The New Architecture of Beauty

It’s hard to overstate how far tech has come in terms of pure cultural capital. In a very real sense, technology has become synonymous with consumer culture over the last two decades. But for much of the late 20th century, tech in beauty was largely invisible, supporting supply chains, labs, and CRM systems rather than shaping cultural conversation. It was rarely featured in consumer-facing narratives, because why would it be? It wasn’t interesting in the way that consumer technology was, and, compared to the claims, results, and the science behind them, it most definitely wasn’t glamorous – a concept so totally entwined into the idea of beauty that the two quite literally go hand in hand. 

But over the last decade, the growing role of platforms and data has meant tech now shapes many of the conditions in which beauty brands operate, even if artistry and cultural storytelling remain just as crucial. The biggest sign of all of this transformation is through the partnerships we’ve seen announced over the last few years. 

Look around: most major beauty brands now have partnerships with tech firms, even if smaller companies often find different routes. Nvidia and L’Oréal are collaborating to “supercharge beauty with AI”, Microsoft and Estée Lauder are partnering to reimagine trend forecasting. And those are just the biggest names,;below them, brands like Lyft and Sephora are collaborating, DoorDash and Ulta Beauty have forged a partnership, and that’s before we take into consideration the activations that have taken place in digital gaming platforms like Roblox. 

On the surface those particular partnerships (the smaller campaign led variety) could be deemed nothing more than novelty stunts, activations that create a moment in the marketing sphere, but looked at in another way they can be read symptoms of a power realignment. If the 20th century beauty business was built on department stores, and glossy print magazines as the routes to market, the 21st century is being built on platforms, logistics engines, and predictive infrastructure – all of which are empowering beauty to meet people where they are, and to layer a new kind of technology innovation on top of its scientific credentials. 

Beauty’s growth has long been tied to attention, and in the past decade much of that attention has shifted to platforms. Google, Instagram, TikTok, Shopify, Klarna. Each one promises reach, speed and crucially data, and it’s that data that increasingly shapes how beauty companies organise themselves, often aligning processes more closely to platform mechanics.

This isn’t because platforms are inherently sinister, they simply set the terms for attention, something beauty, like many industries, relies on to thrive.

When Sephora partnered with Lyft early this year it exposed something interesting, that perfectly embodies the shift in how brands now build for platforms first before they do stores, a giant departure from the model of old. Sephora wasn’t using Lyft as brands might traditionally use a taxi (wraparound graphics acting as billboards on wheels) it was using it as a logistics engine, get this, to physically move bodies into stores. On the one hand it would of course be easy to say we’re reading far too much into something that was obviously a marketing stunt, but the reality is experiential shopping has become a key factor in driving the in-person retail experience these days, and so to bridge the gap between digital shopper and real life visit, of course it makes sense to partner with a “tech logistics firm”, because Lyft, at its core, is exactly that.

Tech partnerships now extend into most parts of beauty brand infrastructure. From the AI experiments to product delivery mechanisms, be it through a digital portal or a store, tech is there, driving the operation, especially in a commercial sense. 

Marketing today is heavily digitised, taking up a growing share of all brands activities, but tech hasn’t stopped at just marketing. 

As beauty brands adjusted to the tempo of social feeds, many began reshaping other aspects of their operations to align more closely. Again, this is an eco system, so it makes perfect sense to do just that, because if a TikTok trend spikes overnight, you can’t wait six months to respond. That’s why Microsoft and MAC ran a hackathon together. That’s why LVMH is working with Google for its “quiet tech”.

Traditional planning calendars have shortened, with data signals playing a growing role in guiding creative decisions. Shade ranges are modelled using AI before a chemist even opens a jar. Forecasting is moving beyond seasonal cycles, increasingly supported by predictive models, and the partnerships that support that model are growing fast. 

Even artistry-driven brands are experimenting with system-based approaches to product development and planning. To circle back to an earlier example, when MAC cosmetics partnered with Microsoft on an AI-powered hackathon, that was rooted in Microsoft’s modelling capabilities forcing a rethink of the product pipeline. Ten years ago, the very idea of two companies operating in worlds so far apart as MAC and Microsoft do, joining forces for a beauty hackathon would have sounded less like a novel idea and more like a joke. Now it makes total sense through the product strategy lens. 

There’s a train of thought that says that all this data influencing what gets made is in some way eroding creativity. I know, I wrote about it for the Interline 2025 AI Report, but rather than an erosion of it, it’s more helpful to picture it as a rewiring of how creatives processes are structured. Brand teams have to now think in loops, where you launch, listen, and adapt all in a hyper accelerated timeline where the feedback can be analysed in real time, and better still it’s from metrics that are hard to argue with. Stories remain vital, but they increasingly unfold within systems designed to measure and optimise performance, and that performance in turn steers product and planning. It’s an ecosystem that acts as both a funnel to sell through but also as something to grow within. 

Where brands once had tighter control over how and where customers encountered them, those moments now often take place inside platform ecosystems. They weren’t built for beauty specifically, but they were built for growth, and they’re extremely good at it, providing partnerships play nice, in a world where technology has started to lose some of its lustre in consumers’ eyes, and where younger demographics in particular are beginning to feel as though tech is something that happens to them, rather than something they are active participants in. 

But what does that mean in practice? That aesthetic decisions are increasingly influenced by technical ones (though in luxury and artistry-driven houses the balance can still tilt the other way). Discovery mechanics, behavioural signals, these impact the field of play before a campaign is even briefed. Storytelling has long been central to beauty branding, and despite structural changes, it continues to play a vital role, the idea of a red lipstick being the colour of timeless glamour exists because that’s the story that’s been told for over half a century, but those stories now have to be good at working inside other companies systems. 

That’s the reality now. Tech creates the environment brands largely (though not exclusively) operate in. When it comes to how brands market and how their products are discovered, platforms set those conditions.

Perhaps that’s the real signal here. That tech has matured into beauty’s most consistent infrastructure partner simply because it works. Because it understands volume, signal, logistics, and scale. And as AI pushes deeper into modelling demand, streamlining R&D, and automating performance reporting, that relationship will only tighten, redesigning the entire machine to run smoother, faster, and leaner, with tech at the heart of the system.

Where tech once played more of a supporting role, it now frequently provides the frame within which beauty brands operate, even if artistry continues to define the picture within it. Marketing might be where this change became visible. But the deeper story is how tech continues to steadily reshape the structure of beauty.