Estée Lauder conjures up magic make-up with new Invisible foundation

Now you see it…Lauder’s new Invisible foundation

In December Estée Lauder previewed the latest addition to its foundation portfolio, at the Soho Hotel In London. Invisible Fluid Makeup – described as a completely new direction for the brand – will be available in travel retail worldwide from March, priced at around £22.95.

The launch event was fronted by Estée Lauder and Tom Ford Beauty Senior Vice President of Global Product Development Anne Carullo, who has been the driving force behind the development of skin care and make-up for the Lauder brand since 2002.

Invisible Fluid Makeup is described as a technologically-advanced intuitive liquid foundation that perfects the skin without leaving a trace. It has a lightweight, fluid texture and natural finish, and can by layered for buildable coverage.

Featuring exclusive new patent-pending IntuiToneâ„¢ technology, in shades to suit every ethnicity, the new foundation is said to guarantee a true-to-life shade match by working with consumers’ natural undertones, so skin appears fresh, flawless and radiantly perfected in every light.

“Foundation has come a long way over the years, but there were still many dissatisfied women,” noted Carullo. “The reason lies in skin undertones. Undertones are what give our skin its unique colour and dimension. Invisible Fluid Makeup is a true innovation because it delivers a veil of visible invisibility to every skintone, working with each person’s natural undertones for the ultimate shade match.

“Acting like a weave on skin, the formula allows skin’s undertones to come through, giving the appearance of natural skin, but in a way that is radiantly, naturally and uniquely perfected.”

Anne Carullo: “Invisible Fluid Makeup is a true innovation because it delivers a veil of ‘visible invisibility’ to every skintone.”

Estée Lauder Creative Makeup Director Tom Pecheux tested Invisible Fluid Makeup for the first time backstage during New York Fashion Week at the Derek Lam Spring 2012 fashion show and The Row Spring 2012 presentation. The formula is said to have delivered a flawless look of fresh, natural perfection to a diverse array of models with a broad range of skin tones.

Invisible’s IntuiToneâ„¢ technology features a matrix of ultra-fine pigments and optics fused together. These spherical microbeads of luminous colour provide both coverage and translucency, dynamically reflecting light to create dimension and contour. The result is even, radiant and natural-looking skin that is never cakey, chalky or masky, Lauder maintains.

Moreover, the formula’s Lighthropic Technology harnesses a precise blend of multi-reflective prisms that capture and control brightness, tint, tone and balance, so that the make-up is imperceptible regardless of the lighting conditions.

The tri-phase formula should be shaken to blend, before application. The shaking action entraps the micronised air particles within, thereby mimicking the lightweight, ultra-natural appearance from an airbrush application, according to the brand.

Invisible Fluid Makeup is long-wearing, oil-free, alcohol-free and infused with skin-friendly minerals. It also includes Hyaluronic Acid for day-long hydration.

The foundation is presented in a new, modern bottle design, with an opaque beige tone and signature blue cap. Available in 10 shades, it is suitable for all skin types and can be applied with fingers or a foundation brush.

The Invisible inside track
Carullo has worked on Estée Lauder for 10 years, but has been with the group since 1992. “Since I joined [the Lauder brand] we’ve been modernising it,” she explained, “and in the past four years a lot of the work we’ve done has begun to stick. Estée Lauder is the fastest-growing brand in the entire corporation.”

In particular, the relaunch of hero product Advanced Night Repair – and the introduction of Illumination – has attracted a new, younger customer group to the Estée Lauder brand. “Suddenly, we have different, modern consumers coming to our counters, who no longer consider it something only their grandmothers use,” noted Carullo. “That is a colossal shift in a brand’s opportunity.”

Carullo seized on that opportunity, to try to create a new, natural make-up segment. “We’d tried it before, but nothing ever stuck,” she admitted. “So we decided to un-think everything we knew.”

Lauder created a Foundation Sensorium, to dissect exactly what this new market wanted from a foundation product. “We put together a group of consumers, aged 25-35, all ethnicities, in a room, with blinded bottles of foundation in front of them. We included non-users, self-declared make-up haters, occasional users and traditional users. We asked them to try and to match the products with words on a sheet: everything from natural and flawless to heavy and greasy. And we discovered that no matter what product they tried, very few were described as natural.”

Carullo continued: “It was a true “˜Eureka’ moment. We realised that nothing on the market, even the commercial successes, were resonating as what was wanted. The product these people were describing [as desired] simply didn’t exist, from a formula standpoint.” Hence the creation of Invisible.

Carullo admits to being inspired by everything, from tyres to IT. How did advances in the latter, for example, help inspire this new foundation? “It’s a phenomenal area,” she acknowledged. “One of the things I reapply from it is this: you cannot innovate and also try to protect what you own. You have to either cannibalise yourself or be cannibalised. It’s a new, different idea. Steve Jobs and his team kept re-inventing the iPod, for example.”

She concluded: “To create make-up that’s virtually invisible [has repercussions] for my other foundations, but I can’t let that stop me. I have to keep innovating, to the point where maybe one day a foundation will look as clear as a glass of water.”