Easing Your Way Into Clean or Organic Makeup: Part 1
How easy is it to find clean or organic makeup? VERY!
More than a decade ago, buying organic makeup meant going to places like Whole Foods to find a very limited selection and a (usually) not so pretty tester unit from which to choose. If you wanted to partake in the mineral makeup craze, this meant to a trip the Body Shop or Bare Minerals at the mall (or the airport).
In the last several months alone, some high end brands have jumped on board with a clean makeup arm to their already popular, albeit fairly expensive, traditional product line ups (Chanel and YSL). Bobbi Brown, who sold her namesake company to Estée Lauder years ago, has launched a clean brand called Jones Road Beauty. As an artist who tries to use clean or organic makeup whenever possible, I quickly purchased the Miracle Balm in Dusty Rose ($38) and about 10 makeup pencils ($25 each and the sharpener is sold separately) which can be used as foundation, concealer, eye shadow base, eye shadow and contouring, if that’s your jam. If the company is woman or minority owned and clean/organic, I am even more likely to buy products to see if they will become staples in my kit.
Finding affordable, clean and/or organic makeup is becoming easier. Organic makeup contains no preservatives, so it has an extremely limited shelf life. “Organic” makeup tends to be pricier than “clean” makeup. Paying more for something that you may not use everyday is probably not the best way to go. However, there are some clean brands that are relatively inexpensive and, for staples that you would use everyday, they might be worth considering.
Major drugstore brands like Maybelline are also now coming out with “clean” makeup like some of their competitors who were already selling some clean makeup products (Neutrogena, Physician’s Formula and Almay), making it easier and easier to find clean makeup without trying too hard.
As a side note, a product can be clean without being organic but an organic product is always be clean and this is where reading a label comes in—start by reading the label!
The last time I was in Target, I noticed they started using their own “green” logo to indicate makeup products that are clean. Minimally, this should mean no phthalates, parabens or sodium laureth sulfate (SLES). “Clean” and “organic” are different things. Target carries the organic brand W3ll People and I feel some of it is fairly priced for organic makeup. The $20+ mascara may give some people pause because the recommended usage of mascara is three months (I know, I know) which means more than $80 a year just for mascara. The 5 pan eyeshadow palette is also around $20, so things kind of even out a bit.
The “Leaping Bunny” means the product and the ingredients that go into the product are cruelty free. This is a great start into clean and the picture of the Leaping Bunny is usually found on the back of the packaging.
What if you want to go all organic? I will touch on some great organic makeup brands (and woman owned) and where to buy them in my next blog post…