Listen up bb, clean beauty and green beauty are a thing of the past. The beauty industry is becoming more eco-conscious than ever with its latest movement, blue beauty. We caught up with Nicolas Gerlier, founder of the first blue beauty brand available in the region, La Bouche Rouge, to find out everything about this new initiative.
First of all, what is blue beauty?
If clean beauty focuses on using better ingredients and green beauty ensures those ingredients are sustainably sourced, then what’s left for blue beauty? “The packaging and production process. Blue beauty looks beyond its formula to consider the planet and its ecosystem, in its entirety. That means utilising packaging materials that are upcycled and recyclable as well as refillable.”
Lipsticks from La Bouche Rouge are refillable and the lipstick mechanism is made entirely of metal.
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Did you know that “83% of water on the planet is contaminated by microplastic”? Don’t feel bad, neither did we. Other sad facts including “since 1950, only 9% of the world’s plastic waste has been recycled, 12% has been incinerated, and 80% has been released into nature” tell us that nowadays “true luxury implies sustainable objects and formulas.” It’s a total necessity as the “beauty industry is the 3rd most pollutant in terms of plastic.”
Reinventing makeup
Close your eyes and visualise the small logos embossed on your favourite lipsticks. It turns out that “a piece of non-recyclable silicone is used to make the tiny imprint.” Unfortunately, the “silicone only can be used for three lipsticks before it gets binned and sent to a landfill.” Think of how many lipsticks in the world are created using these little silicone markers. Big yikes.
“All the ingredients are cultivated with respect for the planet, in a traceable manner, as locally as possible. “
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La Bouche Rouge translates to “The Red Mouth” and also in a more ~philosophical~ sense, can be interpreted as “using your voice as a declaration of your soul.” They took note of Mama Earth’s demise and decided to “eliminate plastic from A to Z. That means, the packaging, the formulas, and the manufacturing and distribution process contain no plastic.”
What we love
The clean beauty formulas not only have buttery textures that apply like a dream but they’re also housed in refillable and recyclable cases. Btw, these aren’t just any cases you’d see on the ‘gram. La Bouche Rouge cases are made of upcycled leather from your “favourite luxury handbag brands.” They “come in a variety of shades” based on what’s currently trending in the accessories market.
You can even get the case engraved with your initials as well as symbols <3.
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The La Bouche Rouge range includes lipsticks, lip liners, lip balm and scrub, complexion sets, mascara, liners, eye shadows, eyebrow pencils, eyebrow serums, and brushes. We personally love the Noir Le Khôl Eyeliner Pencil (Dhs140, ounass.ae). It’s the *only* eyeliner pencil on the market in the world containing zero microplastics.
The “vegan makeup brushes are made in Kyoto, Japan and the inspo behind their unique shape is Japanese calligraphy.”
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If you have sensitive eyes like us, you will most likely fall in love with the Mascara Le Sérum Noir (Dhs189, ounass.ae). It’s the “first-ever mascara to come in a ~glass~ tube. The micro-plastic-free formula is so pure that you can even sleep in it.”
The top of the Mascara Le Sérum Noir is made of “plant-based bio-materials and the brush is castor plant fibers.”
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If La Bouche Rouge hasn’t impressed you enough already with their revolutionary blue beauty brand, they *also* manufacture their products in a “building that uses solar-powered, geothermal heating, which allows for three times the reduction in energy consumption. The solar panels installed on the building’s rooftop produce enough energy to cover the annual needs of forty French homes.” We can now breathe a big sigh of relief because we’re finally feeling optimistic about the future.
La Bouche Rouge is available across the region. You can find them in the UAE at Ounass and Bloomingdales.