Yet another consumer movement is developing alongside fragrance's exuberance: simplification.
Beauty consumers are reassessing complex routines and increasingly asking individual products to perform multiple functions. Rather than contradicting premiumisation, Abbas believes this is producing a “fewer but better” mentality.
Consumers remain prepared to invest, she says, when products provide superior results and contribute to the growing longevity trend, supporting skin, hair and wider beauty health over the long term.
This is creating opportunities for multifunctional skincare, hybrid formulations and clinically backed products that combine performance and convenience with an elevated experience.
In the Gulf, Abbas points to brands including Aiza Beauty and Asteri, alongside Asian beauty names such as Laneige and Medicube, as examples of another influential movement: “skinnification”.
The principle is straightforward but commercially powerful. Regardless of whether a product sits in skincare, haircare or another category, consumers increasingly expect it to contribute to underlying health as well as deliver an immediate cosmetic benefit.
Bioscience-backed, medically endorsed and clinically supported beauty consequently sits comfortably alongside experiential fragrance in the new luxury landscape. Both offer consumers something beyond the purely functional.