Young shoppers keep cosmetics hot despite inflation [Video]

In Keon Zhang’s household, it started with a rite of passage: his eight-year-old discovering a pimple.

“She was like, ‘Daddy, I need to get rid of them … I need a skin care routine,'” said the chief executive of beauty brand Back to Earth Skin.

“And then, here my son comes up and he’s like, ‘Do I need it?'”

For others, the impulse to dive into a beauty regimen has come from the endless scroll of social media posts showing influencers slathering on Drunk Elephant skin care products, reaching for Dior’s lip oil and swearing by Sol de Janeiro’s Brazilian Bum Bum cream.

The flurry of purchases they have inspired in the middle of an economic downturn has confirmed what the industry has long known: beauty is hot, even when the propensity to spend is not.

Leonard Lauder — heir to the Estee Lauder cosmetics empire — coined the term …