L’Oréal is paving the way for an emerging — and extremely important — category called assisted beauty tech. The personal care company brought a product for motor skills and another for creative skills to CES 2023, both showcasing some awesome precision technology for makeup application.
Every person should be able to experience beauty, but tens of millions of people actually can’t use traditional makeup due to motor skill impairments such as tremors, multiple sclerosis, a stroke or similar conditions. L’Oréal, in an effort to improve cosmetic inclusivity, worked with in-house brand Lancome to create a handheld corrective device for applying lipstick.
Update: L'Oréal's HAPTA is one of our picks for the Best of CES 2023 Awards. Find out what other products took top honors at this year's show.
The device, called HAPTA, can keep a lipstick steady for application, offering assistance and more confidence to enjoy beauty products. It kind of works like a gimbal, steadying the movement of the lip product even if the hand is moving irregularly.
HAPTA is a three-part device: first, the lipstick; second, the gimbal; and third, the handle, which is the brains of the operation for countering an unsteady hand. When I tried moving my hand, the lipstick remained in the same position in space — the flexible end of the handle adjusted on-the-fly to my irregular movements. That said, L’Oréal showed me a demo robot arm that’s made to more accurately and fairly respect tremors or impairments to wrist movements. Similarly, it kept the lipstick steady.
L’Oréal Brow Magic
L’Oréal’s second CES innovation is called Brow Magic. Brow Magic is basically an eyebrow printer that takes all the hassle out of getting your brows on fleek. It leverages technology from a company called Prinker, which prints instant temporary tattoos using cosmetic grade ink. The ink cartridge features dark brown, brown and blank inks for a variety of color combinations that L’Oreal says should cater to 95% of people’s eyebrow colors.
The Brow Magic companion app scanned my face to help me figure out what brow shape would look best on me, but you can totally customize the thickness, arch and color to your preferences. Then you send your pick to the printer, and it will glide across your skin leaving a perfect eyebrow behind. I tried it on my forearm just for sanitary purposes, but the result is a million times better than anything I could’ve done myself. It takes a lot of the intimidation out of experimenting with makeup and brow designs.
Both HAPTA and Brow Magic are expected to launch by the end of 2023 and be priced under $200.
