sheet masks will
go high-tech. Yes, they
make skin dewy fast—but
if you buy one that’s not
the best fit for your face,
they can also cause serum
to leak into your eyes and
get uncomfortably close
to your mouth. A first-
world problem, yes, but annoying enough that Neutrogena
has created 3-D-printed sheet masks, called Neutrogena
MaskID, that are tailored to your face shape. (They’ll be avail-
able in the next six months.) “The same facial-recognition
technology that lets you open your iPhone X by looking at
your screen also allows us to scan and create a 3-D model of
your face in our app,” says Michael Southall, global research
and development lead for beauty tech and devices at
Johnson & Johnson. To print the customized sheet masks, he
and his team partnered with experts who specialize in
3-D-printing artificial joints. Maybe even more exciting? The
ingredients are also customized. “We can put different ingre-
dients on different facial zones—forehead, cheeks, around
the eyes,” says Southall. Neutrogena already has an iPhone
attachment, the 360 Skin Scanner, that uses sensors to mea-
sure moisture levels on various parts of the face and imaging
technology to track wrinkle depth and pore size. Based on
these readings, the new MaskID app will recommend ingredi-
ent combinations for different facial zones (five ingredients,
including hyaluronic acid and vitamin C, will be available at
launch). “The possibilities are almost infinite,” says Southall.flawless foundation will be just a blue LED
device away. The Opté Precision Skin System looks like an
old-school handheld inventory scanner. But at this year’s CES
convention in Las Vegas (aka the tech expo to end all tech
expos), “it was one of the most impressive things I saw at the
entire show,” says Sharon Profis, an executive editor at CNET.
Instead of reading bar codes, the wireless device—about the
size of an electric razor—scans your face with blue light to
identify age spots and pimples, uses a facial-recognition algo-
rithm to determine each blemish’s size, shape, and color, and
then prints the perfect amount of foundation over them (it’s
spot coverage, not a full face of makeup). The Opté is essen-
tially a 3-D makeup printer: It’s got a mini ink-jet that squirts
out teeny droplets of foundation (each one finer than a strand
of hair) to cover spots, pointillism-style, until they are seam-
lessly hidden. “It’s difficult to print makeup onto the face with
any real accuracy,” says Phill Dickens, a professor of manufac-
turing technology at the University of Nottingham in England.
Printing foundation, which can blend into surrounding skin,
makes much more sense than printing something that’s got to
be precise, like eyeliner, onto your face. “They demoed this
device on my colleague at CES, and it worked so well it was
insane,” says Profis. “It gave her spotless, smooth skin.” The
foundation (which Opté calls a Tone Perfecting Serum) is
infused with skin-brightening, anti-inflammatory niacinamide
to fade sun spots and pimples over time and comes in three
sheer shades (Fair, Medium, and Deep).you could Netflix and chill with the skin freak-
outs. Earlier this year, a new skin-care brand called Atolla qui-
etly launched in beta testing, and its goal is to make serums
that treat your skin’s unique needs—and predict how yourcomplexion will change over time to help prevent breakouts,
redness, and sensitivities. “Our app uses a similar algorithm as
Netflix, so it learns more about your skin the more you use it,”
says Meghan Maupin, a cofounder of Atolla and an MIT gradu-
ate with a background in mass personalization (she previously
worked in 3-D printing). For now, the company only offers
serums, and it creates customized formulas based on a thor-
ough evaluation of your skin. To measure oil, moisture, and pH
levels, Atolla mails you special sensors (small stickers that you
press on different areas of your face) and also asks you to
answer an extensive survey about your skin, your lifestyle, and
your environment. Boston dermatologist Ranella Hirsch is
another cofounder, and she identified the best ingredients for
the serums, which come in thousands of possible combina-
tions. Each bottle is one month’s supply—once you’re done,
you reassess your skin and get an updated formula. “As we
continue to scale, our algorithm is constantly iterating and
getting smarter,” says Maupin. “To put it more simply: The
more people who use it, the better it’ll predict what your skin
needs. Ultimately, we expect to know your skin so well that
we’ll know how it’ll change over a year, which means you can
prevent unwanted changes instead of just reacting to them.”DNA testing could be a stan-
dard step in buying skin care.
Just as a saliva sample can trace your
ancestry, it could also be used to pre-
dict how your skin will age—and how
to reverse course—based on an evalu-
ation of your genetic makeup, says
cosmetic chemist Ni’Kita Wilson. As
we get older or are exposed to the
sun, for example, certain genes flip
on—“they trigger enzymes that break down collagen, causing
wrinkles and sagging. But if you realize that’s happening on a
molecular level, you could use prescription ingredients to
quiet your overactive genes and normalize your skin,” says
Wilson. And she’s not talking about the skin-care ingredients
we already know and love. “I’m talking about pharmaceutical
companies developing new topical drugs to upregulate and
downgrade overactive or underactive genes in your skin,” she
adds. And just like that, the key to truly smooth skin could be
written in your DNA. Some companies, like HomeDNA and
Skintelli, have already started recommending existing skin-
care ingredients and products for users based on DNA testing.
They claim to give insight into how quickly your skin cells turn
over or the quality of your collagen. “More studies need to be
done in this area, and we should see how the FDA weighs in on
it, though it’s heading in the right direction,” says Wilson. “Your
genetic analysis could also tell you what kinds of foods to eat
for younger, more radiant skin.” (Researchers in Israel are
already studying nutrigenomics, a new field in which genetics
inform diet.) And all of this could happen sooner than you
think: “We could all be spitting in tubes for younger skin in the
next few years, maybe even sooner,” Profis predicts.sunscreens are poised to get smarter. “We have
the technology to activate ingredients with temperature and
light, so it’s an obvious and hopefully inevitable next step to
have sunscreens that are more protective in UV-intense situa-
tions,” says Ellen Marmur, a dermatologist in New York City. In
her dream world, this will fix a major issue with sunscreen com-
pliance: “Very often people forget to reapply, so it would be
lifesaving to have ingredients that activate after an hour or asIn thenextfewyears...In the
next
year...