Recently I read about a much hyped beauty brand that had created a nude lipstick shade that everyone seemed to be raving about. As someone who had spent much of last year in and out of lockdown, I was looking for something that would give me a subtle but fresh made-up look. Could this nude lippie be the answer? I thought, 'Why not?' and shelled out for shipping fees to have it sent over to me from overseas. In order to get value from my shipping cost I ordered two of the same shade - surely all those beauty bloggers couldn't have been wrong about this much-hyped lipstick?
Sadly, they were wrong. As soon as I put on the lippie I knew I'd made a mistake.
The colour looked washed out on my lips and rather than a 'nude' colour it appeared chalky on me.
The colour looked washed out on my lips and rather than a 'nude' colour it appeared chalky. I tried not to think about how much I'd spent on not one but two of the same shades of lipstick. And then it occurred to me that of course, not all lipstick shades are created equal.
I'm not the only one who struggles to find a nude lipstick shade. It's a common source of frustration for women of colour all over the world. So much so that a few women have started their own lipstick brands based off of this struggle.
In the UK, Florence Adepoju noticed a gap in the market when she was working behind a beauty counter at the age of 17.
“I realised most lipsticks were too pale for me and foundations weren’t dark enough. I was told my shade was ‘limited edition’. But my skin isn’t limited edition. I often had to turn away Black customers. The market was disregarding Black women. I wanted to change that,” she .
So she launched her own lipstick line, MDMFlow, at the age of 22, from a shed outside her parent’s house in Essex, UK.
Over in the US, two Harvard graduates were thinking the same thing. Amanda E. Johnson vented her frustration over not being able to find a perfect nude lipstick as a Black woman, to her friend K.J. Miller who'd faced similar struggles, and thus Mented Cosmetics was born.
"One night over a glass of pinot, we sat down and asked ourselves why it was so hard to find the perfect nude lipstick. That conversation sparked an idea, and that idea became the brand we are building today." The on their website reads.
has shown that women of colour actually purchase more makeup than white women. The fact remains however, that pigmented skin tones are underserved by major cosmetic brands, but things are slowly changing.
In the US, Black-owned beauty brands are . The big-daddy of them all, and the most well known brand remains Fenty Beauty, which was created by the megastar, Rhianna and launched in 2017.
The launch of Fenty was compared to a "social movement". Fashion editors and customers alike made the beauty line an instant success.
"We're all just, like, giddy over here. I knew that she was going to be thoughtful. You expect that from a woman of color coming out with a cosmetics line, but I was honestly shocked at how inclusive the line is," Julee Wilson, the fashion and beauty editor for Essence magazine said at the .
Fenty showed many mainstream cosmetic brands that women of colour were not only an underserved segment of the market, but that creating make-up for this sector could result in great commercial success. Though admittedly many of these brands still have a long way to go.
As for me, I have a couple of expensive "nude" lipstick shades sitting in a drawer going unused. I'm hoping that these remain an expensive reminder that firstly, perhaps buying makeup online you haven't tried before isn't a good idea. And secondly, next time I need to look for makeup that will compliment my brown skin rather than work against it. In order to do that I'm going to make an effort to buy from brands who think of women of colour as a priority rather than an afterthought.
