers. These facial stickers are actually acne-treating patches that help heal blemishes while offering a fashion statement. Companies like Starface and Squish are embracing the modern mouche by selling acne stickers in bold shapes and bright colours as a testament to the skin positivity movement. Flaunt your self-care rituals, don’t hide them.
There are also make-up stamps popping up here and there. Milk Makeup creates their Tat It Up “tattoo” stamp in a variety of symbols including a dollar sign, crescent moon, X, star, heart, peace sign, happy face, and yin yang symbol. These makeup stamps allow one to place a symbol on their face and thus communicate intention in much the same way as the mouches once did.
If we move beyond the use of facial stickers, we can explore other facial accessories like teeth jewelry. Dental gems can be glued to your teeth allowing you to embed a precious stone in your smile, or if you’re feeling bold you can opt for teeth caps, full grillz, or even a teeth tattoo. Ways to accessorize your face have never been hard to find, what’s changing now are the mediums we have available. Beyond the physical beauty accessories, we have got to mention the obvious forerunner: the use of social media’s AR filters for altering one’s look.
Nearly all apps with video features carry some type of augmentation filter. From Zoom which offers to subtly enhance your look to Snapchat and Instagram filters that can make you look like a cartoon character. These filters show us what type of looks we may soon all be wearing (projecting) into the near future.
C
What Next
In terms of weak signals of change or future trends in development, most are linked to the development of augmented reality filters and “sticky” augmentation layers that are ‘permanently’ attach to an item viewed through AR.
Take for example Dior’s 3Dior Makeup, a digital filter available through your phone that overlays your face with colourful dots that emanate from your cheeks and eyes. Or one can look at The Fabricant as inspiration. It is a digital fashion house that creates the latest fashions, only available as a digital download. With Fabricant, you can purchase a digital item and virtually wear it in a variety of digital environments.
D
What If
With the continued rise and expected adoption of augmented reality technology, beauty, fashion, and other forms of personal expression are only going to get wilder. Here are some possible scenes we may experience in the near/distant future.
Low risk trials
In the future, “trying on” different looks would be incredibly easy and low-risk. For example, if you wanted to dye your hair neon green, you could easily do that without damaging your real hair or having to commit to that colour beyond a few minutes, hours, or days. All you’d have to do is download a filter and apply it to yourself. Others would then see you with neon green hair. Same if you wanted to sport a facial tattoo — simply ask AR to apply it.
Reactive filters
The same rings true for your beauty schemes - your makeup could be entirely digital, even going so far as to adapt to other’s preferences (so your winged eyeliner only appears to those who like winged eyeliners, and your blush can shift to appear pinker or more peachy depending on others preferences). Perhaps your makeup could even morph throughout the day to reflect your shifting mood, the weather, or your schedule, etc. You would no longer have to update your makeup before heading out, as your digital overlay could do so automatically.
Animated makeup
This reactive quality to our beauty could manifest in a number of ways, leading to new ways of communicating with one another and new aesthetics. Imagine for a moment that your eyelashes send out floating sparkles every time you blinked. With AR tech, that’s totally achievable. Whether that’s something we’d really want remains to be decided…
Thanks to this type of technology it’s entirely possible we will see the development of more dramatic beauty trends. Imagine for a minute animated, bold, and incredibly creative facial overlays. Walking down the street would become a spectacle of extreme creativity.
Standardized beauty
It is also possible that these beauty trends will become viral or standardized at a remarkable rate, much like current beauty trends are picked-up and copied at a phenomenal rate through social media, in the future, a cool new look could go viral faster than ever. It’d be as easy as applying a filter. What this would mean is that everyone could end up looking very similar, very quickly. In this same future, it isn’t inconceivable to imagine the use of certain filters to promote your political stance, your marital status, or your culture tribe.
E
So What
Knowing what we now know, what kind of critical takeaways are we left with? We always try to look at changes with both a positive and a negative lens, while also listing more neutral or unexpected impacts. Let us know in the comments if you think we’ve missed any of the obvious ones.
Positives
So Long Makeup
With AR beauty, you’d no longer have to spend copious amounts of money on beauty products. Instead, you’ll likely be spending it on more sophisticated filters.
Perfect Skin
Everyone who opts into the use of AR could benefit from unblemished, perfectly radiant skin.
Animated Makeup
AR provides for more dynamic and animated beauty schemes. Eye makeup that ripples, and blush that pulses.
Dynamic Overlays
In addition, AR provides for responsive and dynamic designs. Fashion could be dynamically upgraded when you enter a certain setting (ex: a high-end restaurant outfit versus a park walk outfit).
Targeted Beauty
Makeup could change and adapt to each viewer’s personal preferences, meaning that your “look” morphs to renders you beautiful in the eye of the beholder.
Negatives
Skin Colour Editing
It would be possible with sophisticated AR filters to digitally alter your skin colour. This implies that a certain skin colour may be viewed as less desirable and should/would be “edited” out of society.
Everyone Looks the Same
Because everyone subscribes to the same filters and beauty packs, a large percentage of the population ends up looking like clones.
Decline of Natural Beauty
Celebrating natural, understated, or unedited beauty becomes part of underground culture. As we become so used to seeing edited faces, unedited “true” faces begin to feel jarring.
Accessibility Issues
Only those of means could afford to take part in the AR beauty trends, leaving segments of the world population unable to take part in this trend.
Identity Theft
A new type of identity theft could become possible whereby someone could download someone else’s face and digitally overlay it over their own — providing for cases of mistaken identity and clones. (DeepFakes in real life).
Other Considerations
Beauty Hack
Malevolent actors could hack everyone’s faces by overlaying hostile imagery over their AR programs.
Double Personality
Would we begin to develop double identities? One that’s our edited, augmented version and the other being our true face? How might we relate with each?
What are you looking forward to when it comes to the future of beauty and augmented self-expression? Is there anything that you fear will keep you up at night? Let us know in the comments.