The concept of clean beauty, while incredibly buzzy, has also become a loaded phrase in the last few years. Today, you’ll see many brands (including Doré) touting themselves as clean. But what exactly does clean beauty mean?
Part of the confusion around what clean beauty actually means is that there isn’t one clearly defined set of standards that establish what clean is. And while places like the EU have strongly regulated the beauty space for consumer health and safety, the FDA still has a lot of catching up to do. This has led to brands or retailers having to define what clean means to them, making it tricky for us to know what that means from brand to brand, or retailer to retailer. For some, it means that ingredients are natural or organic. For others it means they’re non-toxic. Sometimes sustainable and ethical sourcing also gets lumped into clean.
For Doré, our philosophy around clean is focused on the health and safety of our community. We want to make sure that when you use our products, you know they are safe. A lot of the chemicals in personal care products that were released decades ago have now been studied for long enough to know that some of them may be related to different allergies or diseases. That doesn’t mean all chemicals are bad - there are many synthetic ingredients on the market that have been tested and are proven to be safe for use in personal care products, and can often add stability and efficacy to skincare formulas, but we like formulating with that knowledge in mind. This is why all Doré products are EWG Verified (you can learn more about EWG Verified here.) We rely on EWG for the latest research in this space to hold us to their high standard of safety. In addition to eliminating ingredients of concern, EWG Verified products also must meet EWG’s standard of transparency in labeling and ingredient information, and commit to using good manufacturing practices.
To that end, we don’t believe that just because something is natural or organic that it’s better for you - we often give the example of a mushroom that could poison you, or irritants like poison ivy. In our experience, sometimes all natural products can exacerbate sensitivities or lose their stability and lead to product contamination. That’s why we like to differentiate between clean and natural.
In addition to EWG Verified, we also look to our partners at Credo Beauty who have raised the bar for defining clean beauty in retail. Credo’s Clean Standard takes into account safety, sourcing, ethics, sustainability and transparency and they are one of the retailers to most clearly defining and communicating their clean standard. We are proud to meet Credo’s Clean standard in addition to our EWG Verification.
Lastly, our products are manufactured in France, so in addition to the clean standards outlined above, we’re also held to EU regulatory standards for beauty and personal care.
So whether you’re shopping Doré, going to Credo or exploring another brand, it’s important to get clarity into how they define clean, and also to define what clean needs to mean to you to feel safe in your skincare.
