Clear is the new clean

Forget green, organic or even natural – it seems all we really want is transparency. Shannon Peter hunts out the new upfront beauty brigade…

From vegan to organic, clean to green, the beauty world has reached peak buzzword and, frankly, it’s left us all slightly bewildered. These markers were supposed to make our choices easier, to help us identify what is right for our skin and our morals, but just as we manage to wrap our heads around one term, another more saintly ethos appears. When it comes to beauty shopping, things have never been quite so confusing. What we really need is a revolution – and one might be on the horizon: welcome to clear beauty.

Not to be confused with clean beauty, clear beauty isn’t about staking a claim on one area of ethical beauty, it’s about providing an unprecedented level of honesty and operating with full transparency. According to new research by New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), it’s the new frontier. ‘ The time has come to replace the proverbial “mirror” with clear glass,’ the Clean Beauty Report reads. It found that nearly three-quarters of consumers want a brand to explain exactly what its ingredients do, while 42% feel they aren’t getting enough information on ingredient safety. We need to trust the products we invest in, which is why the most honest brands are catching our attention.

DAZED AND CONFUSED

No longer is it good enough to simply tell us what’s in a product – transparency isn’t just about taking us behind the red velvet curtain of the industry, it’s about ripping the curtain down altogether. Savvy consumers are now demanding full disclosure on everything, from price to ingredient percentage, sustainability to packaging materials, influencer marketing deals to the company’s stance on animal testing.

What’s driving the new demand? ‘As consumers aim to gain control of their lives by making more informed decisions, brands are at risk of losing customers due to a lack of transparency,’ reads the FIT report. ‘ What used to be a linear purchase decision has transformed into an everevolving maze.’ Undoubtedly, the 

ambiguity of beauty buzzwords is a driving force. ‘Clean beauty is an unstoppable movement, but transparency is needed because it is an unregulated sector of the market,’ says Margaret Mitchell, Space NK’S global buying director. With no legal definition, terms like ‘organic’ and ‘natural’ mean different things to different brands, making it hard to know who to trust.

It also helps that we’ve never been more clued up on beauty. ‘ Women are tired of being patronised with pseudo-science,’ reckons Victoria Buchanan, senior strategic researcher at The Future Laboratory. ‘ They are increasingly armed with unbiased knowledge delivered by their peers in the form of product reviews on forums and are educating themselves by following the expert advice of some the world’s most famous dermatologists on Instagram.’

Scepticism is at an all-time high. ‘ Years of scandal and cover-ups, things like discovering that some ingredients used habitually were known carcinogens, has all chipped away at our confidence,’ believes Alexia Inge, founder of Cult Beauty. Let’s face it, we’ve all felt duped by brands’ false advertising claims at one time or another.

A CLEARER CONSCIENCE

Thankfully, the shift has already begun. Not only are regulating bodies clamping down on rule-flouters, a new wave of clear beauty brands is attempting to reinstate our faith. The US is leading the charge: take LOLI, for example; it uses sleek infographics to denote the percentage of different ingredients on the labels of its organic skincare blends. There’s also Knours, which creates skincare to sync with your menstrual cycle and clearly explains which ingredients they count as ‘clean’ and why.

That’s not to say that the UK hasn’t

years of cover- ups have chipped away at our confidence

started to demist the clouded beauty window, too. Last year, Garnier extended its ingredients lists to include each component’s source, as part of its pledge to decode its range, and many experts cite The Ordinary, with its low-cost, highquality skincare model, as one of the original forces behind this shift. But the most radical disruptor is undoubtedly Beauty Pie. Its mark-up-free pricing structure and subscription model continues to shed light on the beauty industry’s uncomfortable cost/price disparity.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, as many new indie, start-up brands join the transparency brigade, too. The Inkey List is particularly noteworthy. This new skincare line aims to bring clarity to the ever-mystifying skincare world, by providing easy-to-understand products at crazy-affordable prices. ‘ We want to be the beauty translators of the industry,’ explains co-founder Mark Curry. ‘ There is no marketing bullshit surrounding the brand, no smoke and mirrors.’ The brand’s packaging doesn’t just list the product’s ingredients, but it also explains why each component part has been chosen, from the potent actives right down to the “filler” substances that give the formula its pleasing texture or lengthy lifespan. It comes backed by an info-heavy website, helping consumers decipher which products are best for them, and with price tags between £4.99 (for a hyaluronic acid serum) up to £9.99 (for a potent retinol formulation), The Inkey List has swapped profit margins for consumer trust.

No B.S. deserves a shout out, too. This Us-based skincare line, which has just landed at online beauty retailer Feel Unique, aims to strip back the often-convoluted skincare routine. Rather than sell us countless formulas to maximise on profits, it offers only products that it deems to be the cornerstone basics of every skincare routine.

So, is the future of beauty looking clearer? We’re undoubtedly at the start of a seismic shift, but it’s quite likely it will take a while for the clear beauty concept to infiltrate the entire industry. ‘ The sheer size and complexity of their supply chains makes transparency difficult for the big beauty players to do, but they do need to find a way to open up because reticence will send out a negative message,’ concludes Inge. So get started and add some clarity to your life with these clear beauty heroes…