Advertisements
This blog post I started ages ago for a blogging competition that I never ended up joining or submitting a post for. As I wasn’t happy with the original post that I did. And since then the topic keeps popping up in my head so I thought I would revisit the topic. That topic was “Designing for the Future.” So these are all things I would personally love to see all beauty brands incorporate in the future.
- Recyclable Packaging: One thing I would love all brands to embrace is using recycled material in their packaging. It’s better for the environment and makes me really want to try out the brand if I learn they do this. And not enough brands do this currently.
- Cruelty Free: Technology has advanced so much these days and there are plenty of ways to test out products without using animals. Those poor animals in a lot of places often are abused or tortured for this testing. It’s not needed so I really hope more brands go cruelty free. Hell, I would prefer if the globe just outlawed the practice all together. Then it wouldn’t be a question on who is cruelty free and who’s not. Because everyone would have to be.
- More Shades: This is something I’ve started really paying attention to when brands launch new concealers, contour and highlight combos, and foundations. Often they are all very limited in their shade range with only like 10 to 15 shades and typically only focused on the middle range of skin tones. I border on the very light shade of skin tones, often the lightest shade is too dark or just close enough that with a little bronzer I can play it off like it’s correct. But the same is happening on the other side of the shade range, if not worse. There are hardly any deep shades and if they do have some they don’t cover that entire scale just the lightest of the deeper spectrum. Which is messed up. And I don’t want to hear people saying, “Well POC can just go to brands that do cover their skin tone.” That’s wrong, why should they have to go out of their way to find a brand that does support them. We’re all human and the spectrum isn’t just semi-pale to tan. It goes from basically pure white to pure black. Cover everyone along with every undertone. We all aren’t warm toned, there’s also neutral and cool. Pink and yellow undertones. Come out with the full spectrum. Sure it may be easier to produce 10 to 15 shades, but sweetie it’s 2017 there’s more than just that.
- Ethically Sourced/Fair Trade Ingredients: Makeup is more than just the final product. The materials that go into making a product are huge. And some of those ingredients such as sandalwood have a lot of shady practices around them in how they are harvested. We should be focused on regulating those practices and ensure those people who are harvesting the product are getting fair pay for what they are doing. Which isn’t happening everywhere. So we need to ensure that beauty brands are following fair trade practices and ethically sourcing their ingredients.
- Child Labor: I honestly used to think this was just a thing in the past or only a thing that happened in China since sadly a lot of backward practices are happening there. But it’s still something around and needs to end. Not just in the beauty community but every community. Just because they are “cheap labor” doesn’t mean that we should treat them horribly. They are going to be the future and the conditions where they are forced to work is not safe for them.
What would you love to see companies do in the future to make the beauty community and world a better place?
