Unlike many savvy men of my generation, personal grooming never quite occurred to me. Even Baz Luhrmann didn’t sway me with his “sunscreen song” decades ago.
Yet, despite my novitiate, I couldn’t pass up a chance to get a custom-made lipstick in Seoul. (Don’t worry, it was for my wife who is an evangelist for sunscreen and lip balm—which are now part of my rudimentary skincare routine.)
I was at a store called Amore Seongsu, in a shopping area characterised by grunge architecture—in contrast to the glassy skyscrapers of the business districts—that has emerged as a popular haunt for youths in Seoul. Our hosts, a couple of ever-obliging staffers from the Korea Tourism Organization, sought volunteers for customised lipstick, foundation, and essence from among a bunch of largely travel and tourism professionals who were only too eager to jump at it.
The neighbourhood of Seongsu-dong has establishments seemingly overlaid on old buildings, where natural brick or concrete façades stick out and colourful graffiti adorn the walls. The Amore store is one such place. It sits on what was a repair shop for broken cars earlier, so the unpolished interiors of stony stairs, floors, and walls are intact. However, the array of products lined up inside and the busy personalised services set it up as a flagship store of Amorepacific, a beauty and cosmetics chaebol.
After a brief wait, I was led to a table where a cheerful store assistant asked me to fill personal details on a form. It wasn’t a true shot at customisation, as I stood in for my wife and gave a vague description that we look the same shade of brown. The staff appreciated my attempt better when I showed her a photo of my wife. “Ah, she has very bright skin,” she said, and got me started.
First, choose a texture displayed on a touchscreen. I picked velvet over gloss. I was handed a colour palette shaped like a flower to place it on my cheek, as the camera analysed my skin tone and gave scores on hue, intensity, and saturation. The assistant quickly explained what it meant, but I struggled to grasp and hoped the AI at work and my instinctive choices would save the day.
To be fair, it was a cinch. The AI tool recommended three shades out of hundreds to take a call. And merely five fragrances to select from, as I took in whiffs from scented paper strips.
The very next moment, the assistant passed on a bottled concoction through an opening in a glass chamber. On cue, a robotic limb picked it up and set about manufacturing the product. I took a step back and gaped, woken up from obliviousness as the future of beauty unveiled itself there and then. In less than half an hour, I received a brick-coloured lipstick with one last personalised touch being the user’s name—transliterated to Korean—printed on it.
I was a neophyte. And thanks to the ubiquitous presence of Olive Young, South Korea’s leading health and beauty retailer, skincare became the number one priority on my shopping list.
K-beauty, along with other elements of Korea’s raging soft power like K-pop, K-dramas, and cinema, has taken the world by storm. K-beauty products, increasingly popular in India, have overtaken the French in the US recently. South Korea also lures tourists as a hub of plastic surgery. In one of our visits to a hotel in Seoul, the manager joked that she has seen some departing tourists look unrecognisable from the ones who had checked in!
From the dizzying 123-storeyed Lotte Tower in Seoul to marine cable car and yacht rides affording glimpses of a magnificent, misty skyline of Busan’s coast, I got a peek into city life in a country where the young population across genders adhere to sharp, sculpted looks and minimalist streetwear emphasised by business-like dark shades.
Perhaps the aspiration and demand to look the part is oppressive. And in the past decade, Korean youths have contended with a real estate boom and lack of affordable housing in a city like Seoul that attracts many seeking better education and job opportunities. So much so that the nation struggles with a worryingly low fertility rate.
But for a touring outsider, K-beauty and hospitality are an invitation to indulge that is hard to decline and worth every Korean won.
The writer was in South Korea at the invitation of Korean Tourism Organization