Beauty is big business, it’s about time we took it seriously
Today sees the release of the first comprehensive valuation of the British beauty industry and – in a revelation that will prove challenging to those who continue to dismiss it as the preserve of girls and gays – it turns out to make a bigger contribution to our economy than car manufacturing or publishing. In 2018, the sector’s gross value-added contribution to GDP was approaching £30 billion, while it supported almost 600,000 jobs (and that’s excluding the thriving dental industry, where the cosmetic and medical realms remain difficult to separate).
In addition to sitting at the heart of the UK economy, the beauty business is saving the high street, promoting creativity, and having a significant cultural impact. Britain is good at this stuff, it’s making major money. Why do we still act as if this sector is some sort of (heavily perfumed) dirty secret just because it’s women who like it?
Years ago, as a former academic-turnedopinion writer, I took on a side hustle as a beauty columnist, and was warned that this would mark the end of my career. Meanwhile, a male colleague was celebrated for his “profile-raising” football column. Boys’ toys in the way of sport, cars and wine are sanctioned by their association with masculine pleasure. So-called girls’ stuff is damned by the taint of femininity.
The new report is being issued by the British Beauty Council, the first formal group to lobby for the sector at government level, which was established last year as a means of addressing these sexist attitudes. Its CEO, Millie Kendall MBE, co-founder of retailer Beautymart, says that even her admirably successful career “has been plagued by men falling off their chairs
laughing at the thought that I was given an MBE for services to the cosmetics industry”. Meanwhile, its chairman, Jane Boardman, CEO of Talk PR, observes: “My favourite anecdote is of a male colleague trying to describe my agency and coming up with ‘fluffy stuff that Jane likes’.” This was despite her heading a network of 18 offices in 16 countries.
When beauty isn’t being patronised, it is being condemned as the root of all evil. Naomi Wolf ’s Beauty Myth may have been published back in 1990, but its legacy lives on in every dinner-party bore who wields its disputed and now outdated figures to argue that the industry is oppressing – even killing – women.
In fact, three decades on, the beauty sector has never been more radical, diverse and inclusive. Big Pharma may legitimately worry us; Big Mascara, not so much.
Today’s report is deliberately modelled on the British Fashion Council’s quantification of its own economic impact, published in 2010. This, and the BFC’S other activities, helped the rag trade to stop being dismissed as trivial and recognised for the £50 billion it brings to the economy. Flash forward to the Queen sitting front row at Richard Quinn and politicos forced to acknowledge fashion’s force. Beauty is primed for the same transformation.
Like our style mavens, our grooming gurus will also henceforth have their showcase, London Beauty Week, starting this September ahead of London Fashion Week, and a hotbed for growth and trade. Wouldn’t it be a beautiful thing if we could all get behind it?