When my first book, Gorgeously Green, launched on Oprah in 2008, there were just a handful of green beauty products on the market. Actually, some of the pioneers, who are still going strong today, were part of that handful! And many of them feature in my 8th Annual Gorgeously Green Beauty Awards.
I had the idea for Gorgeously Green over ten years ago. Around that time I discovered that all was not well with the crazy expensive night creams I was saving up for. I dug deeper. And then I found out that all was not well with virtually all the mainstream skin care brands that I had been using for years. I couldn’t believe it! Not only were many of the ingredients useless fillers, but many of them weren’t particularly great for my health either. It struck a deep chord within: The one area of my life that was about self-care, the one area of my life that I thought was doing me good (and smelled lovely), the one area of my life that made soothed me when all around me was chaotic – and that area was now not good for me???
Beautification by way of cosmetics and skin care should be healthy, and so when I wrote my first book, I set out on a mission to educate women like myself (who love beauty products), and to discover green brands that really work. That was the one thing that gave a lot of women pause: it’s all very well to look for clean beauty products, but I’m not really interested if they don’t work! This was the marketing engine that I was up against because those small brands didn’t have the likes of J Lo behind them.
So, I made it my business to pull formulations apart, and to learn about every single ingredient, good and bad. And for the past 8 years, I have reviewed thousands of beauty products. This is why I created The Gorgeously Green Beauty Awards. I felt that it was time to award the star players in each category, and bring them to your attention.
How I review
As a natural beauty editor, I try to give every single product that lands on my desk a fair trial. So, many different aspects come into play. Since I am in the “mature/dry” skin category, I’m a tough customer. The product has to work for me on so many levels. If the brand/product is geared to toward a different skin type, it gets handed off for testing to one of my younger assistant beauty editors. This is what we consider:
- What is the texture like?
- The scent?
- How green is it (there are different shades of green when it comes to products)?
- What are it’s star ingredients, and why are they in there?
- Does it do what it says it’s going to do? (This is a big one!)
- What is it’s shelf-life, stability?
- Ratio of active and inactive ingredients
- Brand ethics
- Packaging
Each product gets taken on a road trip by one of my team, or myself. We don’t just smear the product on and see how it feels after a few minutes. A “road trip” means weeks or even months of trying that particular product.
We are very fussy. We have a strict criteria as to the products that we will even consider trying in the first place. Many get turned away. So, brands that have even made it into our nomination process are all amazing. Since I wrote my first book, a few databases have sprung up that rate products according to their “hazards” or toxicity. While I keep a watchful eye on all of these databases, I am also aware that there is sometimes both flawed reasoning, and out-of-date rating scores. For this reason, I make my own determinations based on years of peer-reviewed research. You can be rest assured that I will never recommend or review a product that poses a threat to your health.
Now, here’s what I want YOU to do: VOTE!!!!!
