The Times 2012
by Alice Hart - Davis
When trend-forecasting guru Antoinette van den Berg first began talking, two years ago, about “the end of anti-ageing”, few in the beauty industry could grasp what she meant. Anti-ageing is huge. It’s big business. Market research company Mintel predicts that by 2017 we will be spending £1.2 billion in the UK on anti-ageing.
But for Ms van den Berg, founder of the Dutch forecasting group Future-Touch, which specialises in the cosmetics industry, it now looks very much as if her prediction that “there will come a time when a woman of 55 will have no problem with looking her age” is starting to kick in.
For trend-caster Ms van den Berg this cannot happen fast enough. Along with the “end of anti-ageing”, she now predicts it will be soon be “cool to be old”. That may seem a stretch, but given the way attitudes are beginning to shift and the increasing popularity of mature female models in youth-dominated areas such as fashion, it might just be starting to happen. Bring it on.When trend-forecasting guru Antoinette van den Berg first began talking, two years ago, about “the end of anti-ageing”, few in the beauty industry could grasp what she meant. Anti-ageing is huge. It’s big business. Market research company Mintel predicts that by 2017 we will be spending £1.2 billion in the UK on anti-ageing.
But for Ms van den Berg, founder of the Dutch forecasting group Future-Touch, which specialises in the cosmetics industry, it now looks very much as if her prediction that “there will come a time when a woman of 55 will have no problem with looking her age” is starting to kick in.
For trend-caster Ms van den Berg this cannot happen fast enough. Along with the “end of anti-ageing”, she now predicts it will be soon be “cool to be old”. That may seem a stretch, but given the way attitudes are beginning to shift and the increasing popularity of mature female models in youth-dominated areas such as fashion, it might just be starting to happen. Bring it on.