The make-up aisles of today's pharmacies are a bright spectrum of colour – but there's always that one perfect shade of lipstick no company seems to make. Harvard Business School graduate Grace Choi is eliminating this irritation with Mink – a 3D printer just for make-up.

As beauty brands connect more with their consumers, Beauty For All is L’Oréal’s attempt to make itself more accessible by turning away from a super glam aesthetic. But do we really want brands to abandon unobtainable glamour for more humble, emotive and ‘real’ visual tropes?

Will L'Oréal’s new volume-boosting 'Miss Manga' mascara – designed to recreate the Japanese ‘anime eyes’ look – appeal to Western women? And how will real anime fans react to the appropriation of their subculture?

Birchbox is a high end beauty e-tailer which dispatches samples to subscribers for a monthly fee. We consider their innovative product service system in the light of changing definitions of luxury and fluctuating consumer trends.