Beauty Play offers firsthand experience with Korean skincare products to foreigners

In this photo carried on Beauty Play’s website, visitors browse beauty products on display at the center in Jung District, central Seoul. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Beauty Play, an experience center the Ministry of Health and Welfare supports and the Korea Cosmetic Industry Institute manages, aims to promote Korean beauty brands and connect small and medium-sized enterprises in the industry with consumers.

Located in Myeongdong in central Seoul, Beauty Play draws beauty product lovers from worldwide. It provides visitors with a wide array of experiences related to the Korean beauty industry, all free of charge.

Such services include skin tone diagnosis, makeup tutorials and exhibitions of products with testers available, which is particularly popular among visitors. As the beauty industry constantly evolves, the selection of products at Beauty Play is updated every two months or so. The top products each month win the title of “items of the month,” which went to LIPSOI for November.

Loubihich Merieme, a 25-year-old freelance model who also goes by Mirim and has worked with various skincare brands, likened Beauty Play to a showroom. She was impressed with the number of photo zones at the center and also how crowded it was with visitors coming to try out Korean beauty products.

She described Beauty Play as the perfect place for a girls’ day out and said, “You can go there, try out cosmetics, play with makeup and then have a sip of coffee with your girlies,” referencing Molto, a popular cafe that shares the floor with the center.

Of the center’s offerings, she said she particularly appreciated the glow makeup seminar on Nov. 15 with Hwang Mi-kyung, an assistant professor of beauty arts at Jeonghwa Arts College.

Hwang has worked with prominent makeup brands such as Amorepacific, Hera, Tony Moly and Ryo in various capacities, holding multiple managerial roles.

“We see all these celebrities with flawless skin and makeup, and we don’t know how they do it. [Hwang] gave [us] many beauty tips,” Merieme said. “Once I heard them, they just made sense.”

Her favorite part of the seminar was the use of color theory to cover imperfections in a way that appears natural. Merieme said Hwang emphasized the importance of choosing the right color of base makeup products depending on one’s skin tone.

“When it comes to Korean beauty [standards], skincare is more important than the makeup itself. The makeup professional in the seminar made it a priority to prepare the skin for the makeup,” Merieme said. “Makeup only covers the skin. It doesn’t heal the face.”

The center also helps lesser-known Korean beauty brands to gain attention among consumers, Merieme added, saying she only learned of the vast options of Korean beauty products and brands only after she started engaging with influencers.

“Beauty Play gathers a community of global consumers and influencers and introduces them to brands that they didn’t know before. So there’s less budget needed by the brand [to do marketing through the center],” she said.

Yu So-yeon, CEO of Korean beauty brand LIPSOI, echoed Merieme’s sentiment based on her experience with the center to promote her company’s products.

The company had its ceramic massage tool products displayed at the center’s exhibition space, and Yu personally led a seminar at the center explaining the benefits of the products.

“We had several reasons for launching a pop-up store at Beauty Play. First, we wanted to introduce and share information about ceramic [massage] tools and the company’s products,” Yu said. “Ceramic massage tools are not well-known yet in the international market. So our objective was to offer consumers a direct experience with the products.”

Yu added, "Through the seminar, we wanted participants to touch, learn how to use, and directly experience the skincare benefits of the ceramic tools.”

She was pleased with the result of the exhibition and her seminar in which she taught participants how to use the ceramic tools and saw their positive engagement with the products.

“We managed to build a mutually beneficial relationship with Beauty Play. This collaboration provided us an opportunity to promote to a wider public the benefits of [our products],” she said. “The collaboration had a positive impact on our brand.”

Beauty Play also regularly invites makeup artists who have worked with top Korean celebrities to give seminars in which they share beauty tips. One such artist in recent months included BTS's former makeup artist Han Hyun-jae, who has also worked with boy band Infinite and girl group AOA. It also welcomes representatives of beauty brands so that they can showcase their company’s product lineups and give presentations, where attendees often participate as volunteers to put on products during the presentations and receive samples to try at home.

The center’s efforts to promote Korean beauty brands and products to the worldwide audience also include its global supporters program.

Layla Altoublani, a 26-year-old master's student at Chung-Ang University Graduate School of Business from Bahrain, was part of the program in its first edition. She said Beauty Play allowed her to test new products, review them and engage in a variety of events and lectures featuring makeup artists for K-pop celebrities.

“I was playing around with cosmetics and testing them. It was really good [being] a supporter,” she said, adding the center provided her “with the platform to test different protests” and even helped her find products that are part of her skincare regimen now.

Through the three-month program, Altoublani's tasks consisted of introducing Beauty Play in a creative way as well as testing and reviewing provided products on a monthly basis.

“[The center] told us that we could come visit the place with our friends. They were always proactive,” she said. “They said that if our friends wanted to check out the place, they would make a time slot for them and give them a tour.”

Beauty Play regularly holds various events related to beauty products. It has also opened reservations on its website for this month’s full makeup service dedicated to foreigners.

BY STUDENT REPORTER NOUHA BENJELLOUN ANDALOUSSI [kjd.kcampus@joongang.co.kr]