Today is International Women's Day! To celebrate this day, we are highlighting four amazing women who are currently making history in the clean beauty industry:
1. Ciara May Imani, founder of Rebundle, the first American-made plant-based braiding hair
https://rebundle.co/
Like many Black women, Ciara Imani May had struggled with itchiness while wearing her own braids. She had to get a lab analysis to figure out what was in regular, plastic-based braids, and discovered that the leading ingredient in popular braiding hair brands is polyvinyl chloride (PVC), which is classified as “potentially toxic” by the Environmental Protection Agency.
This led Ciara to develop a cleaner product for consumers - Rebundle’s braiding hair is 100% plant-based AND biodegradable.
2. Susie Wang, founder of 100% Pure, the world's first globally-patented, fruit-pigmented makeup
https://www.100percentpure.com/
While working as a product formulator and developer for prestigious cosmetics companies, Susie accidentally knocked over one of the chemicals, spilling the formulation onto the lab table. Within minutes, the chemical spill had begun to drastically warp the industrial lab table. Susie asked herself: what kind of effects could this chemical have on delicate human skin, if it could damage such a hard plastic table?
Susie discovered that not only were there hundreds of unsafe toxins being used to formulate cosmetics, but she was dismayed to find that plenty of companies claimed "no animal testing", which was mostly untrue. The cruelty free claim sometimes means that the final formula wasn't tested on animals, but the individual ingredients were.
After these upsetting experiences, Susie was inspired to start 100% PURE, a line that was exactly that: a truly 100% natural line of skincare made only with the highest quality ingredients and free of the toxic, harsh chemicals.
3. Karen Behnke, founder of Juice Beauty, an anti-aging skincare company that is fruit-juice-based and uses stem cells from fruit!
https://juicebeauty.com/
Karen’s goal was to create luxurious organic formulations that performed better than conventional beauty products. She was astounded to learn that, although the skin can absorb what is placed on it, there were very few available healthy personal care products that worked well.
Karen led an initial 5-year journey with scientists, to solve complex organic formulation challenges. Working with PhD chemists, physicians, and microbiologists to perfect Juice Beauty’s chemistry. Juice Beauty’s revolutionary formulations started with a basic premise: Karen believed that by formulating with an antioxidant and vitamin-rich organic botanical juice base, rather than PEGS/petroleum derivatives or water, and combining it with powerful skincare ingredients, would yield better results than conventional or natural products. Multiple clinical testing proved her right.
4. YOU!
Consumers are the drivers of industry. While the beauty industry still has a long way to go before it is completely free of ingredients that are harmful to women, we are so happy to see that more and more women are rejecting traditional products that are formulated with toxic chemical ingredients. We also love that women are rejecting the concept of beauty "standards" in favor of natural beauty products that make you feel great about the self that you already are :)
Happy International Women's day ladies!