China’s 10 leading beauty trends of 2025

After years of hype-led launches and algorithm-fueled virality, Chinese consumers pushed the industry toward hard metrics: performance that survives real life, science that can be explained, and brand worlds that feel emotionally relevant, not just aesthetically pleasing. The winners of 2025 weren’t necessarily the loudest brands, but the most precise. They solved real problems with sport-proof formulas for outdoor lifestyles, microneedling tools that brought clinic logic into the home, makeup that behaves like skincare, and brightening products that no longer compromise the skin barrier. Yet with new growth engines came new fault lines. Fragrance evolved from a niche passion into an M&A battleground. Men’s grooming entered its scale era, forcing both C-beauty brands and multinationals to rethink what “masculinity” looks like. And AI moved from a backstage tool to a front-door interface, accelerating discovery while exposing beauty’s biggest vulnerability: trust, whether in creators, claims, or after-sales systems. Here are 10 trends that defined China’s beauty market in 2025 — and the signals they’re sending for 2026. 1. Outdoor beauty turns sport-proof into the new baseline Few consumer arenas moved faster than outdoor sports — and beauty followed. China’s outdoor market rose 23% year-on-year in 2024 to 150.4 billion RMB ($21.2 billion), pulling sunscreen, base makeup, and body care into a more functional era. On major platforms, sunscreen and makeup already represent 70% and 60% of category sales, respectively, while sport-proof makeup sales jumped 40-fold in 2025. What changed was not just demand but review culture. “Test of setting spray for marathon” and “waterproof makeup for diving” outperformed generic tutorials, signaling that China’s “skintellectuals” now expect scenario-specific evidence over broad claims. Brands that win here will pair R&D with emotional resonance. Outdoor activities are no longer just a hobby; they’re a way for young urban consumers to reclaim their identity, health, and control. 2. At-home microneedling pushes beauty into hardware In 2025, the most telling move from global giants wasn’t another serum but tools. Shiseido’s MicroClick Concentrate, a single-use microneedling device, and L’Oréal’s Lancôme 400 Booster, released mid-2025, brought clinic logic into the home. On Chinese social media, microneedling content helped popularized this trend, led by viral hits like VT’s Reddle Shot, which generated more than 400,000 posts on Xiaohongshu. The goal of these brands is straightforward: to break through the plateau of ingredient storytelling by upgrading delivery. For increasingly discerning skincare consumers, hardware has become a new status marker — and for brands, a new margin pool. The constraint, however, is equally clear. In China, microneedling sits in a gray zone between cosmetics and medical devices, making market entry less about marketing and more about regulatory compliance. 3. Anti-aging fades; longevity becomes the growth language 2025 was the year “anti-aging” started to sound dated — not because aging stopped selling, but because the framing changed. Estée Lauder’s longevity-led eye launch and L’Oréal’s Cell BioPrint (a five-minute proteomics-based analysis concept) reflected the shift from erasing wrinkles to extending skin “healthspan.” The consumer promise expanded to include mobility, resilience, cognition, and metabolism, with skin serving as a visible readout of internal performance. Longevity also raised the burden of proof. Sounding scientific is no longer enough; brands must make complex biology understandable, measurable, and personal. The winners will be the ones who translate biotech into trackable outcomes and integrate skincare into a broader stack of supplements, diagnostics, and behavior change. 4. Whitening evolves: Sensitive-skin brightening becomes a new battleground Whitening didn’t disappear in China; it evolved. In 2025, the defining story was the rise of whitening for sensitive skin, a segment estimated to be worth 3 billion RMB ($41 million) within a broader whitening market of 70 billion RMB ($9.6 billion) and a sensitive-skin market of 30 billion RMB ($4.1 billion). Instead of chasing “porcelain” skin, consumers prioritized a healthy glow without skin barrier damage. The category’s rise comes as high-potency actives and aesthetic procedures increase the risk of skin sensitivity, pushing brightening toward anti-inflammatory, barrier-first science. Brands like OSM, Eucerin, and Simpcare leaned into clinical-style claims, gentle actives, and new delivery systems this year, effectively redefining efficacy as results plus tolerance. 5. Makeup-care goes mainstream: Complexion becomes treatment In 2025, foundation evolved beyond coverage to function as an active layer. According to Mintel, 91% of Chinese consumers check active ingredients in base makeup, and 76% believe skincare-infused formulas work. Online, demand centered around ceramides, peptides, squalane, SPF, and soothing actives, demonstrating that consumers increasingly evaluate color cosmetics through a skincare lens. This is also a time-and-attention story. Gen Z consumers don’t want a 10-step morning routine; they want fewer steps that still deliver. The real battleground is complexion: Euromonitor forecasts base makeup will exceed half of China’s color cosmetics value by 2027. Brands that can make “treatment-grade makeup” feel credible, without turning it into a clinical chore, will own the next upgrade cycle. 6. Haircare becomes China’s fastest-moving “third pillar” Haircare is quickly catching up to skincare and makeup. In H1 2025, online haircare sales rose 20.7% year-on-year to 34 billion RMB ($4.8 billion) across major platforms, with men’s haircare up 131.5% from a smaller base. Consumers are treating scalp care like skincare, increasingly focusing on ingredient transparency, targeted concerns (oil control, volume, early hair loss), and multi-step routines. Premiumization is the structural story. Anxiety over thinning hair and scalp health pushed prestige players and salon brands into the mainstream and created space for higher AUR categories like serums, sprays, and leave-ins. Haircare is becoming one of the most innovation-dense categories in China’s beauty landscape. 7. Premium skincare turns into a science race In 2025, a new rule emerged at the top end: luxury storytelling alone can’t carry a 15,000-RMB cream. As consumers demand visible proof, brands like SK-II, La Prairie, La Mer, and Clé de Peau Beauté positioned their hero creams as R&D showcases, highlighting proprietary complexes, advanced peptides, fermentation, and clinic-linked collaborations. The gap between price and persuasion is narrowing. Premium skincare is becoming a proving ground: prove the science, or lose the premium. Expect more clinical-style communication, more experiential “science theater” in travel retail, and more attempts to turn testing and diagnostics into conversion tools. 8. As fragrance booms, capital follows Niche is no longer niche. LVMH Luxury Ventures’ minority stake in BDK Parfums symbolized a broader M&A and investment wave — and a strategic view that fragrance is one of the clearest growth levers left. BDK’s China expansion through SKP-S and smaller retailers illustrates what works: design-forward bottles, rich narratives, and distinctive signatures that signal individuality. Meanwhile, fragrance broadened into “scent universes.” Chinese designer labels such as Feng Chen Wang and Songmont, as well as global lifestyle players like Champion, pushed beyond eau de parfum into incense, candles, and spatial storytelling. In China, scent is increasingly framed as mood regulation, ritual, and “spiritual empowerment,” not just personal appeal. 9. Men’s beauty enters its scale era — and the rules are changing China’s men’s skincare market is now too big to ignore. Worth 17 billion yuan ($2.3 billion) in 2023, it was already triple the size of the U.S. market and more than twice South Korea’s by 2024. By 2026, it is projected to exceed 20 billion RMB ($2.8 billion). In 2025, competition intensified as Proya signaled a return to the category, while domestic brands scaled quickly through Douyin. But men’s growth is not about louder masculinity tropes. Younger consumers want efficiency, comfort, sensitive-skin care, and credible efficacy — and they distrust traditional influencer scripts. Reaching them requires infrastructure: diagnostics, simple routines, replenishment systems, and dermatologist-style credibility. The premium men’s market remains a trust game, and the brands that build that trust systemically will reap the rewards. 10. AI becomes the new gatekeeper — and the new risk 2025 was the year AI moved from “tool” to “interface.” With AI apps surpassing 700 million monthly active users (MAUs) in China and Doubao reaching 170 million MAUs, a growing share of consumers started asking machines for routines instead of trusting creators. With discovery now compressed into seconds, brands are forced to think like data companies, structuring claims, ingredients, and usage logic so machines can read and rank them. But AI also introduced a governance crisis. The rise of AI-generated damage photos, used for refund fraud, exposed how quickly efficiency can turn into exploitation. For beauty — a category built on trust, safety, and claims — the next competitive advantage won’t come from adopting AI alone but from controlling its externalities: verification, transparency, and accountability across platforms.

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China’s 10 leading beauty trends of 2025