As someone who is deeply obsessed with sunscreen, these posts are long overdue.
My views are mine. They reflect my expertise, interaction with clients/readers and my experience as a beauty industry.
Trend one: people of colour realise that sunscreen is a legitimate part of their skincare routine.
Eight out of 10 clients still say, “the sun is not shining; so no sunscreen today.”
On my uphill battle, this is progress. I hear less of, “Indians don’t get skin cancer, so no I don’t need sunscreen.”
Asian consumers are more more skincare-educated, and they understand UVA’s damaging effects. UVA causes photo-damage, tanning and pigmentation and consumers recognise sunscreen as a tool to prevent this.
The beauty industry has responded with more sunscreen products specifically for people of colour: in India, I have seen an explosion of sunscreens that blend in with no whitecast (La Shield is one of the best), and similarly, in the USA, livetinted and Naomi Osaka’s Kinlo brand target people of colour.
Trend two: COVID has impacted sunscreen use, with many of my readers/clients confessing to falling off the sunscreen bandwagon.
Individuals know sunscreen prevents skin cancer, but issues such as poor pandemic behaviour, ingredient safety, and coral reef safety are causing individuals to turn away from sunscreen entirely.
As we head into the summer and more time is spent outdoors, health authorities need to reinforce public health policy messages around sunscreen use to protect against skin cancer.
Trend three: How to reapply sunscreen makes it to the top five commonly asked question for me.
I struggle to find sunscreen products to REAPPLY over foundation. SPF in make-up provides rubbish protection against UVA and I have given-up looking for top-up SPF products. My solution is either to use just sunscreen and skip any form of base.
However, nor wearing a base (foundation, tinted cream etc) is unacceptable to most of my readers/clients. The best thing I have come up with is a sunscreen stick. The irony is, sunscreen sticks are stupidly expensive and the small SKU size makes them environmentally unfriendly.
they are absurdly expensive and environmentally unfriendly.
I am going to keep looking for a Holy Grail reapplication product.
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Trend four: Coral reef safe sunscreen feels like nothing more than a marketing scam
Important coral reef territories are Australia, Fiji, Maldives, Papua New Guinea and Philippines . None of these countries bans sunscreens.
Reef safety is a serious issue for consumers and absent regulation, unscrupulous manufacturers are simply using reef-safety to sell more sunscreen.
For example, these are some labels I see:
