Why Vegan Makeup Is Beauty's Next Big Thing
There are fish scales in your mascara and crushed beetles in your lipstick. Your favorite lip balm might be made from a fatty substance extracted from sheep's wool. And then there's the matter of animal testing. Feeling queasy yet? Animal products and byproducts have been used for beauty treatments since the days of Cleopatra's milk baths—but a growing movement is aiming to change just that. All signs point to a vegan makeup revolution—and it's happening right before your well-mascared eyes.
Vegan makeup is booming: a report from August estimates that by 2025, vegan makeup will be a $20.8 billion business. It's poised to be the biggest beauty trend in 2019—but its roots actually started about three years ago. Back in 2016, Kat Von D Beauty announced it would reformulate all of its products to be vegan. Then in March 2018, cool-girl favorite Milk Makeup reformulated a few of their existing products so they could claim the brand was now entirely 100 percent free of animal products like beeswax or carmine. Unilever's Dove brand also the earned PETA cruelty-free certification this year. And by 2020, any cosmetics or ingredients tested on animals will be illegal in the state of California; and prestige beauty brand Hourglass Cosmetics will also be entirely vegan. But by far the most shocking news came in November, when drugstore goliath Covergirl announced it had earned the Leaping Bunny seal and was now the largest makeup brand to be certified cruelty-free.
But like all buzzwords in beauty—organic! natural! green!—the definition of vegan makeup is mired in controversy. First of all, vegan isn't synonymous with natural, organic, or even cruelty-free (in fact, vegan makeup can sometimes be even more chemically-processed). A lipstick could be free of animal-derived ingredients yet still be tested on animals somewhere during the production process. Or a lipstick could be totally vegan, made by a cruelty-free brand, but that brand is owned by a larger beauty conglomerate that tests on animals. To make matters even more complicated, the aforementioned beauty conglomerate could itself be cruelty-free—but they sell their products in countries like China and Brazil, where government regulations require animal testing on imported cosmetics. Hardcore vegans won't touch products from certain vegan beauty brands—or even shop in the most well-know beauty specialty store in the world—because of the sins of their parent companies. But for the rest of us who are just trying to live a more compassionate lifestyle, the choice of where your money goes is an entirely personal one.
Whereas performance, wear, and texture can suffer with super-clean makeup compared to the more chemical-y stuff, there is no sacrifice when it comes to wearing vegan makeup. The eyeliners are just as inky as non-vegan ones, the lipsticks just as long-wearing, and the eyeshadow just as glittery—all without utilizing a single animal-derived ingredient. The only way to know for sure if your makeup is vegan is to become an eagle-eyed ingredient label reader. Makeup that is all-natural, organic, and otherwise good for the environment will often utilize animal-derived conditioners and binders like beeswax and lanolin. Other common non-vegan buzzwords: carmine, squalene, oleic acid, glycerine, and collagen.
The point is, you don't have to be a vegan to wear vegan makeup. Any beauty brand that is trying to make a difference for animal welfare should be celebrated and championed. To do so, we tapped vegan fashion and beauty influencer Vanessa Hong of the Haute Pursuit and a few adoptable puppies and kittens from the ASPCA to showcase some of the boldest beauty ideas for 2020 (created using only vegan and cruelty-free makeup).
GLITTER STARBURST
GOTH GLAM
GOLDEN HOUR
GOING GRAPHIC
EXTRA DEWY
Photography by Ruo Bing Li. Model Vanessa Hong @ Society. Hair by Brittan White. Makeup by Liset Garza. Special Thanks to ASPCA.
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