Last winter, while strolling through the streets of Manhattan, I passed the much-hyped Louis Vuitton (LV) store. The store is designed to resemble a giant luggage trunk. What caught my attention, however, was Le Café Louis Vuitton, a luxury dining destination offering designer cocktails, elaborate desserts and even caviar pizza. It promises an immersive brand experience, complete with Instagrammable interiors in loud oranges and understated beiges. Its elaborate dessert craftsmanship featuring the LV logo and designs, are as much about visual appeal as craftsmanship.
Increasingly, beauty and luxury brands are borrowing from the sensory world of food, drawing on its fragrances, flavours and colours to create products and experiences that encourage consumption. This is happening in ever closer alignment with social-media trends, where the visual appeal of a product can be as important as its function.
From kitchen to cosmetics shelf
The relationship between food and beauty has existed since time immemorial. It has been part of our kitchens and household traditions for generations. Haldi and besan, for instance, have long featured in beauty rituals across India. Ingredients such as mint, ajwain, cumin, basil, neem, rose petals and other herbs have found their way into homemade Ayurvedic remedies and skincare preparations, from ubtans to face packs to beauty oils.
The humble beetroot is increasingly finding its way into blushes and lip balms, while haldi and saffron are marketed as ingredients in face packs and creams.
Several high-end herbal brands have entered the luxury Ayurvedic market, repackaging familiar herbal recipes and concoctions for a niche clientele. The familiar adage, “What is good enough to eat is good enough to apply to the face”, captures this longstanding association, although edible ingredients are not automatically safe or suitable for every skin type.
Globally, green tea and tea tree oil have become popular skincare ingredients. The Korean beauty, or K-beauty, movement, for instance, has helped popularise rice water, black rice and ginseng in skincare. Meanwhile, fruit-inspired make-up has given us tomato-, orange-, raspberry- and strawberry-inspired lip colours and blushes. The sensory appeal and colours of the salad bowl have found a new vocabulary in beauty marketing.
The same borrowing happens in fragrances. Around Halloween, pumpkin, cinnamon, apple and other autumnal scents fill supermarket aisles, recreating the sensory associations of seasonal desserts and warm dining rooms. They sell not merely a fragrance but a mood: the comfort of a season, a memory or an imagined experience. The appeal is no longer simply about buying a candle; it is about being transported, quite literally, into a particular memory or season.
There is novelty here, too. In 2026, for instance, Sephora Collection and TABASCO launched a limited-edition lip-gloss collaboration featuring four shades inspired by spicy flavours: Jalapeño, Sriracha, TABASCO Red and Extreme Heat. The glosses also incorporated chilli-pepper extract, evoking the sensory appeal of the iconic hot sauce. Such collaborations can generate interest not only in the beauty products but also in the original food brands, potentially boosting sales of the sauce itself.
Small-treat economy and hedonistic substitution
While beauty has long borrowed from the humble kitchen and its martabans (large glazed ceramic storage jars), the convergence of fashion, food, beauty and luxury has evolved considerably with globalisation. Changing appetites and tastes have encouraged luxury houses to tap into emerging trends that continually reshape consumer preferences.
First, the global availability of luxury food ingredients and products, from blueberries and raspberries to açaí berry compote, reflects changing patterns of consumption and an evolving wellness culture. Today, such products can reach our doorsteps within minutes, thanks to food-delivery and quick-commerce applications.
Second, there is what might be called the “Ozempification” of appetite, which is capturing the imagination of the wellness and fitness industries. The growing use of GLP-1 medicines has brought renewed attention to appetite, hunger and food cravings, raising interesting questions about how consumers engage with food-related sensory experiences. If one cannot eat a vanilla dessert, could a vanilla-scented fragrance offer a sensory substitute? Similarly, if pistachio chocolate is too calorie-dense, could a pistachio-inspired lip gloss provide a different kind of indulgence?
Third, inflation and the rising cost of living are reshaping consumption patterns. Higher rents, food inflation and the inability to participate in the wider luxury economy have contributed to the appeal of the small-treat economy. Consumers turn instead to relatively affordable indulgences: a lipstick, nail polish, a daily coffee-and-doughnut ritual or a weekend spa experience. This echoes the idea of the “lipstick effect”, whereby consumers seek smaller luxuries when larger purchases become unaffordable.
Finally, there is “foodstalgia”: the use of food-related memories and sensory associations to create emotional appeal. Perhaps it is the nostalgia and comfort of familiar flavours and aromas that many of us are craving. This also brings us to the idea of hedonic substitution: when a particular indulgence becomes unaffordable, inaccessible or restricted, consumers may seek pleasure through an alternative sensory experience that fits within their means.
Food as an immersive luxury experience
And this brings us back to Le Café Louis Vuitton, Prada Caffè and Armani/Caffè. A Gucci burger might offer, albeit temporarily, something of the experience of owning a Gucci bag. A Dior pastry might evoke the feeling of being associated with the brand, if only for a moment—and certainly for much longer on Instagram.
Pasticceria Marchesi 1824, one of Milan's historic pastry establishments, offers an early illustration of the association between luxury and gastronomy. India, too, has seen this convergence. In April-May 2026, Roastery Coffee House collaborated with Tory Burch to create the limited-edition Romy Café in New Delhi. Inspired by the brand's Romy handbag collection, the experience brought together luxury and café culture through curated pastries, logo-topped lattes and interiors reflecting the collection's aesthetic.
Food-inspired flavours and colours have also found their way into beauty marketing. Chocolate, coffee and caramel, with their warm beiges and browns, evoke the aesthetics of coffee culture. Brands such as Rhode and, following its acquisition, e.l.f. Cosmetics have drawn on these associations. The glazed-doughnut skin trend, strawberry make-up, matcha green and avocado-inspired beauty products have all become part of the marketing vocabulary. Beauty vloggers and influencers further amplify their appeal through Instagram-friendly content, turning products into trends and trends into sales.
The small-treat economy extends well beyond beauty products. Fragrances, candles, soaps, incense and home scents increasingly draw inspiration from food, turning familiar aromas into affordable forms of everyday indulgence.
Artificial scarcity and aspirational consumerism
Aspirational consumerism has acquired a new dimension as social media globalises trends at unprecedented speed. When Dubai chocolate becomes a sensation in the UAE, it soon reaches the US. When fruit-shaped desserts become a rage among car-mukbang creators in Los Angeles, they find their way to establishments such as L'Opéra in India.
From Stanley tumblers and Starbucks merchandise to the recent dot cakes and iPhones in India, queuing for a product, pre-booking a limited-edition release and unboxing Labubu dolls have all become part of the consumption experience. Blind-box purchases, for instance, introduce an element of uncertainty: consumers do not know which colour or version they will receive until they open the package. The unboxing itself becomes content, feeding the attention economy driven by social media. The perception of rarity can make an otherwise ordinary product seem more desirable.
All these strategies bring aesthetic and aspirational consumerism, the social-media-driven pursuit of virality and immersive luxury-brand experiences into the same frame. Food becomes a visual and emotional language for fleeting pleasure, while fashion and beauty brands capitalise on our desire for economic participation, brand association and exclusivity.
Amid these trends, however, what is forgotten is the larger question of basic food security, inclusion, affordability and access, not just to food itself, but also to the digital platforms and social spaces where these aspirations are increasingly created, circulated and amplified.