For busy fashionistas, products do double duty

Some beauty aids claim to boost energy, sex appeal, and weight control with their scents. (Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff)

When Joey Chancis, creator of the Joey New York cosmetic line, began thinking about a new lip product, she looked to herself for inspiration.

"I was struggling to take off my baby weight," she explained. "That's when I realized we should focus on something like this."

The entrepreneur began investigating aromachology - the study of the influence of aromas on behavior - and last year launched lipFIT, a line of balms, glosses, and lipsticks that claim to suppress appetite through an aromatic blend of ingredients including peppermint, grapefruit, and spearmint.

The response, she said, was instant. "It's been flying off the shelves," Chancis said. "People really like this because it's not so scary or medicinal. It's really just a natural way to have the brain tell you what to do."

Multipurpose beauty products used to mean a little sunblock in foundation or perhaps some moisturizer in a lipstick. But now, more cosmetic companies are offering mulitasking beauty products: body wash that doubles as shampoo, lip glosses packed with vitamins. It makes sense: Time-pressed consumers buy one product that purports to do the work of two or three, and cash-strapped style mavens get more bang for their buck.

All in the name of beauty - and commerce, of course.

"We have definitely seen a strong increase in multiuse products, particularly on the makeup side," said Karen Grant, senior beauty analyst at consumer and market research firm NPD. In part, Grant attributes the uptick to the increasing pace of women's lives: "One of the things that we've seen that as our lives get more and more busy, it translates into your beauty products." Such goods, she says, are merely one more example of consumer demand for multipurpose products, like cellphones that double as cameras or drugstores that stocks food.

Some of these products promise the world in a tiny tube. The new Too-Faced Fuze Slenderize Guilt-Free Lip Gloss claims, for example, to jump-start the metabolism and boost energy levels through a blend of vitamins, amino acids, and plant extracts.

The gloss, which comes in three flavors - blueberry raspberry, dragonfruit lime, and strawberry melon - is an offshoot of the popular Fuze Slenderize energy drinks. (This road tester's confession: a swipe of the blueberry-raspberry gloss didn't exactly deter the night's calamari-and-french-fry consumption, but it was a great gloss: smooth, unsticky, and with a sheer, flattering color.) The gloss, which retails for $18.50, is sold at Sephora stores.

Philosophy's 3-in-1 shampoo, shower gel, and bubble bath weren't explicitly designed to suppress appetites. But after the company released a series of products scented like strawberry milkshake, key-lime pie, and vanilla birthday cake, customers wrote in, praising the company for (inadvertently) satisfying their sweet tooth.

(In a multitasking aside: several of the 3-in-1 products also include a recipe on the bottle, though the shampoos are not to be consumed. The one scented like a melon daiquiri includes, yes, a melon daiquiri recipe. Same with mimosa, coconut frosting, and the aforementioned birthday cake.) Priced at $10-$16 a bottle, they're available at Sephora or at philosophy.com.

Joey New York, in addition to lipFIT, also offers two other aromachology formulas, which together make up its Urges Collection. LipNIX, a blend of lemon, geranium, and helichrysum aromas, claims to help curb the urge to smoke, while cinnaMEN, redolent of vanilla and cinnamon, purports to lure males. (Cost: $12-$25, available at joeynewyork.com.)

Sound like a lot snake-oil science? Rachel Herz, visiting assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and the author of "The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell," says that certain scents can indeed trigger an emotional response that, in turn, can affect how we behave. (Herz, by the way, developed Scentology, her own line of boosted fragrances, based entirely on published research demonstrating the effects of certain fragrances on mood and behavior.)

Still, Herz thinks a good advertising campaign doesn't hurt either.

"The real truism when it comes to these sorts of products is that the marketing message is really effective," Herz said. She adds that an individual's response to a particular scent varies widely and can depend on both personal and cultural experiences.

Chancis counters that when the Urge Collection was first launched, a noted beauty editor called her to say the lipNIX gloss had finally helped her quit smoking.

And as for the cinnaMEN product, "There was a customer who told me that she was at the gym and she had the lip gloss on," Chancis said. "A guy friend came over and gave her a hug, and he said 'Oh my God, you smell so good. What is that?'

"The next thing you know, he's bringing over five guys to talk to her."