For all beauty’s investments in virtual try-on for shade matching and makeup looks, the tech has struggled to graduate from novelty to shopping habit. Much of this is down to a stubbornly analog reality — when it comes to makeup and skincare, seeing a shade on a screen is no substitute for feeling a formula on your skin. But what if virtual beauty to date has been solving the wrong problem? Consumers may not want a digital beauty counter so much as a new canvas for self-expression.
That’s the thinking of Clueless closet-inspired AI styling app Alta, at least. Just over a year since its launch, Alta’s user base had gone to the effort of manually uploading “hundreds of thousands” of beauty products into their virtual closet, according to CEO and founder Jenny Wang. Alta is an AI-powered digital closet and personal stylist that lets users digitize their existing wardrobes, generate personalized outfit recommendations, and virtually try looks on an avatar of themselves. It started out as strictly fashion, but the ability to try on beauty products like eyeshadow, lipstick, and perfume was the most highly requested feature within the app, with some 76% of Alta’s user base (which Wang says is now “in the millions”) indicating a desire to use beauty products on their avatars.
TV presenter (and Alta investor) Keltie Knight’s avatar within the new Elf experience on Alta’s app.
Photo: Courtesy of Alta.
It makes sense, then, that Alta has signed a deal with Elf Beauty, parent company of Elf, Rhode, Naturium and Well People, as its first beauty partner in a year-long exclusive app integration.
From today, Alta users will be able to try on Elf Beauty products with their virtual avatars, add products to their wishlists, add cosmetics to the outfits they build, and click linked products to shop directly on Elf’s Direct-To-Consumer site. Elf Beauty products will also be organically recommended in Alta’s AI-generated outfit styling suggestions via Alta’s Discover tab and try-on mode. Alta will profile new Elf product drops within the app, as well as feature editorial looks pinned to Elf calendar events and profiles of top Elf creators from the beauty brand’s existing “Beauty Squad” community.
“Our belief is that the avatar is the AI-era selfie and a form of digital expression, and Elf really believes in that vision,” says Wang, who says that Alta users are not requesting beauty products to try and predict what they will look like on their real faces, but are more using their avatar as a way to imagine and experiment with an overall look. “When we see a signal, we want to jump into the signal,” Elf Beauty CMO Patrick O’Keefe says. “So this is a perfect opportunity for us to lean into this avatar world more, test and learn. We always want to show up in what we call ‘beauty deserts’ or places and spaces where no one else is showing up, but where our community already is.”
