Snapchat: The New BTS for Beauty Buffs
It is 7:30 AM on a Sunday, and I'm just managing to wake myself up after a measly few hours of sleep. My dark under-eye circles are intense and my hair, once hidden neatly beneath a silk scarf, is now frizzy despite the eight well-organized braids I plaited the night before. I slap around my bedside table for 30 seconds before I finally find my phone, unlock it, and immediately open Snapchat, a morning habit I've recently acquired. But instead of checking on what my friends back in New York are doing, I scroll past the "Recent Updates" section to the letter "A," where the Snapchat story of Glamour magazine beauty director Alessandra Steinherr waits for my tap.
"Hey guys," she says, her British accent filling up the silence in my room. "Here's today's Sunday facial!"
What comes next is 120 seconds of video footage showing the products she has decided to use in her weekly ritual, with details about the brands and how to use each product to its full potential. Most of them won't be hitting shelves until months later.
Image Credit: Snapchat @Alessandra Steinherr.
Snapchat, in the past year, has become one of the beauty world's most popular platforms to give fans easy and in-depth behind-the-scenes access to the industry. Editorial influencers like Teen Vogue beauty and health director Elaine Welteroth (@ElaineWelteroth), and assistant editor at Allure Kristie Dash (@KristieDash), show their hundreds of followers the (often laborious) process of how beauty stories come together, in addition to snaps revealing the bits and pieces of their own daily lives. Popular blogger Estée Lalonde (@Essie_Button) uses her Snapchat to share her favorite beauty finds and the industry events she attends. Even major beauty brands like Sephora (@SephoraSnaps) and Nars (@NARSissist) have caught on, the latter treating its followers to an early unveiling of its 2013 makeup collection inspired by fashion photographer Guy Bourdin.
The fashion industry, to outsiders, has a reputation of being somewhat of an enigma. With the increasing democratization of the industry, fashion aficionados have been able to get a peek into the once exclusive world of garments and runway shows; however, fans of fashion subcategories like beauty have had a harder time getting their "fix." In their reviews of runway shows, most fashion publications touch only briefly on the makeup looks, and they rarely identify products or delve into application techniques unless the artist is someone of great influence like Pat McGrath. With beauty influencers taking the reigns for themselves, the percentage of Snapchat's 100 million users looking for beauty-related content can finally find what that has been previously hidden on beauty forums and message boards online. The intimate nature of Snapchat as a platform allows beauty industry secrets to become much more accessible to hundreds of thousands of people.
Plus, these quick videos demonstrating how one can transform rough-looking skin at 7:30 in the morning gives me, among many others, nothing but hope for the future.
