At Abu Dhabi Beauty Week, we got the chance to talk to Amy Hanbury, the founder of Odist. Odist is a home-grown beauty brand here in the UAE that was born to bring the community together, and shine a light on people with really hopeful messages. They created abrush range with three exclusive vegan brush types.

We also spoke with Anisha Oberoi, who is all about empowering small businesses in the sustainability world, and the founder of Secret Skin. She gave us her heart warming story about how Secret Skin came to life. Secret Skin was launched just 16 weeks ago – mid covid, may I add. When Anisha moved to the UAE two years ago, she was coming up on her 10-year anniversiry of being in remission from breast cancer. She created her baby (Secret Skin) because during chemotherapy, it was difficult to find products that didnt have harmful carcinogens or ingredients that wouldnt disrupt her hormones and affect her fertility. She took her frustration and turned it into her inspiration to create a brand that stands for true authenticity and benefits the greater good. Secret Skin is an e-commerce platform that connects consumers in the Middle East to sustainable brands from around the world.

Lets get into more deets from the panel, shall we… 

Milli: We’ve mentioned sustainability, vegan, cruelty free, are they all the same thing? What actually is clean beauty?

Anisha (SS): Clean beauty is a term that is used to categorize products that are formulated without harmful or potentially harmful ingredients that go into them; sulphates, preservatives that are synthetic. Things that could potentially harm pregnant women or even women that aren’t pregnant. So the companies that make these products are also very particular about the fact that they are sourcing ethically, the brands are cruelty free, there’s no animal by-product, and things are at a very high level of product integrity. So clean beauty, because the term is so unregulated because there’s clean, there’s natural, there’s organic, and so it really confuses the customer, but the formulation really has nothing harmful, instead things that are good for the safety of the individual as well as safe for the environment.

Milli: Amy, what about you, how does Odist identify as a vegan brand?

Amy (Odist): So it does kind of fall under the same category, and we can talk about clean beauty, like Anisha said, but ultimately it does come under – I know I’m putting another term into the world but good beauty essentially or conscious beauty. When you’re looking to purchase these items you are almost following a lifestyle. You are looking for the good ingredients, things that aren’t going to harm you, have a positive impact on the environment. 

Milli: It’s so interesting what you’ve said about the value chain and the supply chain because often when people hear organic or vegan or clean, they immediately think of the ingredients and that’s it, but actually the cost of transporting something here from the States or wherever it may come from is the biggest impactor of global warming and that also contributes to clean beauty and I think that’s one of the misconceptions of the clean beauty movement.

Anisha: Brands are becoming more conscious even brands like Farfetch for example; they will tell you when you checkout, you can calculate your carbon footprint when you’re ordering something. While buying clean products whether it’s from anywhere in the world – where they have the certifications that it’s clean – you will be sure that they’ve done everything that they can to help you and enable you to reduce that carbon footprint. Instead of waiting two weeks and buying from another part of the world which may have come from China because they produced it there, then they bottled it somewhere else and then they sent it here and then you bought it from a retailer, think about the carbon footprint. Brands are doing all they can in order to enable customers, because I think all customers have good intentions. I’m sure all of you want to give back to the community and people are becoming more aware about their contribution to the environment when they consumer something.

There is a much deeper knowledge that people have and brands are cleaning up their act because they realize that before the new consumer today makes a purchaser they are looking at how you represent yourself, what values you stand for, as well as, how was the product formulated, how was the processing done and also where are you sourcing your ingredients from. So brand transparency has become more important than ever and in order to understand the changing face of the beauty consumer it is also necessary to look at everything that is going on in the world today because you can’t be culturally tone-deaf to the moment of our times. These viral conversations about body empowerment, gender, colour, body shape, diversity inclusion, women’s empowerment, black lives, all of this has brought to the forefront that what good used to look like in the beginning is not the truth now. Now you are expected to normalize acne and be empower and be empowered.     

Milli: The impact this is going to have on our purchasing decisions, not least because of the travel bans that have happened and like we said actually buying home-grown makes more sense now, also because we are literally living through a pandemic, and people are more conscious now more than ever about what they are putting into their bodies and on their skin.

Amy: Absolutely, it’s health in general. We’ve seen what kind of times that were living in and maybe a year ago we never thought we would be here (still wearing masks on a panel for example) and I think anything that you can do as an individual to promote healthy living as such, were going to do. We don’t want to find ourselves in this position again. I do believe it has made us a lot more responsible as a consumer, you look at the ingredients, the carbon footprint, and you just think, realistically where our world is going to be in 10-20 years’ time if we continue to live like we are now. And actually that’s a really scary thought, but like Anisha said, its brands like ours that have put in that forefront of conversation.

Abu Dhabi Beauty Week is an 11-day celebration of the emirate’s position as a global hub of the beauty industry. Until February 14th, Abu Dhabi is playing host to incredible immersive pop-ups form leading brands, hosting masterclasses and offering brilliant discounts on your favourite brands!

Click here to play our Big Beauty Quiz. 

Click here to read for more information about Abu Dhabi Beauty Week.Â