Beauty company L’Oréal has partnered with avatar-creation company Ready Player Me to bring hair and make-up features to the metaverse. As part of the partnership, L’Oréal Professionnel has released five on-trend hair looks while Maybelline New York has created five make-up looks for Ready Player Me users to try.
In a statement, Asmita Dubey, Chief Marketing Officer of the L’Oréal Group, said that the future of beauty will encompass three domains: physical, digital, and virtual. To that end, the L’Oréal Group is creating “virtual experiences using virtual spaces” that include in-game customized experiences and virtual ambassadors.
Through the partnership, users will be able to wear L’Oréal’s looks throughout 4,000 different virtual worlds. A spokesperson for the L’Oréal Group said the company wasn’t looking to create realistic looks, instead preferring to push the boundaries of creativity in the digital beauty space. There’s no word yet on how long the looks will be available.
Ready Player Me is a company that specializes in the creation of avatars. It recently raised $56 million in a Series B funding round, which Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z company led. With Ready Player Me, users can create a single avatar and use it in many virtual worlds, including Spatial, Hiberworld, and VRChat.
This is not L’Oréal’s first step into Web3. Just weeks ago, it partnered with Meta to take part in the social media giant’s six-month metaverse accelerator held in Paris, France. L’Oréal has also launched a Web3 experience where users can virtually try on different palettes of make-up. In addition to those Web3 moves, it has curated its own NFT collection.
Beauty Companies Make Moves in Web3
Web3 has proven attractive for many industries this year and the beauty industry is no exception. At Rarity Sniper, we have written many stories involving beauty companies and the next iteration of the internet. Here are three.
First, there is Sephora. On September 18th, 2022, the company that specializes in beauty products held its annual “Sephoria” event in the metaverse. During the four-hour event, users were able to take masterclasses, relax in lounges, and watch videos from company founders.
Second, there is Fenty Beauty. Eight months ago, the company Rihanna founded filed a series of Web3 trademarks with the USPTO. The trademarks surround “downloadable virtual goods” for make-up, hair accessories, skincare preparations, and perfumes.
Third and finally, there is Estée Lauder. Eight months ago, the beauty giant became the official exclusive beauty sponsor for Metaverse Fashion Week in Decentraland. To commemorate the event, the company released a 10,000 NFT collection, modeled after an IRL perfume.
L’Oréal’s partnership with Ready Player Me shows the company still has interest in Web3 and is continuing to make moves in the space. Here at Rarity Sniper, we’ll be paying close attention for further developments in the story.