Beauty is a highly individualistic personal experience. Preferences also differ from person to person. At the same time most concepts of what is beautiful, are inspired by some role model. The marketing industry has successfully exploited the latter part of this idea using celebrities in ads. But we have yet to find ways in which we can deliver personalized experiences.Any innovation for this will be a game changer for beauty industry.
There are online tools that try to be personalized, but they are mostly like color pickers and different kinds of filters. In the offline environment there are direct marketing and event based marketing where engagement can be 1:1.

The next wave of new shopping experiences in my opinion is in the area of mixed reality experiences combining AR, AI, VR technologies that go beyond the screen based interfaces. These technologies will work when they have data of the user without asking the user (frictionless experience). It will be kind of a miracle imagining a device knowing so much about you without you telling. I believe data is the new oil of tomorrow and with all the data collected and made public everyone of us will become exposed to devices of the future. Beauty in particular will then be defined by what a user wants and not what a user aspires to be like. Advertising will also have to adapt to this new realiy.

Agree that "non obvious" is a subjective term. One vehicle could be an experiential model that enables customers to get a full makeover in front of a screen that records the sequence and links to your online device so you can repeat the procedure and purchase products away from the physical store. (See Magic Mirror adopted by Metier de Beaute in Nordstrom as inspiration).

"Beauty" is a broad sweeping term I think - what does that encompass? I believe the future of beauty will continue to increase in health/wellness and consumers will begin to demand more accountability with their spend as far as how they dress, what is in their products, sourcing - beauty will be an activist expression of self and brands will need to appeal to that need as well as traditional marketing that targets insecurities around personal self. I also see more woven holistic multi-brand sales and experience based opportunities by creating integrated spa/clothing/product sale opportunities where women actually ARE - at work, social events/parenting, on retreats and in home (why MLM still works well in this field). This is why Target does well because it serves many purposes. I do not think it will be as individualistic as one might believe because there is a yearning for collective experiences and my guess is women will continue to prefer to 'multitask' and will be open to creative, non retail options.

I agree with HImanshu Bharadwaj. I believe that in the future, AR, VR, MR and AI will take up this market. For example: you will have a personal AI makeup artist helping you select the makeup or personal beauty products - According to your personality and the type of face & hair you have. All you need to do is just look at the mirror, you will have millions of different filter makeup you like. And combined with MR gesture & voice control, you can order the makeup right away or put on your face immediately.