Alternative Shopping: Magic Mirrors for Macy’s Beauty Floor

"Magic mirrors" have come to Macy's Herald Square on the beauty floor.

It's a virtual experience, where beauty products selected on the magic mirror menu instantly appear on the image of your face when you look into the mirror.

The YouCam Makeup magic mirrors eliminate the messy hassle of applying and removing different makeup products as you would select and sample them, and also eliminates any of the ensuing hygienic concerns. It also speeds up shopping.

The Taiwan-based Perfect Corp. created the magic mirrors by designing the app on the iPad, which sits in a lighted frame.

Macy's flagship has two magic mirrors — each about 10 by 18 inches — atop pedestals situated in the Impulse beauty area on the main floor.

"We’re going to take it to other Macy's stores, as well. Young customers today are very used to technology. They expect it and we are getting it to them," said Muriel Gonzalez, Macy's Inc., executive vice president and general merchandise manager of cosmetics and fragrances.

"We’re constantly looking for ways to innovate and change the experience at Macy's," added Kathy Hilt, Macy's district vice president and manager of Macy's Herald Square.

"This is Perfect Corp.'s first permanent installation of the YouCam Makeup magic mirror virtual shopping experience in the U.S.," said Adam Gam, vice president of marketing at Perfect Corp. "We have done one-day-only pop-up events with single brands at other retailers in New York City — Tom Ford at Saks and YSL at Bloomingdale's — but they were not permanent." Gam also said that last April, the YouCam Makeup magic mirror was launched in the U.K. at Estée Lauder counters at Selfridges and at the Estée Edit Carnaby Street store. This month, the YouCam Makeup magic mirror was introduced in Japan, at Fruit Gathering's New Tokyo Ginza store.

For Wednesday's launch at Herald Square, the YouCam magic mirror was loaded with 250 makeup sku's from Benefit, NYX, Tarte, Urban Decay and Too Faced, including lipstick, eyeliner, eye shadow, blush and bronze. There's also the YouCam Makeup app, which can be downloaded for free to browse, virtually try on and buy Macy's beauty offerings off a mobile device.

"Users can seamlessly discover a new lipstick and try out all the colors in the collection with a single tap, making messy makeup trials a thing of the past," Alice H. Chang, chief executive officer of Perfect Corp., said in a statement. Perfect Corp. has more than 400 million downloads globally and has engineers and "beauty aficionados" working to create ways for women to discover, virtually sample and buy beauty products through technology.