Sustainable Beauty

Our new series spotlights some of the best new products from sustainable beauty brands.

WESTMAN ATELIER EYE WANT YOU MASCARA

While perhaps best known for an almost supernatural ability to leave her friends and clients such as Anne Hathaway, Reese Witherspoon, and Cameron Diaz with supple, luminous skin, celebrity makeup artist Gucci Westman’s greatest living legacy may be her still-evolving line Westman Atelier. She founded her namesake brand in 2018 with a vision to offer clean, truly elevated products with an efficacy still rare in the natural beauty space. She wanted to close the gap between the analytical, ingredient-sensitive skincare world and makeup development, where active ingredients were rarely considered or noticed beyond immediate visual impact. The house’s recent release, Eye Want You Mascara, embodies this holistic beauty-meets-wellness philosophy. The mascara is ideal for sensitive eyes with a plant-based filament wand and organic shea butter and carnauba and candelilla wax ink. The effect is minimal and subtle—a less-is-more æsthetic rather than overtly made-up glam–and can be built upon with additional layers for evening. It’s also nourishing—Westman’s products are never solely about the surface.

SÁNDOR GROUNDING HAIR OIL AND GUA SHA

For years before launching Sándor, named for her grandfather, editorial hairstylist Sabrina Szinay searched for a luxurious plant-based and scalp nourishing hair care. Her own carefully developed line is the end result of this process, filling a notable gap in an industry saturated in the language of sustainability and natural ingredients with few genuine options. With Sándor, working in harmony with nature is a core value. Ingredients are carefully sourced with circularity, collective needs, and nourishing, lush impact in mind. Take the Grounding Hair Oil, introduced last year. The oil combines organic argan oil and jojoba oil to seal in hydration while squalane softens. The product’s post-industrial aluminum bottle is infinitely and easily recyclable. The Gua Sha, crafted from Bian stone, which contains up to forty trace minerals and was formed some sixty-five million years ago when a meteorite landed in Shandong, China, is the perfect accompanying object. Use it to ease inflammation and improve circulation.

LESSE ESSENTIAL MOISTURIZER

There’s a beautiful minimalism to Neada Deters’s skincare line Lesse. The New York-based Filipina-Australian founded her brand in 2018 with an eye towards simple, impactful formulas based in organic, carefully sourced botanicals. The philosophy is less is more, with thoughtful ritual being centered above consumption and an overall focus on establishing new standards for the industry. Ingredients are grown with an emphasis on sustainability, ethics, and effectiveness, and these values are reflected in the newly introduced daily Essential Moisturizer, which is meant to brighten and rejuvenate the skin at any time of day or night. “Our formulas center on rare active botanicals,” explains Deters, who has experienced hyperpigmentation and sensitive skin and calls the new formulation “transformative.” “The Essential Moisturizer was developed around the miraculous benefits of Australian kakadu plum, the world’s richest source of vitamin C—and the results are heaven sent.”

TATA HARPER SKINCARE SUPERKIND BIO-SHIELD FACE OIL

Before founding her namesake skincare line in 2010, Colombia-born Tata Harper searched throughout the Northeast for a home that would also be a biodynamic farm. She eventually settled on the Champlain Valley of Vermont, where she began growing mint, meadowsweet, and more on what later became Julius Kingdom Farm. Today, the farm produces most of the ingredients for Tata Harper’s cult green products, including Vermont-native herbs like calendula, borage, and alfalfa, which form the base of the brand’s new Superkind Bio-Shield Face Oil alongside holy basil and reishi mushroom. Rich in fruit-based vitamins C and E and utilizing plant-based omega fatty acids to help strengthen the skin barrier, Harper’s skin oil is all about natural relief for stressed skin. The formulation fits within Harper’s unique approach to natural beauty, which is uncompromising in lessening its environmental impact while utilizing many organic ingredients for maximum impact on the skin.

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