Virtual mirror

Genevieve Vieira

What makes a company successful is its ability to stay on top, constantly evolving products or services to meet demand. This has become increasingly challenging since technology enabled innovations to be introduced on to the market daily.

The French cosmetics company L’Oréal have always been on top of their game, and have once again proved their supremacy with the newly released App, Make-up Genius.

Based on the insight that beauty is one of the most Googled topics in the world (about four billion searches a year), the group decided to respond to the needs of consumers by offering greater customisation and interaction with their brand.

Brand Global President of L’Oréal Paris International Cyril Chapuy says: “We believe that one of the major trends to come concerns the virtual reality experience, which will offer consumers a new and effective way of trying products, learning how to use them and personalise them, with unparalleled results for the consumer.”

Makeup Genius is a real-time make-up tester which allows users to test their make-up products using a virtual mirror – make-up is projected directly onto the user’s face. Easy-to-use and navigate, consumers can now experiment with different looks, instantaneously experiencing the effect of a desired product, without directly applying the make-up.

Users are able to see what different products will look like on them. Though the products available on the App are limited (some are not available in South Africa), consumers can nonetheless scan the barcode of the desired product at point of sale with little to no difficulty.

“By combining our knowledge

of consumers and the science of colours with technologies for monitoring facial expressions, we have been able to calculate the best possible algorithm capable of producing an extremely realistic colour-rendering in real time using just an iPhone camera,” says Guive Balooch, director of the Connected Beauty Incubator, L’Oréal Research & Innovation.

“This innovation will enable L’Oréal Paris to offer all women an unprecedented beauty ‘e-routine’.”

L’Oréal’s Makeup Genius has been a huge success in Europe, the US and China with more than 6.4 million downloads, and there’s no reason South Africa should be any different. The App is, however, exclusively dedicated to L’Oréal products. However, it’s only a matter of time before the technology will be copied and made available on imitation Apps.

Director of the Connected Beauty Incubator, L’Oréal Research & Innovation For more information visit