How Hand Creams and Sanitisers Became a Beauty Status Symbol

Beauty is getting handsy.

Hand products — from creams to sanitisers — have emerged as the industry’s latest obsession, elevated from everyday staple (and go-to Mother’s Day gift) to cult collectable. Rather than receiving them in a gift bag, shoppers are buying hand products for themselves, with distinct microtrends in formulation and packaging creating new must-have brands. As Chemmie Squier, creative director at trends agency The Digital Fairy, puts it, they’ve become a status symbol for consumers, especially those priced out of premium goods like designer purses or perfumes.

Brands across the spectrum are driving the trend: Top brands like cosmetics maker Rare Beauty and premium labels like Chanel and Dior are launching or expanding their hand offerings, with a particular focus on ergonomic, eye-catching or otherwise pleasingly blob-like packaging, while Korean brand Amuse’s colourful, bobble-headed tubes of hand cream rapidly became an influencer favourite.

But the trend isn’t limited to lotions, as sanitisers and soaps are also getting the premiumisation treatment. Touchland’s range of $10 slimline hand sanitisers with scents like peppermint mocha and vanilla blossom have become a trending obsession among Gen-Z and Gen Alpha shoppers in the US and UK, buoying the brand to over $100 million in revenue last year. Fashion brands like Loewe and Hermès have launched refillable hand soaps, while indie brands like the UK’s Commune have made an elevated soap the core of their offering. Dermatological skincare brands like Joonbyrd and Prequel, meanwhile, have debuted preventative anti-ageing hand-centric products, including hand washes and UV-protecting fingerless gloves.

“Using a hand cream isn’t really just making sure that your hands aren’t dry now. It’s about having a moment to yourself,” said Margaret Mitchell, chief commercial officer at the premium British beauty retailer Space NK, which has seen hand care sales grow 25 percent in the last year.

Hand products — whether lotion, cream, sanitiser, soap or something else — serve as a way for brands that don’t traditionally play in fragrance to test out the space, or create another add-on purchase to their existing perfume offerings, as the category continues to outperform.

But it’s also a way to cut through a noisy environment, said Mitchell. Launching a popular hand product, much like beauty’s previous fixations with charms and lip balms, isn’t restricted exclusively to skincare brands. Some of the most popular ones have come from fragrance, body care or cosmetics brands — the only qualification needed is to make it distinctive, said Andrea Lisbona, the founder of Touchland.

“We created a beauty experience out of one of the most commoditised personal care experiences,” said Lisbona, pointing to the product’s unique design that mists the hands rather than dispensing a gel, the lid-free packaging that makes for easier application and the scent.

Sold at a lower price point, hand products can also introduce newer customers to the brand, and as a high-replenishment product, they carry a greater chance of creating repeat customers. And with the right packaging, it has the potential to become a hit on social media too. But crafting the right launch, with the right scent, ingredient profile and visuals takes careful calibration.

Scent Power

For a hand care venture to work, it needs to be aligned with a brand’s overall mood.

One of the most successful launches of 2024 was Rare Beauty’s Find Comfort hand cream, $18, which debuted in December. While it has skincare ingredients like brightening niacinamide and smells like peach flower, the pebble-shaped, squeezable packaging complete with a lid that came to a rounded tip — meant to relieve pressure points in the hands when holding it — ensured its virality. To celebrate its launch, Space NK hosted a London pop-up with meditation and journalling sessions, as well as a matcha bar, to tap into the brand’s ethos around mental wellbeing.

Creating a story around the packaging as well as the product’s “uplifting” smell helped dovetail the launch with Rare Beauty’s core message, said Mitchell.

It’s also a way to differentiate in a crowded market. The popularity of Sol de Janiero’s $38 body mists successfully showed that consumers were open to more than just traditional eau de parfums, and helped create a new category of lighter, more ephemeral and layerable scenting. Hand creams, sanitisers and serums are a big part of that, with a lower price point than most perfumes but boasting a similar smell power — Touchland’s range was created by perfumers at the famed fragrance company Givaudan, which also makes perfumes for Jean-Paul Gaultier and Diptyque. It also includes a line of body mists, while Rare Beauty’s launch was accompanied by a hair mist and body products.

Any adjacency to the world of perfume is a boon right now, said Mitchell, adding that Space NK is actively encouraging its stocked brands to think of ways to move into ancillary categories like body and hand cream, describing it as a big opportunity.

Serious Skincare

For every shopper who’s looking for eye candy, there’s another looking for something with some substance. Some of the category’s buzziest entrants talk less about experience and more about results, as consumers gain increasing awareness of how quickly the hands show signs of ageing — exposed to the elements daily, the skin on the hands is also thinner than that of the face, and so discolouration, wrinkles and uneven texture can appear faster.

Joonbyrd, a British brand founded by the dermatologist Dr. Alexis Granite offers the Confetti Sky Hand Treatment for £50 ($64), with encapsulated Vitamin E, peptides and a protein blend, which the brand says “firms and rejuvenates” the skin, while a large, lozenge-shaped bottle of Wonder-Land Hand Lotion, £55, smells like amber and is said to “defend against environment aggressors.” US-based Prequel, which is developed by the same parent company that made the popular skincare brand Naturium, offers its Hand Wrap hand cream for $14, and says it’s been developed to help stem water loss, making eczema flare-ups less likely and keeping moisture in the skin for longer. Touchland has also created slightly more premium — at $14 — hand sanitisers in its Glow Range, which it claims have wrinkle-fighting ingredients, and a gentle option better suited to sensitive skin. Mitchell said the luxury skincare-led options from La Mer and Augustinus Bader are consistent top-sellers in Space NK.

Hand care routines have also become a common sight on TikTok. While some are up to 15 steps in length and decried by commenters as superfluous, other videos, which feature less than three products garner praise and curious comments. On a video posted by the New York-based dermatologist Dr. Shereene Idriss, viewers wanted more steps, asking her which “hand retinol” or “hand masks” she would recommend.

Ultimately, Lisbona thinks the trend for hand care is just another sign of the blurring lines between wellness, self-care and traditional beauty products, expanding the definition of what beauty can be.

“We made [Touchland] a skincare formulation, we made it a fragrant experience, we added different colours to make it a self-expression experience … it’s about finding a bit of joy in every day,” she said.

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