Foresight Friday: Rose Coffey, senior foresight analyst

Every Friday, The Future Laboratory team offers an end-of-week wrap-up of the topics, issues, ideas and virals we’re all talking about. This week, senior foresight analyst Rose Coffey discusses the Skims Seamless Sculpt Face Wrap, tanning as a form of rebellion and Somerset House’s Virtual Beauty exhibition.

: This week, Skims entered the beauty space with the sold-out launch of the Seamless Sculpt Face Wrap, which the brand is calling its ‘first-ever face innovation’. The collagen-infused night strap claims to use targeted compression in order to shape and sculpt the face. It taps into the fast-growing collagen market – a theme we explored in our Innovation Debrief 2025: Collagen’s New Frontiers report.

In the spirit of TikTok’s viral morning shed trend, the product joins a growing roster of nocturnal self-optimisation tools, from jaw-lifting bands to mouth tape. Its success highlights how wellness and beauty rituals are increasingly merging with sleep routines through skincare-adjacent products, turning bedrooms into sites of biohacking and self-sculpting.

: In The Atlantic, Yasmin Tayag examines how tanning has become more than an aesthetic choice and is emerging as a symbol of defiance and an ideology in its own right. She cites a survey by the American Academy of Dermatology which found that 52% of Gen Z were unaware of one or more of the risks associated with sunburn.

We spotlighted how brands are encouraging people to protect their skin in our Future Forecast 2025: Beauty report. Yet in the MAHA world – Make America Healthy Again – tanning continues to carry cultural weight as an act of rebellion, complicating the traditional wellness narrative.

: Finally, I visited Somerset House’s Virtual Beauty exhibition, which shows how beauty ideals are being re-coded in the post-internet age. The exhibition reflects a deeper cultural reckoning, one we mapped in The Synthocene Era. As identities become hyper-constructed and curated, the boundaries between authenticity, artifice and aspiration continue to blur.