Minimalism in Beauty Brands

WORDS CATHY LI

Beauty never looked simpler. If you look at any of the popular beauty brands of today, you will notice there is an indulgent use of minimalism in their product marketing. Gone are the days of seasonal-limitededition villain eyeshadow palettes (though they still exist, I doubt that they have been selling much). Now, Social Media platforms are pivoting our attention to the “clean girl aesthetic,” ditching full coverage foundation for its sheer coverage sister, tinted moisturizer. This may be in part due to customers reeling their heads from the oversaturated, ostentatious flashy makeup trends of 2016 and embracing minimalism. Minimalism isn’t new. What is relatively popular now is the resurgent artistic movement of minimalism, but the very idea of decluttering can be traced back to ancient Greek philosophers.

Greek philosopher Diogenes, who after losing all his wealth, came to a revelation that individuals can exist without material possessions producing them happiness they desire. While Diogenes was one of the firsts to recognize minimalism as a benefit to improving the human condition, his definition hinges on the spiritual. Minimalism itself is also an art movement, an extreme form of abstract art that populated Post-World War II. The associated art forms are distinct for their purity in lines and in structure. Take Robert Morris’ Untitled for instance, a work that abstracts form and space. Viewers of this art piece interact with the work itself by walking around these geometric forms. They are subject to the art itself and the piece holds dominion over them. The bare bones of this art piece is what makes it such a riveting work, as it alters the viewer’s understanding of perception.

It is hard to escape minimalism. Its influence in spatial work, specifically in modern architecture and interior design, is undeniable. Clean, uncluttered lines realized with simplistic layouts dominate most modern spatial designs. Art critics and casual art fanatics alike will argue that minimalism is lazy and unimaginative, but an essential minimalism requires deliberate organized methodology.Psychologically speaking, minimalism entices because it’s linked with selfcontrol. In The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo makes an argument for her readers to adopt minimalism, emphasizing that people can achieve stillness, or control over their lives by ridding themselves of clutter, whether that be household junk like an old receipt or an unhealthy habit like smoking cigarettes. “Taking good care of your things leads to taking good care of yourself,” Kondo says. Fascinatingly, Kondo echoes back at us the important pillars of minimalism: deliberate control and manipulation of space, aesthetic restraint, and the idea of “the essential.”

But what are the implications of minimalist design in a capitalist and consumerist society?

Look at any flyer on a college campus. It was probably made on Canva, a graphic design website with a million templates that fall under the umbrella of corporate memphis. The style that was originally sequestered to the corporate tech sphere is now readily accessible to the average internet user. Corporate Memphis is ubiquitous, a fun, hip, go-to-style to market anything and everything online. What used to be a sleek clean mode of communication now is saturated with cold, generic undertones that are anything but exciting. Instead, such designs warp the consumer’s mind into what a company sees them: dollar bills.

But I am not interested in the way that corporate memphis influences brand identity, but rather how the ethics of aesthetics and beauty manifests into the private consciousness of the consumer psyche – which leads me to the beauty brands of today. Tower 28 Beauty, known for its bare-bones design and packaging, is an excellent example of the shift towards minimalism in makeup. Evidently, what catches our eye (and our pockets) is the simplicity in packaging and color schemes. Though the color palette of Tower 28 leans towards the more bright and colorful, the clear-straight-from-the-lab packaging elevates the minimalism in its brand-identity. It’s real, it’s personal, because it’s just so simple.

While parsing through Tower28’s Behance for a more in depth study of their brand, I found countless ad images that laud the clean girl aesthetic and naturalist makeup style, cementing the arrival of minimalism in beauty spaces.

Juxtapose that with Jeffree Star Cosmetics, a brand whose peak relevancy seemingly does not persist beyond the 2016-2018 zeitgeist. Yes, the website still features the cult favorites that made the brand so successful in the past such as the “Blood Sugar” and flamboyant JeffreeSkin line, but despite its obtrusive roots and brand voice, even Jeffree Star Cosmetics can not escape the bite of the minimalist bug. Their newest product “Magic Mushroom Mist” has all the telltale signs of a gradual movement towards minimalist marketing: a clear bottle with a softspoken color palette to accompany wavy yet simplistic typography. Though this product is one of the decidedly minimalistic designs in Star’s brand, the product alone shows that even the most maximalist brands are falling victim to more conservative design patterns.

That is to say, minimalism in beauty is not something that will go away anytime soon, especially in the context of makeup and selfhelp. Rather, these trends hold a mirror up to a consumerist society and how design ebbs and wavers to fit an aesthetic ideal for profit.