The Next Volume Category Is Makeup

Skincare is already pursuing facial fullness. Colour cosmetics could bring something more: an immediate visual effect, with a treatment ambition that extends beyond application.

By Nassim Belhaq - Paris Macro Beauty

A serum designed for hollow-looking temples and cheeks tells us something about the beauty brief taking shape.

The Ordinary’s Volufiline 92% + Pal-Isoleucine 1% is marketed for precisely these concerns, including the appearance of lost volume around the cheeks, eyes and smile lines.[1] Croda, the ingredient supplier behind Volufiline, explicitly connects renewed interest in facial fullness with the conversation around GLP-1 treatments.[2] Skincare has already begun to translate that interest into products.

Makeup deserves a place in the discussion. It is applied to many of the same areas, often every morning, and can change how a face looks before any longer-term benefit becomes visible. For a category accustomed to promising more from each application, this is a particularly relevant brief.

GLP-1-associated weight loss has brought facial volume into sharper focus. The changes vary between individuals, and similar changes can occur with substantial weight loss through other means. The research does not yet establish a distinct medication-specific mechanism.[3] For someone whose cheeks look less full, however, the practical question can be immediate: the products and gestures they know may no longer give them the result they want.

Contouring makes that tension easy to understand. Adding shadow beneath a cheekbone can be desirable when the aim is stronger definition. On a face where that hollow has become more apparent, the same gesture may reinforce something the wearer would prefer to soften. Blush placement, colour depth and finish then take on a different importance.

There is no reason to assume everyone wants a fuller face. There is equally little reason to keep treating fullness as a concern that belongs exclusively to skincare or aesthetic medicine.

Volufiline is one reference point. Its supplier positions the sarsasapogenin-based ingredient around cosmetic plumping and mechanisms involving adipocyte differentiation and lipid storage.[2,4] Palmitoyl isoleucine, used alongside it in The Ordinary’s serum, is another ingredient positioned by the brand to support a plumper appearance.[1] These are relevant developments in how skincare addresses volume, although ingredient mechanisms and brand claims do not establish that a topical product replaces facial fat lost during weight reduction.

Collagen support is a separate avenue. Croda’s Matrixyl synthe’6, based on palmitoyl tripeptide-38, is positioned around the synthesis of skin-matrix components, including several types of collagen.[5] It offers a rationale for investigating progressive improvements in skin quality. The evidence would still have to follow the ingredient into the final makeup formula, its application dose and its pattern of use.

For colour cosmetics, the opportunity is to bring these different timescales into a product people want to wear.

A fuller-looking cheek at application. A smoother, more supple surface during wear. A longer-term treatment objective, supported by an appropriate active strategy and demonstrated on bare skin.

The attraction is straightforward. A consumer should be able to enjoy the immediate result while deciding whether the product earns its place in their routine over time. This gives a development team a demanding brief: the colour must be desirable, the optical effect convincing and the care benefit meaningful.

Plumping blush is already part of the market. MAKEUP BY MARIO’s Soft Pop Plumping Blush Veil combines sheer colour with a hydration and plumping proposition.[6] Its existence makes the opportunity more specific. A new entrant needs to show what it can add to the experience and performance of the products already available.

I would put perceived volume at the centre of that work. Glow alone is an incomplete answer. The relevant effect is how colour and light together influence the impression of shape, while the formula remains flattering on texture and through movement. That is an artistic judgement as much as a formulation question, and it needs to survive outside studio lighting.

The opportunity takes shape across three familiar products: blush, contour and concealer. Each has a different relationship with facial volume, and a different contribution to make.

A blush can explore fuller-looking cheeks through the relationship between colour, finish and placement. A contour product can pursue softer definition, helping the wearer shape the face without deepening every existing hollow. A targeted concealer can address the appearance of lines and their shadows, including the glabellar lines between the eyebrows, where excess coverage can easily become conspicuous.

Those expression lines are a separate concern, not a specific consequence of GLP-1 use. Their relevance here is the product challenge: reducing their visual prominence while remaining flexible on a moving face. The concealer would need to demonstrate that it softens the appearance of the lines without collecting in them.

Together, the three products offer a coherent way to explore fullness, definition and local correction. They also preserve the pleasure of makeup. A response to changing facial needs can be desirable in its own right.

This thinking underpins REPLENISH G.L.P. — Glow. Lift. Plump., a concept platform for volumising colour cosmetics developed through Paris Macro Beauty’s advisory practice, PMB Intelligence.

The name captures the intended makeup result: light that brings fullness to the face, colour that gives the impression of lifted features, and a visibly more plumped appearance. Across blush, contour and targeted concealer, the ambition is to combine that immediate effect with progressive improvements in skin quality. Collagen-support strategies are among the development routes to assess.

The architecture is defined at concept level; formulation development and finished-product validation would form part of each engagement. Its purpose is to give brands and manufacturers a focused starting point for building a distinctive proposition in this territory.

There is substantial development work behind even a concise promise. A blush is applied selectively, often over skincare and foundation. The quantity used can vary considerably. An active that performs in a twice-daily skincare protocol cannot simply lend its results to a pigmented product. The formula and its evidence need to reflect how people will actually use it.

The same discipline applies to the word “volume”. An immediate optical effect, temporary surface plumping and a progressive change in skin quality are different outcomes. A convincing product should make that distinction legible. Any stronger claim about collagen stimulation would need evidence appropriate to that specific mechanism.

For a brand, this could become a hero launch with a clear reason to exist within its complexion offer. For a manufacturer, it could provide the basis for a differentiated development platform across several client briefs. The choice of technologies, textures and supporting evidence would be shaped around the intended user, positioning and commercial requirements.

GLP-1s have made this opportunity more visible. Its relevance could reach anyone who wants makeup to bring softness and fullness to their features. That is a broader and more useful ambition than organising a range around a medication label.

The opportunity I see is a new performance brief for makeup: a product that creates a desirable impression of volume now, while earning a longer-term place in the wearer’s care routine.

PMB Intelligence works with beauty brands and manufacturers to develop that brief into a product proposition, connecting positioning, technology selection, development partners and evidence.

Explore REPLENISH G.L.P. with PMB Intelligence.