LSN : Daily Signals : Thought-starter: The future of beauty demands a new lexicon

Technogym turns gym equipment into desirable décor

Technogym Personal Line by Italian architect and furniture designer Antonio Citterio

Cesena – As the host of this year’s Global Wellness Summit, Technogym presented its recent collaboration with Italian architect and furniture designer Antonio Citterio.

Exploring the idea that health and fitness now infiltrate every aspect of domestic life, the brand has concentrated on creating equipment that also functions as a desirable design-led object within the home.

‘Technogym strongly believes fitness is moving out of a home gym environment and into day-to-day living spaces,’ says Giulia Magnani, digital PR and content specialist at Technogym. She adds that its products are no longer limited to innovative and technology-driven pieces of equipment, ‘But they are also pieces of furniture and design.’

As explored in our new At-home Fitness microtrend, as consumers’ schedules become increasingly demanding they are seeking state-of-the art at-home gym equipment that affords them the same calibre of training as a high-end gym, while also being aesthetically pleasing.

Aromatherapy Associates debuts its compostable face mask

Hydrosol Sheet Mask by Aromatherapy Associates

London – Aromatherapy Associates demonstrated its environmentally friendly credentials at this year’s Global Wellness Summit with the launch of its Hydrosol Sheet Mask.

Made with a biodegradable material derived from eucalyptus wood, the mask is infused with essential oils such as frankincense hydrosol, a by-product of the essential oil distillation process that can be applied directly to skin, as well as turmeric root extract, hyaluronic acid and aloe vera to promote firmer and smoother skin.

While the mask’s packaging is not yet recyclable due to material limitations, the brand is working to bring an entirely compostable product to market in the near future.

As consumers become increasingly aware of the detrimental effect that their beauty regime can have on the environment, there has been a drive within the sector for Whole-system Thinking, whereby products such as face masks and cleansing wipes are reformulated in order to better support the planet.

Why Educated Eating is the next wellness frontier

Habit, San Francisco

Cesena – A panel discussion at the Global Wellness Summit emphasised nutrition’s growing importance in the wellness sphere, and the need for the industry to move past the concept of dieting.

Speakers from the newly rebranded Weight Watchers (WW), nutritional profiling company Habit and health information site WebMD discussed what wellness will mean in the future. WW’s chief scientific officer Gary Foster explained that people no longer want to diet, as it can force a total change of lifestyle. Instead, he said, ‘[consumers] want a broader, more holistic approach that includes food, activity and what consumers call mindset – keeping their head in the right space’.

This point was reiterated by Dr Brunilda Nazario, lead medical director of WebMD, who explained that alongside altering attitudes to dieting there also needs to be a shift in how society approaches obesity.

Neil Grimmer, CEO of Habit, added that one way in which brands can transcend the idea of dieting is by helping consumers to understand their body and nutritional needs on a more granular level. ‘One of the things that we have found is that people really want to know about themselves,’ said Grimmer. ‘I think the currency of that [knowledge] is so valuable.’

For more on how consumer data will shape the future of healthcare, read our latest macrotrend, Certified Wellness.

Switching sleeping pills for soporific lighting

Washington DC – Students from around the world were invited to present future wellbeing concepts at the Global Wellness Summit, with stand-out project Bellumo aiming to transform how we sleep.

The brainchild of Maria Mu, who recently graduated from Cornell University, Bellumo is a hanging mobile that can be positioned over the user’s bed. Accompanied by a Bluetooth-connected app, users are guided through various breathing exercises to help them relax, with the mobile slowly brightening and dimming as a prompt for them to inhale and exhale.

Designed to address the global sleep deprivation epidemic and its impact on consumers’ lives, the concept also aims to reduce the need for sleeping pills. As Mu cited in her pitch at the Summit, the majority of sleep-inducing products are medicinal, which can lead to user dependency.

With sleep now recognised as one of the key tenets of healthy living, brands are increasingly using technology to support consumers’ night-time needs.

Stat: Wellness sector growth outstrips global economic development

The Global Wellness Institute (GWI) has released its latest report findings, emphasising the strengthening economic value of the wellness sector.

The GWI reports that a combination of longer life expectancy and an increase in non-communicable diseases are fuelling global interest in wellness, as consumers seek ways to achieve longer, healthier lives.

As Ophelia Yeung, senior research fellow at GWI, explains, the areas of wellness that will experience the greatest degree of growth will be those that touch consumers’ everyday lives. ‘The wellness market isn’t just growing, it’s extremely dynamic. We believe that the three sectors that represent the core spheres of life will see the strongest future growth – wellness real estate, workplace wellness and wellness tourism,’ Yeung told the audience at this year’s Global Wellness Summit.

Thought-starter: The future of beauty demands a new lexicon

This year’s Global Wellness Summit marked the launch of a new report, Beauty2Wellness, which explores how beauty could meaningfully contribute to tomorrow’s wellness industry.

Written by neuroscientist Anjan Chatterjee, the two-part paper considers how the beauty sector could overcome stereotypes and bias based on appearance. Chatterjee suggests that by creating a new lexicon, the industry could help to bridge the perception gap between beauty and wellness.

‘An unhealthy preoccupation with beauty can emphasise a ‘beauty is good’ stereotype, where people are judged based on how they look rather than how they act,’ explains Chatterjee. ‘People make deep inferences about a person’s personality based on superficial features. Flawed faces are regarded as flawed people.’

As explored in our Algorithmic Beauty macrotrend, technology is fuelling a distorted sense of self among consumers, but it could also be part of the solution. In his paper, Chatterjee emphasises that the beauty industry has a role to play in helping to mitigate the idea that beauty is intrinsically linked to self-worth, and this will become increasingly important as the beauty and wellness industries continue to converge.

In this vein, the second half of the report uses natural language processing (NLP) to determine the words that could be used to better facilitate the merging of these two disparate sectors. For more on the growing relationship between beauty and wellness, look out for our forthcoming Viewpoint with Dr Chatterjee.