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YSL's at-home lipstick maker lets you create thousands of shades

It's based on parent company L'Oreal's smart skincare technology.

Loreal

When L'Oreal showed off its Perso Smart Skincare system last CES, it was still just a prototype. Still, it was an intriguing prototype — a handheld skincare dispenser that doled out a serving of formula that was customized each time you pressed it. Today, the company is announcing that the Perso system will finally be available for consumers to buy under the Yves Saint Laurent brand. Instead of making different formulations of skincare though, the Rouge Sur Mesure will create a new shade of lipstick each time you need it.

The $299 device uses color cartridges filled with “ink” from YSL’s lines of red, nude, orange and pink lipsticks. With the help of its AI-based system, you can create “thousands of bespoke shades of YSL’s Velvet Cream Matte Finish lipstick” with one touch. Using the companion app, you can select a shade based on pictures of your outfit or of lipstick someone else is wearing. There are also options to use a wheel to pick and tweak the hue you like. If you’re lazy, you can also let the algorithm come up with three options for you based on what you’re wearing.

Once you’ve selected a color, press Create and the machine will dispense a single serving that you can apply with the accompanying brush. The device includes a removable compact that you can bring out with you for touchups.

Although using lipstick seems a little futile if you’re masked up, it might be nice to have the Rouge Sur Mesure system handy for Zoom meetings or the future when we can wear masks less often. While $299 is a steep price, it makes sense for products under the luxury YSL brand. Plus, for people like me who can’t settle on one favorite shade and have too many lipsticks at home, this might be a more elegant solution.

You can currently register for the pre-sale of the Rouge Sur Mesure on the brand’s website, and it’s slated to arrive in spring this year. L'Oreal said the Perso system will also show up in versions of products that create customized skincare and foundation later this year. Looks like beauty and cosmetics fans might have more intriguing tech to look forward to in 2021.

L'Oreal also had some interesting sustainability news to share at CES. It introduced something called Water Saver, which it describes as “sustainable haircare technology” that it developed in collaboration with environmental innovation company Gjosa. The water saver is a system that “applies the principle of fractioning used in rocket engines to water flows.” It basically reduces the size and increases the speed of water droplets and makes sure less water is wasted in shampooing and rinsing. The droplets will also be better absorbed so you can use a smaller amount of liquid.

Water Saver is now available in select L'Oreal salons in New York and Paris and a global rollout is planned through 2022. The company expects this system to to be in thousands of salons in the next few years, translating to “up to one billion gallons of water per year” saved. It also promises that an at-home shower device will be available for consumers “at a later date” so we can all work on saving water together.