While working on beauty campaigns in France, makeup artist Violette Serrat kept seeing models arrive on-set with damaged skin. “It was very stressful, so I was trying to find a skincare product that would soothe and immediately repair the skin to prepare it for makeup,” she says. It inspired her to create Boum-Boum Milk, which ended up being the bestselling skincare product in her beauty line, Violette_FR. “I realized we needed something liquid that really feeds the skin,” she says. “I wanted to develop a product that would make your skin stronger the more you use it without creating an addiction to it.” The end result was a three-in-one mist that acts as a toner, serum and moisturizer.

Milk is associated with our basic life needs—it’s what we all survive on as babies—and it’s been showing up lately in skincare. That association was part of ILIA Beauty founder Sasha Plavsic’s inspiration when she created The Base Face Milk, a facial essence and liquid moisturizer that launched earlier this year. “Milk brings to mind nourishment for me,” says Plavsic. “And there is also something soothing and nostalgic about the concept [of using it in beauty]; I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s with ‘Got Milk?’ campaigns.” The original idea for the product came from Plavsic’s travels to Seoul, where the Korean beauty industry is “years ahead of the Western world’s” and light, cushiony textures remain hugely popular. “I wanted to make a base that could be worn in the morning or the evening,” she says. “The intention was to soothe, prep and nourish with just a hint of light moisture, so a liquid was perfect.” This category of product—a fluid you press into the skin to improve its health and texture—is definitely having a moment. In addition to the ones offered by Violette_FR and ILIA Beauty, there’s Hailey Bieber’s Rhode Glazing Milk—which sold out when it launched last summer—as well as Farmacy Honey Milk and Byoma Hydrating Milky Toner.

The rise in this kind of product is a response to consumers over-exfoliating, believes Simon Tooley, president of Etiket, a Montreal-based beauty retailer that just recently opened a boutique and spa in Toronto. Tooley recalls many brands having a milk cleanser about a decade ago, but they slowly fell out of favour and were replaced by gels and anything that would deeply clean the skin to remove sun- screen, makeup and pollution. Ingredients used in overabundance, like retinols and chemical acids, have also caused a surge in compromised skin barriers and therefore sensitivities. “But now it’s starting to come back to that idea of soothing,” says Tooley.

Beauty is also having a bit of a food obsession of late (Bieber’s Glazing Milk was created in part because she wanted to make her skin look like a “glazed doughnut”), and that means that when it comes to fragrance, milk has a place as a creamy and sweet scent. Perfume is already exploding due to TikTok, and foodie scents are expected to dominate this year’s fragrance offerings, according to consumer-trend-tracking company Spate. One that has already sold out at Etiket is Giardini di Toscana’s Bianco Latte, a milky-vanilla scent that went viral. “All gourmands are trending right now,” says Tooley. “And I think what’s happening is that everyone’s like, ‘How do I create something that’s different and doesn’t smell sickly sweet?’” For example, vanilla as a scent can be extreme, but the perfumes that have notes of it and are standing out right now present it in a more refined way. “These are sophisticated,” says Tooley, citing a fragrance called Escapade Gourmande as an example. “Vanilla is something that when used correctly [makes] us sniff our wrist again,” he says. “I’ll often say to the perfumer, ‘What is that?’ And they’ll go, ‘Oh, well, there’s a vanilla note in there, and that’s what’s drawing you back.’”

Fragrance brand Commodity’s Milk was a hit right out of the gate when it was released in 2021 and now accounts for 70 percent of the perfumery’s business, says founder Vicken Arslanian. Developed to be a juxtaposition of hot and cold—with warm marshmallow balancing cool milk—Milk is successful, Arslanian believes, because it’s a gourmand scent that doesn’t “claw at you.” “I think that’s the tricky part: how to make something that is warm and comforting yet doesn’t make you want to wash it off an hour or two later,” he says. With Milk, the addi- tion of toasted sesame gives it a distinct unique scent.

As Plavsic notes, there’s also a nostalgic element at play with milk. “Remember, we grew up on milk—things like [the old milk ads] and having milk with cereal,” says Arslanian. “So we have this child- hood connection.” And the soothing aspect—whether on our skin or our mind—that milk seems to deliver can’t be overstated. “Not to get too philosophical,” says Tooley, “but I think we want to feel warm and safe and good, what with all that’s going on in this crazy world.”

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