This week, we’re celebrating the one-year anniversary of Highsnobiety Beauty. For a year now, we’ve platformed stories about everything from Gen Z’s plastic surgery paradigm to perfume’s emotional power. “Beauty” is so much more than an aesthetic standard or the products we use — it’s culture, politics, and personal style. Over the next three days, we’re rolling out a special series that captures beauty’s many faces.
In case you missed it, Highsnobiety launched its first beauty product. Kind of.
In collaboration with director duo 91 Rules, we imagined a not-so-distant future in which humans (or rather, humanoids) are, in many regards, optimized: They are ultra-productive, efficient, and resistant to disease. However, they can’t process sensation and emotion.
The solution? SENSE, a wellness company that sells SENSE Synthetic Systems: tiny computer chips that can be inserted into your body to help you see, feel, hear, taste, and touch.
Ahead, Highsnobiety Beauty Editor Alexandra Pauly sits down with 91 Rules co-founders Erik Saltzman and Cameron Tidball-Sciullo — as well as makeup artist Allie Smith — to unpack the future of beauty, SENSE, and why its fictional premise isn’t so far-fetched.
Alexandra: How did you come up with the concept for SENSE and decide to collaborate together? Walk us through it.
Cameron: We've adored Allie's work for a long time. We started working with her on a futuristic, dystopian video project that Erik and I had written and directed in 2021. We had an amazing time working on that project but it was for clients, so we weren't able to go as wild as we wanted to. It was December of 2022 and Erik and I were talking about wanting to do a personal project that was video-focused and beauty-focused, so we reached out to Allie and we started a conversation there.
Erik: Because [SENSE] was pretty scrappy, it kept evolving in stages. We started to put the looks together with Allie, and we made a little bit of a throughline: maybe it’s for an android, and these can enhance their senses. Even further into the editing of the films, we came up with the company [SENSE]. It happened organically and everyone we collaborated with started putting ideas into it.
Cameron: It has continued to grow and grow since the original idea of doing a personal project that's focused on dystopian beauty and future beauty. Everyone who has passed through it has brought their own touch to it, including our amazing model, Unia. It was a very involved day for her, asking her to embody the character. She breathed a lot of life into it and also brought a lot of interesting ideas to the table with her performance.
Alexandra: What was the thought process behind the overarching look and aesthetic of the visuals? What does the imagery convey about both the future of beauty products and beauty consumers?
Erik: Us three are very aligned on what we want things to be aesthetically. It’s something that is at once super slick and terrifying… you can't really reconcile it. It’s slightly evil but you're attracted to it.
Allie: There’s an inhuman quality. With skincare products, procedures, treatments, all of these cutting-edge things coming out, [beauty] is becoming so tech-driven. It feels sleek and polished and not totally human. That's an aesthetic that we all really enjoy working with.
Cameron: There's a retro-futuristic tinge to it — looking at how people imagined the future in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. It has a clinical feel; it looks like ads for Walkman. We were also interested in mining how every decade imagines the future. They never guess correctly, but I think there's always hope and innovation that lives in it.
Alexandra: The beauty industry so often sells us a “better” or more optimized version of ourselves. It’s easy to forget that what our bodies can do can’t be bought and sold. SENSE hints at a future in which our bodies have stopped working the way they're supposed to because we keep using products to alter them. Do you feel this pressure to keep bettering yourself?
Erik: I know that optimization is bullshit and at the same time, I enjoy researching biohacking and the right food to eat and the right supplements. I find it very intriguing. There's something that functions almost like an addict's brain of, ‘I just want to be able to fix it myself.’ I do fall into that. I think a lot of people do.
Alexandra: At the same time, beauty companies are increasingly capitalizing off of our emotional lives. Psychodermatology brands are cropping up. Last year, there was TikTok’s “crying makeup” trend — people were doing their makeup to make it look as if they’d been crying.
Allie: Oh man, I remember that crying trend. That was very fun.The amount of product and information out there is overwhelming. It feels like nothing is completely off the table… it's wild to see how stacked the shelves are with products and buzzy words. Marketing has become really clever.
Erik: The world does feel intense enough that if you put on a good-smelling moisturizer that you think is luxurious, you do feel better for a moment. It's such a stupid solution, but it does work for very short amounts of time. That is more of a statement on the world, I think, than the beauty industry. I don't know if that's manipulative, or just the way it is.
Alexandra: Fast-forward 10 years: what do you think the biggest beauty and wellness trends will be?
Allie: Isamaya Ffrench had a really interesting take on that question a few years ago. There’s going to be something involving our actual DNA… We're already seeing a huge rise in plastic surgeries, injections, and things like that. So in the next 10 years, I wouldn't be surprised if there’s some kind of crazy technology that changes your eye color or reverses skin damage on a cellular level. There might be more automated parts of beauty, like nail screen-printing devices. It wouldn't surprise me if there's eye makeup that you could have printed on your skin, or something like that. I'm really excited to see how tech addresses beauty in the next 10 years.
Erik: My pie in the sky guess for 10 years from now is a single device you put over your face — it can do lasers, it can do injections, it can do makeup. So it's plastic surgery plus makeup, and it looks like an iPhone that you put on your face.
Cameron: And then you take a pill afterwards.
Erik: Always.
Alexandra: The DNA thing is so interesting because we're already seeing it. A few months ago, I got a pitch for a skincare brand that formulates your routine using a blood sample you take at home. I’m a little scared to do it… Where's my blood going to be stored? Where's this information going?
Allie: I’m getting a lot of targeted ads for [a brand] that creates a custom foundation color and takes captures of your skin to get you exactly the right shade. It is very cool to see technology make something really personalized… But yeah, I'm a little wary of it as well.
Erik: I regret doing 23 and Me. It seems like they're going to get more genetic information out of our blood.
Alexandra: What is the most beautiful thing you've experienced?
Allie: I don’t have memory of it, but I’m sure being born was pretty cool.
Erik: Something related to acid. I just don't know exactly what, so that'll be my answer.
Alexandra: What makes you want to dissociate?
Allie: The government.
Erik: Climate change.
Cameron: The feeling I get reading the news every morning, but still waking up and reading the news every morning.
Alexandra: AI: tired or wired?
Allie: Wired. Love it. Scary potential.
Erik: Hate it for art. Love it for other stuff.
Cameron: Amazing tool. Also very, very scary. Absolutely one of the more exciting things I’ve been alive for.
Alexandra: Do you wish SENSE were a real product?
Allie: Yes.
Erik: Yeah, I think so.
Cameron: The ability to be present and focused on one sense is a beautiful thing to imagine — to be so present within your body.
