EP63. How Parabens kickstarted the Indie Beauty Movement

05/06/21 • 22 min

Green Beauty Conversations by Formula Botanica

Parabens is a collective name for a group of chemicals used as preservatives in consumer products such as food, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. They have been synthesised in labs for almost 100 years. So far then, parabens seem quite boring ingredients.

But, in just under two decades, parabens have become the bogeymen of the beauty industry, pitting at times the mainstream personal care industry and science against indie beauty, the media and beauty consumers. Even someone with just a passing interest in the personal care industry is bound to have heard about parabens in cosmetics products.

Just take a look at row of cosmetics on any drugstore shelf these days and you're likely to come across a good many brands sporting the words 'paraben free' on their packaging; even though in some places, like the EU, it is considered unfair competition. Parabens are permissible in cosmetics in the EU at regulated levels.

If they have been known of and in use since the 1920s, surely we know a great deal about their possible side effects in our consumer goods like cosmetics? When and why did consumers' parabenoia, as we call it, take hold and is the vilification of parabens justified? In this episode, Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier, a biologist and Chartered Environmentalist, digs deep into paraben science, history and hysteria. She takes a neutral standpoint to dissect the facts from the fiction.

Lorraine talks us through the controversy and timeline as parabens moved out of science labs into media stories provoking a crisis in beauty consumer confidence and on to their pivotal moment in pioneering the indie beauty movement.

This is the episode to listen to if you've ever wanted to get behind the headlines and truly understand the furore over parabens in cosmetics. Will parabens continue to coexist with natural, paraben-free beauty? Has indie beauty been too hard on them? Lorraine presents the debate, but only you can decide.

In this episode on parabenoia, you will:

Find out that the defining moment for parabens was research published in 2004 showing that parabens had been found in breast cancer tissue. While no evidence of causal linkage was provided by this research, from then on, parabens were vilified by many as 'toxic chemicals'.
Learn that no scientific evidence has yet suggested that all parabens need to be removed from cosmetics but that the lack of concrete evidence hasn’t shifted public opinion on parabens.
Hear that since the outcry over parabens, a long list of chemicals used in cosmetics including Sodium laureth sulfate, phthalates and PEG compounds were added to those to avoid in personal care - often to the disdain of cosmetic scientists.
Discover that first the DIY beauty movement and then early entrant natural beauty brands emerged as consumers sought to avoid buying 'nasty chemical-laden' beauty products.
Early indie beauty products often couldn't compete with mainstream products in terms of performance. This gave big beauty leverage - and so the two camps of natural and mainstream cosmetics became even more divided and not only over the paraben issue.

Key take-aways include:

Thanks to the paraben saga and its aftermath, consumers are far more aware of science's role in cosmetic formulation and are sceptical of claims whether made by mainstream or indie beauty brands.
Indie beauty/natural beauty are coming of age and realising they need to present the inherent benefits of natural cosmetics rather than live off scaremongering and using 'free-from' claims.
The paraben story has now come full circle as mainstream cosmetics giants and ingredients manufacturers are ploughing research into natural ingredients and products and also listening to and even investing in indie beauty brands.
Parabens and their fellow decried chemicals not only created the indie beauty sector but also changed the mainstream too - time will tell just how defining parabens have been to both camps in the beauty industry!

In this episode on parabenoia, you will:

Find out that the defining moment for parabens was research published in 2004 showing that parabens had been found in breast cancer tissue. While no evidence of causal linkage was provided by this research, from then on, parabens were vilified by many as 'toxic chemicals'.
Learn that no scientific evidence has yet suggested that all parabens need to be removed from cosmetics but that the lack of concrete evidence hasn’t shifted public opinion on parabens.
Hear that since the outcry over parabens, a long list of chemicals used in cosmetics including Sodium laureth sulfate, phthalates and PEG compounds were added to those to avoid in personal care - often to the disdain of cosmetic scientists.
Discover that first the DIY beauty movement and then early entrant natural beauty brands emerged as consumers sought to avoid buying 'nasty chemical-laden' beauty products.
Early indie beauty products often couldn't compete with mainstream products in terms of performance. This gave big beauty leverage - and so the two camps of natural and mainstream cosmetics became even more divided and not only over the paraben issue.

Key take-aways include:

Thanks to the paraben saga and its aftermath, consumers are far more aware of science's role in cosmetic formulation and are sceptical of claims whether made by mainstream or indie beauty brands.
Indie beauty/natural beauty are coming of age and realising they need to present the inherent benefits of natural cosmetics rather than live off scaremongering and using 'free-from' claims.
The paraben story has now come full circle as mainstream cosmetics giants and ingredients manufacturers are ploughing research into natural ingredients and products and also listening to and even investing in indie beauty brands.
Parabens and their fellow decried chemicals not only created the indie beauty sector but also changed the mainstream too - time will tell just how defining parabens have been to both camps in the beauty industry!

Previous Episode

EP62. Defining Conscious Beauty

Over the three years of the Green Beauty Conversations podcast, we have looked critically at almost all trending catchwords, phrases and terms used in the beauty industry. Clean, green, waterless, zero waste, upcycled, microbiome, essential, raw and blue beauty are just some we've covered. A term very much on the rise in early 2021 is conscious beauty.

And who better to define conscious beauty than The Conscious Beauty Union; an entity committed to informing and guiding beauty professionals such as makeup artists, beauticians and salon practitioners on how to make sound, informed conscious choices about the cosmetics they buy, use or promote?

In this episode, host and Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier talks to the three co-founders of The Conscious Beauty Union (CBU) - Khandiz Joni, Tahira Herold and Lou Dartford - to find out not only about the CBUs' role but also to drill into the fine print on conscious beauty, and in particular what it means to the wider industry as well as beauty consumers.

The Conscious Beauty Union is an informal education platform helping beauty professionals develop sustainable practices but its voice should resonate with anyone engaged in beauty. The CBU defines conscious beauty as making informed choices about one product over another by knowing as much as we can about its full lifecycle.

While sustainable beauty is about looking at perhaps single aspects of a brand or product, such as the packaging or how a key ingredient is harvested, conscious beauty takes a holistic, global view. Conscious beauty examines categories that go beyond sustainability. The aim is for us all, from beauty industry insiders to consumers to be able to make conscious beauty purchases based also, for example, on a brand's transparency, promotion of inclusivity and its ethics.

In this episode on conscious beauty, you will:

Find out about the key differences between conscious beauty and sustainable beauty;
Discover that conscious beauty is about giving us the information to start our own journey of travel towards making better beauty consumer choices and is not a prescriptive way of engaging with beauty products;
Realise that conscious beauty will mean different things to different people; our ability to put conscious beauty into practice will vary with location and budget and, in the case of beauty professionals such as makeup artists or salon practitioners, with the role of beauty products in their jobs; and
Find out that conscious beauty can mainstream if we all make steps to start asking questions everyday about our beauty purchasing habits and about the beauty brands we use.

Key take-outs include:

The Conscious Beauty Union offers an educational platform and movement to help beauty professionals (and others) start to ask the questions to make conscious choices about their beauty buying and usage habits. It has member-only advice, educational webinars, articles and other training and information as well as invaluable free resources on its site.
We should celebrate and feel proud as beauty consumers, professionals and brands of the small wins on our journey to more conscious beauty rather than feel guilty about how we engaged with and used perhaps less ethical or sustainable beauty products in the past.
We need to accept what we can do with the information we have at the time on a product or brand and lever that to motivate us to educate also our own audiences and circles, whether friends and family or beauty industry colleagues, partners and customers.

Next Episode

EP64. In Conversation with May Lindstrom

May Lindstrom, CEO and founder of cult LA-based indie beauty brand that carries her name, mother of two young children, and partner in business with her CFO husband, joined us for a remarkable episode of Green Beauty Conversations.

If you know May Lindstrom, the chances are it is through her brand's fabulously coloured Blue Cocoon Beauty Balm Concentrate; a product that has seen many a copy-cat. This episode of Green Beauty Conversations only touches on this hero product because it is the truly unique, quiet and mindful way May Lindstrom has built her business that caught our attention.

In some ways, May's personal journey to starting 'May Lindstrom the brand' resonates with many founders in the indie, natural beauty space. She has hypersensitive skin and spent her childhood to early twenties desperately seeking ways to alleviate a raft of skin problems triggered by using synthetic ingredients in mainstream personal care.

But, this is where May Lindstrom's backstory parts ways with other indie beauty founders. A childhood amidst nature and parents who taught her to see magic in the great outdoors, gave May her lasting sense of responsibility to humanity and nature.

Her formative experiences and deeply-rooted personal philosophies drove the brand at start up, and still do today even as it has reached iconic status. Interestingly, May, ever a creative child, became an art student, model and make-up artist but had once set her sights on becoming a chef with her own restaurant. May is not called 'The Skin Chef' for nothing.

Her products are renowned for their high-quality, ethically- and sustainably-sourced ingredients. May takes obsessive care in sourcing natural botanical cosmetic ingredients directly from trusted, vetted farmers and other suppliers just as if she were cooking with them and nourishing her own family from within.

In this podcast, host and Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier reveals the May Lindstom behind her now celebrity status to discover a truly atypical, indie beauty brand founder. May puts sourcing the highest quality ingredients before growth and people most certainly before profit, is unphased by copy-cat products and will pull out of big retailers even when profitable if they can't support her brand in line with her high standards.

As she says, with each product having her name on it, May Lindstrom is still a very personal business with all the good times and the difficulties that come with keeping things relatively small in a very big, profit-driven industry. Listen in for a chance to hear how May Lindstrom founder and brand thrive by bucking the beauty industry normal.

In this episode with May Lindstrom, you will hear:

How in formulating for her own skin issues and for individual clients with severe skin problems gave May her expertise in ingredients and how to make products effective, but that skincare needs also and as importantly to be sensorial, magical and beautiful and take you to a different space.
Why May deliberately formulated a capsule collection beauty range rather than felt pressured to continually release new products. 'Choice can be paralysing', May says. A multitasking, smaller range is also in line with the current minimalism trend in skincare.
Why your customer's opinion comes first. Listen directly to clients about what they like or don't in a formula and reformulate to respond to their needs. Do this rather than pump out new stock to suit retailers (who often don't have the systems in place to sell your current stock well before its Best Before dates anyway!).
How May Lindstrom retains complete control over her company to ensure they own the entire manufacturing process. 'Ingredient integrity' is of paramount importance to indie beauty brands if they wish to differentiate. Outsourcing means you often lose control over the provenance of your ingredients and you won't know how they went from seed to skincare.
Why May doesn't like to focus on categories such as 'green', 'clean' beauty. Her philosophy is to make skincare with kindness that connects people to themselves and helps them find their own kind of beautiful. This approach underpins all her formulations.

Key take-outs include:

If you think of sustainability as just packaging, you are so far behind! May Lindstrom ensures every aspect of the company seeks to operate sustainably; by paying a living wage (and in line Los Angeles rates); hand selecting ingredient suppliers and farmers who run ethical, sustainable businesses; and drilling down into the provenance of every component in their operations.
A successful beauty business needs to change lives, not just turn a profit. Ask yourself why you are doing what you are doing, and if it lifts others up either changing their skin and/or changing their relationshi...