Read more in the April 2023 edition of C&T magazine or watch the full interview here.
Inclusion and diversity are major social movements across industries. In beauty, this has translated to embracing oneself, body positivity and products customized to the needs of every age, gender, skin tone and type, etc. Textured hair care, white cast-free sunscreens and multi-tonal color cosmetics are strong examples.
Of course, there is always room for improvement, as a poster presented during the recent SCC Annual Meeting demonstrated. Here, research from the University of Toledo showed how ultramarine blue could be used in color cosmetics to match deeper skin tones more realistically. In the same work, formulation tweaks to opacifiers circumvented undesired white cast on skin.
Alayna Bouie (AB), a graduate student overseeing the project, and Raihaanah Safee (RS), lead chemist on the project, explained; following is an adapted excerpt from our interview.
C&T: What initiated your study on this topic?
AB: This actually started in 2019 with a graduate student at the time came across a podcast called Fat Mascara. On it, a chemist was working on foundations for darker skin tones and really fleshing them out, making them look more realistic, using ultramarine blue, which was very interesting because no one was doing that before her.
Read more in the April 2023 edition of C&T magazine or watch the full interview here.
