I was one of them, and I’m not the type who usually flocks to stores for product drops. Lines from Fashion Fair, IMAN, Shiseido, MAC, and others predate the singer’s effort by decades, but her brand stands out for spawning various social media hashtags, news stories about the darkest shades selling out, and an outpouring of mostly brown and black women into Sephora to try Fenty for themselves. I mention Desmond to show that even Rihanna is not a pioneer when it comes to makeup for women of color. It guts me to think about how long the struggle for black women to find suitable makeup spans. Back in the 1940s, (that’s right - the ’ 40s) Desmond sold makeup powders designed to “ enhance dark complexions.” The dearth of beauty products for black women motivated Desmond, who’d studied under legend Madame C.J. Viola Desmond, known as the Canadian Rosa Parks for refusing to leave the whites-only part of a Nova Scotia theater, was a beauty entrepreneur. Damn near everyone can shop the brand - from people with albinism to those with the deepest sable skin.įenty has sparked an important conversation about diversity in the beauty industry, but the discussion isn’t new. Fenty made Time magazine’s list of the 25 best inventions of 2017 for offering shades to a wide range of women. The term, of course, refers to the unprecedented success of Rihanna’s beauty line, which dropped this fall and included foundation shades in 40 colors. The move didn’t come across as a genuine effort to serve women of color, but a ploy to capitalize on what some in the industry have dubbed “ the Fenty effect.”
But when the news broke Wednesday that Kylie Cosmetics was releasing a new line of “Skin Concealers” that includes several brown shades, I rolled my eyes. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here. The archives will remain available here for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox.
Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years.
0 kommentar(er)
