We’ve had South Korean pop, film, fashion and food, and now the latest trend is K-beauty, with sales of Korean skincare brands taking off in the UK as consumers are seduced by products that promise to conjure a radiant complexion.
Britons are cutting back in other areas, but they are still chasing what the beauty industry describes as the “glass skin” look, with retailers reporting a rise in spending on high-end skincare.
Demand for upmarket lotions and serums is up 13% on last year, according to the data company Circana. “Everyone is talking about the trend for glass skin,” Circana UK’s account director, Emma Fishwick, said of the South Korean beauty phenomenon. Elixirs that promise “hydration” and “moisture” are even more sought after, she said, with sales up 15%.
As products from South Korean brands such as Cosrx, Beauty of Joseon and Laneige go viral on TikTok, the high street is racing to keep up. Boots, the UK’s biggest beauty retailer, is expanding its K-beauty range, with Skin1004 and Round Lab among the names being added to its website and going into selected stores next month.
Alice Rafferty, Boots’s director of luxury beauty and cosmetics, said: “The industry is evolving quicker than ever before, with new brands emerging and reaching cult-like status in a matter of weeks.”
K-beauty is expected to follow South Korea’s music, film and TV exports in becoming a blockbuster. Demand is climbing at almost 10% a year, and K-beauty is predicted to be a $18.3bn (£13.7bn) business by 2030, according to a Straits Research report.
South Korean beauty standards include “blemish-free, glass-like skin, a youthful complexion and minimal makeup or the appearance of [minimal makeup]”, said Maria Mukaranda, the beauty editor at the comparison site Cosmetify, where searches for “Korean skincare” are up 83% year on year.
Many people still stick to the standard three-step skincare routine – cleanse, tone and moisturise – but the Korean way can involve 10 steps or more. These include applying sheet masks infused with ingredients such as mugwort and ginseng on a daily basis, and layering on “essences” containing supposed wonder ingredients such as snail mucin or slime.
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“For me, it all started with the popularisation of the 10-step Korean skincare routine,” said Mukaranda. “It was around 2021-2022 when this exploded online, and many of us were exposed to skincare this refined and extensive for the first time.”
K-beauty had given rise to a number of viral products that UK buyers had never seen the like of before, not least Cosrx’s Advanced Snail Mucin Power Essence, she said, adding that the “novelty, intrigue and – perhaps, most notably – the results of such products and ingredients have all played a huge part in the hype”.