A quiet revolution is unfolding on the beauty shelf. The entries and indeed winners of this year’s Pentawards, the world’s leading competition dedicated to packaging design, that stayed in mind weren’t just visually stunning but intuitive, inclusive, and genuinely human. It appears that beauty has entered its era of empathy.

Among the winners, the message was clear: form and feeling now speak the same language. Materials, mechanisms, and meaning are working together, implying that the most contemporary form of luxury resides in its sensitivity to the individual who is experiencing it.

Beauty with Substance

Our Diamond winner for 2025 was Tilt by Established. It epitomizes how inclusive design has evolved from a niche concern to a creative frontier. Five years in the making, Tilt became the first makeup line certified by the Arthritis Foundation for Ease of Use, signalling that accessibility can be as aspirational as luxury.

Every aspect of the range was reimagined for real-world use. Silicone-coated surfaces improve grip, shorter balanced applicatorsreduce hand tremors, and soft-close magnets remove the friction of traditional packaging. Even the Atkinson Hyper-Legible typeface, created by the Braille Institute, ensures that text is readable for users with low vision.

Crucially, the final result does not feel utilitarian or clinical, which might suggest it’s addressing a physical ‘deficit’ in some way and inducing shame. Instead, it is refined, tactile, and confidently inclusive. Tilt demonstrates that functionality can enhance, rather than diminish, desirability. In this case, accessibility becomes a form of elegance, setting a new standard for both aesthetic and functional design. 

Designing Beauty’s Afterlife

Environmental innovation in beauty is equally celebrated this year with the winner of the Sustainable Category. Vivomer Dropper by Shellworks addressed one of cosmetics’ most persistent waste culprits — the pipette dropper — which is traditionally made from unrecyclable combinations of glass, rubber, and plastic. Shellworks replaced these materials with Vivomer, a bio-based compound grown by microorganisms that is plastic-free, fossil-free, and fully home-compostable.

Despite its radical construction, the dropper feels reassuringly familiar: smooth, weighty, and precise. Within 52 weeks of disposal, it completely breaks down, leaving no trace behind. In blending high performance with circular design, Shellworks has made sustainability feel sensual — and quietly luxurious.

Recasting Tired Beauty Tropes

If Tilt embodies precision, L’ENTROPISTE – Master of Disorder by CENTDEGRES turns dissonance into a design strategy by challenging the traditional approach to building luxury fragrance, from visual language to its underlying structure.

Instead of viewing packaging as a polished vessel, CENTDEGRES crafted an experience that reflects the perfume’s volatile personality. The shape, typography, and layered finishes are intentionally unbalanced, guiding the eye to tension rather than symmetry. It’s innovation through emotional design, redefining luxury as something experiential and unpredictable. By embracing contradiction, the concept conveys a more modern idea of beauty that’s expressive, imperfect, and vibrant. This is certainly a break from the mold. 

Meaning in the Material

Across the board, this year’s Pentawards winners show how the beauty sector is shifting from visual excess to emotional intelligence. Heavy glass and ornate finishes are making way for designs that focus on connection and conscience.

These projects signify a shift from form to meaning. Beauty packaging serves as a medium that conveys care, values, and inclusivity. Whether through Tilt’s ergonomic engineering, L’ENTROPISTE’s creative disruption, or Vivomer’s bio-innovation, design has become a language for ethics as much as aesthetics.

For brands, this shift indicates that a new measure of luxury is awareness. A beautiful product isn’t just one that looks good, but one that feels considered in how it’s held, how it’s made, and what it leaves behind.

At its core, the 2025 Pentawards highlight a new form of creativity driven by empathy. These designs go beyond decoration to connect with genuine human experience. Accessibility turns into innovation, and sustainability becomes storytelling.

As one Pentawards spokesperson noted during the ceremony, “This year’s winners prove that packaging is not just something to look at — it’s something to live with. They lead the way in accessibility, sustainability, and aesthetic intelligence.”

It’s a fitting remark for a year when the industry’s most admired work didn’t just adorn the surface, but redefined the connection between beauty, design, and humanity itself.

The future of beauty packaging, it appears, will be as emotionally intelligent as it is visually striking — and that seems like progress worth celebrating.

About the Author

Chloe Scanlan is Marketing Manager at the Pentawards.