By Stephanie MOROU – Metis Insights

The naked truth about beauty influences around the world.

Strip is, firstly, the story of an Asian girl who, during a conversation with Western friends, discovers that one of their preconceived ideas about Asian women is that they are careless about unsightly hair. An insupportable prejudice that spurred research in the field by the founder of what would become the first institute in Asia specializing in hair, STRIP.

Extensive investigation, and numerous experiments were required to change the fantastical dynamics of the famous Brazilian bikini and adapt it to Asian tastes and codes. The Strip institutes, opened in a few trendy cities like Shanghai, Singapore, New York, Hong Kong, London and Bangkok, offer, not only a re-think on our intimate beauty practices, but also to redo the eyes. The goal: to create a real optical illusion that make eyes look bigger by manicuring the shape of the eyebrows and the more or less almond shape of the eyes.

The technique, which takes less than thirty minutes, consists of studying the skin of the eyebrows and then applying a semi-permanent makeup, making the eyelashes thicker in places by adding, one by one, of dozens of false lashes that are more or less long and thick.

STRIP is an illustration of a real combination of European and Brazilian beauty standards tailored to the expectations of women and men of the region.

The fact is that beauty knows no boundaries, and even where our intimacy is concerned, influences come from everywhere when it comes to aesthetics and cosmetics.

New concepts cross-migrate from several cultures, travelling from one continent to another through the permeable frontiers of cosmetics.

The multi-ethnicity of populations facilitates their understanding and makes practices much more acceptable and commonplace, such as depilation and semi-permanent make-up, which would have been perceived as inappropriate a few years ago in countries where the rapport with the body and beauty is simply different.

Which does away with a certain number of complexes on the way. So why not?

Stephanie Morou currently travels the world with the sole purpose of observing and decrypting multi-ethnic creation and the influence of multi-ethnicity in emerging consumer trends.

Her ambition: To reveal creative disparities that are really differentiating, promote strategic thinking, and identify business opportunities for beauty professionals.

The journey of METIS INSIGHTS is therefore a world tour of target markets and the consumers of tomorrow