Japanese beauty brands reassert themselves amid K-beauty buzz

First it was tea with fashion icon Kate Moss at a London hotel to celebrate the recent UK launch of Japanese beauty brand Decorté. A week later, I met A-list Hollywood makeup artist Jillian Dempsey, (her clients include Jennifer Lawrence, Kristen Stewart and Kate Winslet)who raved about the “amazing brands” such as Addiction, Kate and NaturaGlace that she had discovered in Tokyo .

“I literally outshopped myself,” she says.

Soon after, a press release touting the brilliance of a Japanese mascara brand called Fairy Drops landed on my desk. The blurb said it was one of the “best-selling cult beauty products” in Japan, one that leaves you with a “perfect doll-like” flutter. I was intrigued by the curved brush. I tried it and I was hooked. It is easily one of the best mascaras I’ve ever used.

In a matter of weeks, I had experienced three Japanese beauty moments. They say two is a coincidence and three is a trend. And so, quelle surprise, the industry is tipping Japanese beauty, once an insider secret, as one of the biggest and most exciting global beauty trends for 2018 and beyond.

J-beauty – essentially “made in Japan” brands that fuse an archetypal ethos, understated aesthetic, age-old beauty rites and groundbreaking formulations – may be touted as “the next big thing”, but many of the brands, from pioneers SK-II, Shiseido and Shu Uemura to the more niche labels such as Shiro, RMK, DHC , have been around for years, in some cases decades, perfecting the poreless complexion Japanese women are renowned for.

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The efficacy of these brands was long ago discovered by women in the West (like the aforementioned Moss), who have been guarding the secret from a sizeable proportion of the beauty buying market.