In the early 1920s, Coco Chanel spent her holiday on a Mediterranean cruise and got too much sun. At the time, pale skin has been a fashion mainstay for centuries, suggesting a kind of rarified femininity unexposed to the harsh rays of the sun. But when Chanel disembarked from that cruise and stepped out into Cannes, she instantly changed history and her golden skin became a fashion must-have. “I think she may have invented sunbathing,” says Prince Jean-Louis de Faucigny-Lucigne, a close friend of Chanel. “At that time, she invented everything.”1
In the years that followed, women and women alike went to great lengths to achieve their own tans, from slathering their legs with Bovril to covering themselves in oil and roasting like potatoes in the sun to encapsulating themselves in tanning beds in search of the perfect sun-kissed look. Tans became a status symbol all their own, particularly for those living in cold and dreary climates; a tan suggested luxury, travel, and money. In a strange twist of fate, tans were no longer evidence of outdoor labor, but indicators of leisure, youth, and vitality.
Then two vital things happened that changed the tanning game forever: the economic strife of the 1970s and emerging science connecting tanning to undesirable and dangerous skin changes such as cancer and premature aging. Without the means to travel to sunny locales, people in the north increasingly turned to self-tanners to create a simulacrum of vacation-tanned skin. Meanwhile, even those with access to natural rays began seeking out safer alternatives to avoid the potential damage of the sun. These events coalesced the FDA approval of dihydroxyacetone (DHA) for use in self-tanners, sparking a virtual revolution in how people obtained the look of sun-kissed skin.
But early self-tanners suffered from formulation and design flaws and more often than not resulted in a streak-orange mess rather than an evenly tan glow. With consumers overwhelming rejecting the newly released products, self-tanner manufacturers poured resources into creating formulas that were both user-friendly and capable of producing even, realistic color. Their work paid off; although DHA remains the mainstay of self-tanners, modern DHA is a far cry from that of days past as “refinements in the DHA manufacturing process has aided in the creation of formulations that produce a more natural looking color.”2
Today, the self-tanning industry is booming and it’s not expected to slow down anytime soon. According to IBISWorld, “The Self-Tanning Product Manufacturing Industry has experienced meteoric growth … and is set to continue on this growth trajectory.”3 Improved color and innovative application methods, including sprays, lotions, oils, wipes, and slow-build lotions, are credited with driving demand, offering consumers multiple entry points to the self-tanning market. “People are demanding new products that give the most natural glow,” says June Jensen, Director UK Beauty for NPD, “People no longer want to look orange, they want to look like they have just been on holiday. There’s a marked difference.”4
As both drug store and department brands look to raise the appeal of their products and consumers continue their search for the best self-tanners, developing easy-to-use products capable of creating the specific colors consumers are looking for is essential to success. As the standard for color quality grows ever-higher, spectrophotometric analysis is becoming more important to the self-tanning industry than ever before.
