About Your Skincare Brand

Transcription

1 12 Questions You Need to Ask About Your Skincare Brand With so many skincare brands on the market--especially in the natural and organic market, it can be hard to distinguish one from another. And with the all-too-common practices of brandwashing, greenwashing, and healthwashing and it s hard to know who to trust. You deserve to know what you re putting on your skin, here are 12 questions you ask about your brand, before you put it on your skin for the first time or the next time. 1. Do they disclose ALL ingredients on their product labels AND website? In the United States, companies are not required to disclose every ingredient on their labels, in their marketing, or on their website. It s common to see a list of key ingredients, but not the full ingredient deck on the company s website. They leave out some of the more questionable ingredients like surfactants, emulsifiers, and preservatives. Many companies--even brands that position themselves as organic or natural--fail to list ingredients that make up less than 1% of the product, or make up a fragrance, extract, or proprietary blend. While 1% might not seem like a lot, if an ingredient in that 1% is a potential allergen, endocrine disruptor, or even carcinogen--wouldn t you want to know you re rubbing it on your skin on a daily basis? 2. Does the company answer ingredient or safety questions willingly and directly? Or do they only provide robotic, vague, scripted responses? I recently saw an inquiry posted on a supposedly preservative-free, all natural brand s site, 2016 Holistically Haute, LLC/Rachael Pontillo All rights reserved. Page 1 of 5

2 from a concerned consumer who asked how the products are possibly safe when the first ingredient on the list is water, and there is no listed preservative. The company response was we ve ensured our product s safety. But they didn t say how. I ve also personally asked ingredient or formulation questions only to have my inquiry forwarded to a chemist, who responded with a science-y explanation that I had to Google to understand. If the product is really safe and high quality, questions about ingredients should be answered clearly, and without a runaround. 3. Does the product contain water but claim to be preservative-free? I know that free-from claims are popular these days, and that due to concerns with preservatives such as parabens, phenoxyethanol, and formaldehyde-releasing agents many people have been led to believe that products aren t safe if they contain preservatives. If a product contains water, a humectant like honey or aloe, a hydrosol, or another watercontaining ingredient it MUST have a preservative in order to be safe. Water breeds bacteria, mold, and yeast, and it does so quickly. If a preservative is not listed, it means that the product is either unsafe, or that some of the ingredients are already preserved before they re mixed into the final product, and those preservatives are not listed. The only other option is that it s using a blend of botanical ingredients that are natural preservatives (such as white aspen bark extract or honeysuckle extract), and if they are listed by their botanical names, they appear the same as any other botanical extract and a consumer wouldn t necessarily know that they are functioning as a preservative. When in doubt, contact the company and ask. 4. Does the product claim to be chemical-free? This is a greenwashing term that s become all too common. I ve got news for you--everything is a chemical. Water, air, the cells in your own body. Some chemicals are toxic, others are not. Saying a product is chemical-free is flat out false advertising, regardless of what s in the product! 5. Does the company become defensive, condescending, or even hostile when questioned about ingredients or product safety? 2016 Holistically Haute, LLC/Rachael Pontillo All rights reserved. Page 2 of 5

3 I ve had customer service reps tell me that their products have been approved by everyone from dermatologists to the American Cancer Society to Harvard chemists. Or they brag that their products have been given positive reviews by popular green beauty bloggers who only review safe, green, clean products--so therefore I shouldn t have to ask. Or they give me a lengthy explanation that because the product is made a certain way, or packaged a certain way by an expert formulator that it doesn t need a preservative or something like that. When pressed for further clarification which didn t appear on the representative s list of approved scripted responses, she d get flustered and say things like well if our chemists say they re safe, then they must be safe, because they ve been formulating for 30 years and are experts. 6. Does the company explain why they chose certain ingredients for certain products and explain how they benefit the skin? Ingredients are often put into products because they re trendy, but aren t actually formulated in a way that makes sense for the skin type they re marketed to. 7. Does the word fragrance (even natural fragrance ) or parfum (French for perfume) appear on the label? Up to 1000 individual constituents can make up a single fragrance ingredient. The majority of those ingredients are synthetic, and many are known endocrine disruptors, allergens, or even carcinogens. In fact, the #1 cause of skin irritations and allergic reactions is fragrances. Even natural fragrance blends are made with synthetics. The only truly natural fragrances are essential oils and other natural essences like C02 extract, concretes, and absolutes. And of course--companies are not required to disclose fragrance blends (they are considered proprietary/trade secrets), so a consumer will never know. I cannot tell you how many supposedly natural and organic products I ve found that still contain synthetic products. It s a lot, and some of them are very well-known brands. 8. Is the brand owned by a celebrity? There are many instances where celebrities release a skincare line, but have very little input into what actually goes into the product. The criteria for 2016 Holistically Haute, LLC/Rachael Pontillo All rights reserved. Page 3 of 5

4 ingredient selection usually has more to do with what s on trend, what the main hook is (an acne line will have acne ingredients, an antiaging line will have buzzword antioxidants and peptides, etc), but with little focus on the functional ingredients that might not be as sexy--but are equally as important. They trust the chemists to make the right decisions, but often those choices are more about the bottom line than anything else. Even some of the greener, cleaner celebrity lines have had public ingredient quality issues. 9. Is the brand endorsed by a celebrity? Celebrity endorsements literally cost a fortune, as do the types of marketing campaigns that come along (TV spots, and glossy magazine ads and store endcap displays cost MILLIONS of dollars EACH). In these brands, the bulk of the money typically goes to pay the celebrity and the ad man, not necessary into higher quality ingredients or research and development. 10. Is the person/brand behind the products actually qualified to have a skincare line? We often see former actresses and supermodels on infomercials with their glowing skin, selling their own product line that they claim is the secret to their ageless skin. OK--but do they actually know anything about the skin? Or about ingredients or formulation? Probably not. We also see wellness brands and nutrition professionals who have their own skincare brands-- but don t have knowledge of skin physiology or topical ingredients. And from the looks of their ingredient decks, they haven t consulted with an aesthetician or dermatologist either. Anyone can put their name or logo on a skincare brand these days--private labeling is really common--but it doesn t mean that the product they re selling is a quality product. 11. Has the brand been absorbed by a large corporation? We see it all the time--small artisan brands that are bought up by huge conglomerates, who then change the formulas to account for the demands of mass production. The Body Shop, Aveda, and Burt s Bees are all examples of once fairly clean brands that became laden with not-so-clean ingredients once they were sold to Big Cosmetics. It s always important to 2016 Holistically Haute, LLC/Rachael Pontillo All rights reserved. Page 4 of 5

5 read where the product was made, and distributed, and who it was made by, because how ingredients are sourced and products are made differ vastly between small artisan brands and the big guys. 12. Are the products consistent? If a company reformulates often, or discontinues products often, this is a sign of potential quality control issues within the company. Early in my practice, I carried a professional natural skincare line that I loved at first, but then had to stop carrying because I was constantly getting notifications that the products were getting reformulated. I d try the new product, and it would be so vastly different that it really affected not only my own skincare experience, but also that of my clients! It s very hard to recommend a product when you don t know what the customer s ultimately going to get in the bottle. I later found out that that company private labels nearly all of their products from several different labs, which explained the inconsistency--but left me feeling uneasy. This stuff happens--and the consumer (and even the aesthetician or sales representative) will often not be informed. These may seem like a lot of questions--i get it. It would be much easier to just keep using products you re used to or trust beauty bloggers and product reviews to get you the answers to these questions--i get that too. But knowing what you put on your skin is super important, and. And being able to have faith in and feel good about the company you re entrusting your skin s health with is equally as important. So do a bit of digging into the brand you use now, or when looking for a new brand, and see what you find. Your skin will thank you! 2016 Holistically Haute, LLC/Rachael Pontillo All rights reserved. Page 5 of 5