L’Oréal Partners With Period-Tracking App Clue To Offer Tailored Skincare Advice

CLICHY, France — Beauty giant L’Oréal has announced a partnership with period-tracking app Clue to connect the dots between skin health and the menstrual cycle. 

The collaboration will see L’Oréal utilise data from Clue’s app to co-create in-app skin-care advice related to hormones. Clue, which currently has 12 million users across 190 countries, says skin changes are among one of the most-tracked categories in the app, demonstrating the opportunities that exist for brands to cater for consumers looking for bespoke, real-time solutions.

Speaking about the groundbreaking move, Barbara Lavernos, Deputy CEO, in charge of Research, Innovation, and Technology at L’Oréal said: “At L’Oréal we have a strong belief that the innovation that we bring to enhance people’s beauty and wellbeing lies at the intersection of science and technology to meet consumers’ expectations and needs.”

She continued: “Through this partnership, we want to pioneer scientific innovation. Our goal is to develop the best, personalised skincare routines for consumers of all ages regarding skin health, beauty and wellness aspirations, taking into account their menstrual cycles from puberty to menopause.”

According to Glossy, advice will cover common hormone-related skin concerns including acne, dryness, dermatitis and UV susceptibility.

“We really want to focus more on providing more personalised information and giving people an understanding of how their skin is evolving and changing, and then alluding to some potential routines and [providing] understanding [of] how they can use their current beauty products at home,” Guive Balooch, head of L’Oréal’s Technology Incubator told the publication.

Interest in the relationship between periods and other pillars of wellness such as fitness, sleep, nutrition and skincare has risen in recent years, with an increasing number of women and people who menstruate choosing to alter their daily habits according to specific phases of their cycles.

In a recent report by Ultra Violet Futures titled “The Future of Cycle Care 2022”, the FemTech trend forecasting agency predicted that cycle self-care would continue to gain traction across the wellbeing sector, with cyclical innovations set to become commonplace everywhere from beauty shelves to restaurant menus.

“As consumers embrace supercycling and planet positive periods, all brands from skincare to nutrition will need to take note of how a greater understanding of hormonal health is changing consumer desires and needs,” commented Co-Founder Rhiannon Jones.

Innovation and collaboration are thriving, with period-tracking app Natural Cycles leveraging temperature data from sleep-tracking ring Oura to make predictions on when someone could become pregnant.

Elsewhere, Inne’s in vitro diagnostic device is enabling consumers to extract personal data from disposable at-home saliva tests, before wirelessly logging the results into a companion app to understand how it changes throughout their menstrual cycle.

And a new customisable online health and fitness program from P.volve called Phase and Function is simplifying the process of aligning workouts with individual cycles to produce better results.

By providing new and helpful information to consumers on how their cycle can affect their daily wellbeing, innovative FemTech brands such as these are creating a future landscape where people are empowered through the science, data, and technology needed to make informed choices about their bodies.