New Year, new you. January often
starts with resolutions about self-improvement of mind and body. For many, that
can mean an embrace of clean beauty, in its myriad forms.
اضافة اعلان
Swiss glacier water to remove your makeup?
La Prairie can give you that for $120. Intrigued by the possible regenerative
powers offered by the microbes in Finnish forest mulch? Snap up a cleansing
cake from Luonkos for 33 euros (about $35). Curious about algae and sea kale
sunscreens, vegan lipsticks or gritty exfoliating soaps made from spent coffee
grounds? Look around and it seems as if more and more consumers are jumping on
a beauty bandwagon that promises clean skin — and an even cleaner conscience.
The research consultancy Brand essence
estimates that nearly one-third of the US market is now labeled clean, with an
increase of 12 percent expected from 2020 to 2027. Currently, clean beauty has
5.6 million hashtag views on Instagram and 1.2 billion on TikTok.
And many brands are jostling for a place in
the market, among them indie startups like Merit and Saie Beauty and major
luxury names like Dior, which released its first alcohol-free, water-based
perfume, and Stella McCartney, fashion’s eco-queen, who introduced a natural
origin skin-care line.
But what does clean beauty actually mean?“If you ask 10 different people what clean
beauty means, you’ll get 10 different answers,” said Caroline Hirons, a
prominent British skin-care influencer. When you scrape away at it, she said,
it “doesn’t really mean anything.”
Much like the murky term “sustainability”
in fashion, there is no clear definition of clean beauty — and no consensus on
the specific substances and chemicals that should be avoided or embraced. As
awareness of the lack of regulation in the beauty industry has risen in recent
years, so too has skepticism about the “clean” movement.
“If you ask 10 different people what clean beauty means, you’ll get 10 different answers.”
But growing faster still is the global
popularity of clean consumerism, as shoppers gravitate toward marketing terms
like “naturally derived”, “cruelty free”, and “nontoxic” when it comes to what
they put in — and on — their bodies (with the notable, and curious, exception
of injectables like Botox).
Where did the term ‘clean beauty’ come from?Although skin-care brands like Origins and
Aveda, early adopters of a “natural” vocabulary, appeared in the late 1980s,
the consensus is that clean beauty emerged from Southern California in the
1990s, alongside the “clean eating” trend.
As many consumers became preoccupied with
notions of wellness, some beauty companies began to promote products as
nontoxic, safe, and natural. Yet there has never been a set of legal guidelines
governing the use of such terms.
Currently, the European Union bans more
than 1,300 ingredients from use in cosmetics (though many would rarely be found
in personal care items). In the US, the Food and Drug Administration bans 11
cosmetic ingredients. Last fall, Congress introduced the Safer Beauty Bill
Package, which, if passed, will codify legal definitions for terms like
“natural” and “naturally derived” and ban ingredients like parabens and
formaldehyde. Japan, another major beauty market, has different regulatory
standards.
This means that “many brands are taking it
upon themselves to define clean beauty according to their ideals and agendas,”
said Akshay Talati, the vice president for product development in the Goop
beauty and wellness division.
Then again, there are brands that do not
want to be tarnished by the “clean” association.
Last year when she introduced Stella, her
skin-care line, McCartney told Elle UK magazine that she understood why people use the word “clean”,
“because it conjures up wonderful images of purity, but I would never use it.”
So how is it defined?Tata Harper is widely considered a
godmother of the clean beauty movement, with a cult brand of the same name. She
grew up in Colombia, where she watched her grandmother make body scrubs and
hair masks from ingredients sourced at her local market, and later trained as
an industrial engineer.
Harper started her brand in 2007, and her
products use ingredients like antioxidant-rich witch hazel, hydrating jasmine,
and plumping alfalfa extract. A 30-milliliter bottle of her elixir vitae serum,
with barley juice, borage leaf, and sea buckthorn, costs about $490.
“At the time, natural skin care was not
really made for a serious skin-care client like myself,” Harper said. “That’s
when I realized I had to create my own line because there were no options.”
Goop, the lifestyle empire founded by
Gwyneth Paltrow, is one of the movement’s most vocal advocates. It defines
clean beauty as “products made without ingredients shown or suspected to harm
human health or that of the planet.” On its website, Goop sells products under
its own name and from others, tested, it says, by its own scientists,
toxicologists, and regulatory experts for ingredients that are carcinogenic, or
are irritants or hormone disrupters.
“Goop prioritizes ingredients that are
ethically sourced, of non-animal origin, and cruelty free, and we use
sustainable or renewable bio-based sources wherever possible,” Talati said.
In an email, McCartney said that her new
skin-care line had been developed over three years and ruled out more than
2,000 ingredients, with the guidance of Quantis, a company specializing in
environmental sustainability.
“Many brands are taking it upon themselves to define clean beauty according to their ideals and agendas.”
The products are made from ingredients that
are at least 99 percent natural, like lingonberry extract (to support
elasticity and firmness) and wild harvested fulse algae (to reduce the
appearance of dark circles), which McCartney believes surpass the performance
of many conventional — or potentially controversial — ingredients.
What is so complicated?Many consumers and brands believe natural
ingredients are always better than lab-grown ones, but lab-grown ingredients
can be less water- and labor-intensive. And “natural” does not necessarily mean
safer, given how many chemicals have been proven to be safe for use on skin.
Some ingredients that are popular in
“clean” products like argan, juniper, and shea are being overharvested,
according to a report published last year by the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations. Ingredients like sandalwood, for example,
can be sourced from nature but can also be made synthetically, and companies
that do so say a major incentive is to protect the environment.
And many naturally derived ingredients do
not undergo the same safety testing as synthetic or engineered ingredients, so
they can cause irritation and allergy. Some studies have shown an uptick in
skin reactions to essential oils, for example.
So is clean beauty here to stay or just
another beauty trend?Marcia Kilgore, the founder of Beauty Pie,
a skin-care and beauty subscription service, noted the challenges for beauty
businesses of all sizes in navigating the clean beauty era.
“If you don’t put ‘clean’ on product labeling,
people assume there’s something wrong with it, but if you do, people say it’s a
scam,” she said. She does not think her customers necessarily require clean
credentials, but they do want products that are safe and produce good results,
be it from nature or a lab.
“To be clean is now just table stakes,”
said Kilgore, a veteran of the industry. “The only way to gain attention in
beauty is to claim something new. Soon it will be eclipsed by the next big
thing.”
Still, scores of indie brands are putting “clean”
values front and center, albeit alongside technological innovation — and a bit
of dirt in the process. Haeckels, based in the British seaside town of Margate,
has built a devoted following from innovations that include bio-contributing
mycelium packaging, prebiotic face masks and an odor-eating mushroom and kelp
deodorant. At a time when the environmental value of refillable bottles in
beauty is being questioned, Haeckels’ new vivomer packaging is compostable and
made from microbes that are abundant in soil and marine environments.
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