Originally published in Zora on 26 June 2019
I bought my first lipstick when I turned 30. Blood red, it brightened my face. That same year, a Bollywood movie, “Lipstick Under My Burkha,” narrated the lives of four women in a mid-size Indian town for whom wearing lipstick was a metaphor for how they sought a spoonful of freedom and a pinch of sensuality.
As a child, I would wake up to the distinct scent of my mother’s Lakme moisturizing lotion and the sight of her drawing on her nonexistent eyebrows. The only extra minutes spent before the mirror to apply glistening light pink lipstick and some face powder would be when Maa stepped out of the house for a gathering with friends or for a wedding.
Women across Indian cities and towns have always had a date with the nearest beauty parlor (salon), which offered a comfortable, home-like space, to wax their body hair, get a facial, a hair trim, and manicures and pedicures. But now women and girls in India are wearing makeup every day, flaunting their eyeshadow blends and contoured faces outside the burkha and on the streets. As manufacturers eye the potential for increased cash flow, the color cosmetics industry — comprised of both Indian and international brands — has soared.
Wearing makeup comes across as being ready to take on the world with confidence.
Young women who have had to move out of their small towns to seek education or employment now have the space to explore and experiment with both their lifestyle and the shades they wear on their faces. Sonali Kapoor, who has been working in the public relations industry in New Delhi for 15 years, attends evening events at least twice a week.
“I love wearing eye makeup, and since I have small eyes, I experiment with eyeliners and different eye shadows,” she explains. “Good eye makeup maintains the line between looking good and being loud. If we dress up to feel a certain way, why wouldn’t we focus on specific parts of our body too? I do that for my eyes,” she says.
Makeup artist and hairdresser Ambika Pillai has witnessed a jump in the use of everyday makeup over the last 15 years. It used to be restricted to women working only in show business and the airline industry, she says, but now “everyone wants to experiment, and makeup is no more something that women wear only at parties or at specific jobs.”
According to market research firm Euromonitor International, the color cosmetic market in India is valued at INR 76.3 billion (approximately $1.2 billion) as of 2018 and is expected to grow by 14% by 2023. “The rise in makeup artists offering professional courses has made consumers more adept with the latest beauty regimes,” says Pradeep Srinivasan, senior research analyst at Euromonitor International. “Companies have also taken an active part in educating consumers and making them more beauty conscious.”
Much of this experimentation has its roots in the sudden availability of international brands in the India market. Lakme had been the singular makeup brand in India since the 1960s. Yet, the colors were often on the lighter side, not complementing Indian skin tones. India’s affluent and middle class who were traveling abroad had to rely on those trips to buy their cosmetic products. Then the 1990s brought about the extensive coverage of the Miss India and Miss World pageants, making way for a profitable beauty industry. This was close on the heels of India’s economic liberalization policy that opened itself to international markets.
In 2012, Indians reportedly consumed 233 metric tons of skin-whitening products: the whitening-cream market was worth $432 million in 2010. That same year, Nykaa made international brands available online. “If Amazon is an enabler for the sale of electronics, Nykaa was filling in the gap as the enabler for the color cosmetic industry,” says Hitesh Malhotra, chief marketing officer at Nykaa. The website now sells more than 850 brands and began to open retail stores across India, with 55 more coming in 2019.
“Earlier, we had to mix five tones to get the Indian tone because the color palette was too pink and too white. But now there are more choices for Indian women. But we already have a beautiful skin tone, and many faces look great with just a line of kajal and a dash of lipstick,” Pillai says.
Lipstick and kajal constitute more than 50% of Nykaa’s online sales, although less than 10% of makeup sales across India take place online. But to understand the Indian market, Malhotra likens the country’s geographical size and diversity to Europe: “Women in north India buy bold colors even though they do not wear makeup daily, whereas in a cosmopolitan city like Mumbai, women have begun to wear light makeup on a daily basis because there are more products now that allow the skin to breathe — a necessity for the city’s hot and humid weather. In south India, women indulge in face creams and nude shades, whereas women in eastern India have are very skilled with their makeup wear.”
Over the last five years, social media has been the space to spot international trends. Celebrities endorsing brands carefully craft their social media accounts to give a somewhat authentic glimpse of their everyday lives. YouTube’s more than 250 million users in India has opened the space for trends to percolate down to women’s makeup kits.
“Instagram is a display of people’s aspirations, which is fed by influencers, and this benefits e-commerce in the cosmetics sector significantly,” says Malhotra, adding that an average spending by someone in the age group of 16–22 is about $40 every month. “They are on a quest for fun and want to experiment. Even for women above 22, wearing makeup is towards feeling good, towards deriving validation for themselves rather than socially.”
Vitica Ranga, who completed her undergrad studies in history this year, would wear concealer, mascara, eyeliner, lipstick, and blush to college every day. She created her own YouTube channel in 2016 to showcase various makeup products and makeup styles, spending up to $30 each month on products. “I loved the challenge of trying new makeup,” says the 21-year-old, whose weekly videos garnered up to 10,000 views. One of her most popular YouTube tutorials showed her transformation before and after makeup for a party look. It is one of her favorites, she says, noting, “I think I am beautiful, but the end result after makeup is a different kind of beautiful.”
But is the experimentation expanding to older women? Pillai strongly feels that those who have never worn makeup are unlikely to see the need to wear it — up to a point. “When you notice gray hair strands, coloring hair becomes a necessity. Or concealing dark circles and pigmentation. An Indian woman’s choices have been largely defined by culture and the men in her life, but that is slowly changing.”
Ranga’s mother, who is in her fifties, was not too happy about her daughter’s obsession with makeup but now requests her to do her makeup for family functions. Ranga says, “She is curious about my products and borrows my new lipstick.”