Process likely to lead to job losses and store closures, and threaten source of sales for global network of small farmers and producers
When Anita Roddick sold The Body Shop in 2006, she left behind not just a thriving cosmetics and skincare empire but living proof that a business could follow strict ethical guidelines and still make healthy profits.
But on Monday, the private equity-owned company filed the intention to appoint administrators.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Unknown artwork was barred from leaving the UK after surfacing at an auction in 2021
A painting has been saved for the UK in recognition of its “outstanding significance” for the study of race and gender in 17th-century Britain, it will be announced on Friday.
The anonymous artist’s portrait of two women – one black and one white, depicted as companions and equals with similar dress, hair and jewellery – has been bought by Compton Verney, an award-winning gallery in Warwickshire.
Continue reading...ASA reports rise in complaints about ads that mislead customers about benefits of treatments like Botox
The advertising watchdog is banning growing numbers of advertisements that exaggerate the benefits of health and beauty treatments such as Botox, lip fillers and diet aids.
The Advertising Standards Authority’s (ASA) action is part of a crackdown against beauty clinics and manufacturers of aesthetic products over how they promote themselves.
Continue reading...Longtime associate Peter Hawkings announced as successor after sale of brand last November to Estée Lauder
The American fashion designer Tom Ford is retiring from the eponymous brand he co-founded in 2005, after its sale to Estée Lauder last November.
Ford’s longtime associate Peter Hawkings will succeed him as creative director, while Guillaume Jesel becomes chief executive and president, taking over from Domenico de Sole, the brand’s other co-founder.
Continue reading...Aevin Dugas wins Guinness world record for third time in 13 years, with a circumference of 5ft 5in
The Louisiana woman who has set the Guinness world record for the largest afro three different times in the last 13 years says she keeps breaking the mark to personally vouch for the beauty of natural hair.
“I didn’t decide to grow an afro as much as I decided to go natural,” Aevin Dugas told Guinness World Records in an interview earlier this month. “It’s about pride in textured hair which leads to self-love.”
Continue reading...Suits that say beauty companies knew products contained dangerous chemicals to be consolidated in Chicago court
Nearly 60 lawsuits claiming hair relaxer products sold by L’Oréal and other companies cause cancer and other health problems will be consolidated in a Chicago federal court, according to a Monday order from the US judicial panel on multidistrict litigation.
At least 57 lawsuits have been filed in federal courts across the country over the products, which use chemicals to permanently straighten textured hair, court records show. The lawsuits allege the companies knew their products contained dangerous chemicals but marketed and sold them anyway.
Continue reading...Supermodel joins list of celebrities delving into lucrative wellness business with products that ‘help find inner peace’
Once nicknamed “the tank” for her ability to guzzle champagne, the original 90s It model Kate Moss has swapped partying for dawn meditation and night-time tisanes.
On Thursday, Moss has launched her own wellness brand, Cosmoss, featuring six products including vegan skincare and mood-boosting teas, ranging from £20 for a canister of Dawn Tea to £120 for a Sacred Mist fragrance. “A story of reconnection from soul to surface. There is a magic to Cosmoss and I can’t wait for you all to uncover it, just as I did,” reads a statement in a press release.
Continue reading...Cosmetics company hopes to refinance and keep trading, saying demand for products remains strong
Revlon, the 90-year-old multinational beauty company, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US, weighed down by debt load, disruptions to its supply chain network and surging costs.
The New York-based company said that on court approval, it expects to receive $575m (£469m) in financing from its existing lenders, which will allow it to keep its day-to-day operations running.
Continue reading...Anhydrous products are good for the planet and consumers – but will mainstream brands buy into the concept?
The climate crisis is driving a new trend that will change the look of your bathroom cabinet for ever: waterless skincare.
While wrapping-free, vegan toiletries have long had a place on British high streets, thanks to independent brands such as Lush, the new wave of waterless – or anhydrous – beauty products is driven by a combination of ethical concerns, innovations taken from Korean skincare and new developments in packaging.
Continue reading...Bernardine Evaristo, Keir Starmer, Kathy Griffin and others respond to incident
Author Bernardine Evaristo is among the public figures to have condemned Will Smith for hitting Chris Rock at the Oscars, saying the actor “resorted to violence instead of utilising the power of words”.
In what quickly became the bombshell moment of the ceremony, Smith struck Rock in the face after the comic made a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.
Continue reading...Good-looking people may be better at fighting infections, a study finds, so don’t feel shallow when you swipe right
Name: Gorgeous people.
Age: Considerable. Certainly of greater longevity than poor saps like you who’ve been battered by the ugly stick and, let’s face it, will probably die sooner than hotties like me.
Continue reading...Founder Aryan Pasha wants La Beauté & Style to be an inclusive and comfortable space, as well as tackle prejudice and provide employment
The beauty treatments listed at the new La Beauté & Style salon are much the same as those offered by the dozen or so other parlours that dot the traffic-heavy Dilshad Extension area of Ghaziabad, 17 miles (28km) east of Delhi. But that is where the similarity ends.
The wall behind the reception desk is painted in rainbow colours; a mural of a trans man with flowing multicoloured locks decorates another wall; a woman wearing a sari is having her eyebrows plucked next to a trans man who is telling a stylist how he would like his hair cut.
Continue reading...I have finally admitted that my hair has gone for ever, and taken great comfort from the reigning king of baldness
This year will go down in history as the year I went bald. Well, actually, 2018 went down as the year I went bald. But still, 2021 will go down as the year that I stopped fastidiously brushing three long wisps of cobweb over my scalp in the berserk belief that it somehow made me look less bald. I am bald now. Hello.
Obviously, being bald is rubbish. A bad roll of the genetic dice means I am now conclusively unattractive in the eyes of most of the world. Of course I am – I’m 85% forehead now. I can never go out and commit a crime, because a witness would only have to draw a face on their thumb and show it to the Photofit guy and I’d be in handcuffs by teatime.
Continue reading...Losing 10m followers on sites such as Instagram is a price worth paying for co-founder of ethical beauty empire
Quitting social media is hard to do, even when it doesn’t cost you anything. So when Lush’s chief executive, Mark Constantine, shut its thousands of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok accounts on Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, he knew dropping off millions of customers’ screens would damage his business.
Its Facebook and Instagram accounts alone had 10.6 million followers and the void will result in an estimated £10m hit to sales but Constantine, one of the business’s co-founders, said it had “no choice” after whistleblowers called attention to the negative impact social media sites such as Instagram are having on teenagers’ mental health.
Continue reading...Antonella Bordon’s hair was her family’s pride and joy. But as the pandemic kept her out of school for 18 months, the 12-year-old Argentinian vowed to lop it all off as soon as she could return to class
When she finally cut her hair, Antonella Bordon had trouble sleeping. At the age of 12, her first haircut meant more to her than a simple change of style.
For most of her childhood, Bordon’s silky hair ran all the way down her back to her calves, such a deep brown it looked like a black mane. Her mother and sister would comb it every day, rubbing the locks with rosemary oil, and helping her style it in a way to keep her cool during the hot Argentinian summer.
Continue reading...The musician’s newly launched beauty brand is an extension of his trailblazing look
With Lady Gaga, Pharell Williams, and Selena Gomez all in on the act, the marker of success in 2021 is not a star on Hollywood Boulevard, it’s the launch of a beauty line. Trust Harry Styles to blow the rest out of the water.
Yesterday, the boyband star turned cultural and style juggernaut announced the launch of Pleasing – described as a “life brand”. Styles’s first business venture includes a range of nail polishes, an illuminating primer serum, and a dual-purpose eye and lip oil.
Continue reading...Chests must be de-fuzzed, armpits shaved, legs waxed. But as dance becomes more diverse, should it stop policing what grows naturally? Top performers speak out about their body hair
The ideal dancer’s body is unrealistic in many ways: bendier than a Barbie, incredibly lean but super-strong, with very particular proportions (in ballet, small head, long legs, short torso, high insteps). And also, it’s hairless. As with swimmers, athletes, gymnasts and others who wear leotards for a living, constant depilation is part of the job.
That goes for men as well as women. “I choose to shave because it gives me a sense of readiness,” says dancer and choreographer Eliot Smith. “I believe it gives me better outlines of the body against the stage lights.” On ballet message boards, it’s not uncommon to find parents of teenage boys asking what to do about hairy legs showing under white tights (wear two pairs of tights, or paint over hairs with pancake are two suggestions, if shaving isn’t an option).
But is there an alternative? When pole dancer Leila Davis was pictured in an Adidas campaign in March showing off armpit fuzz, as well as toned abs, there were plenty of online haters, predictably, but lots of lovers, too. And there are a few – although not many – contemporary dancers who are happy to let their body hair be seen on stage.
“I want it to be normalised,” says Jessie Roberts-Smith, a performer with Scottish Dance Theatre. And independent choreographer Ellie Sikorski sees it as part of a bigger picture. “It’s not the first fight I would pick about the homogeneity of bodies on stage,” she says. “But there’s something archaic in dance – where your body is policed in certain ways. You’re taught not to have agency over your body and body hair is a tiny detail of that.”
Continue reading...People with the condition can face being seen as ‘cursed’ in the east African country, says Martin Senkubuge, whose art aims to make them proud of their skin
It was a confrontation with a female Michael Jackson fan that first drew Martin Senkubuge’s attention to the skin condition vitiligo.
Senkubuge, a Ugandan artist, was describing his tattoo of the musician to the woman at an art exhibition in Kampala in 2019, when he accused the pop star of bleaching his skin.
Continue reading...As tattoos become commonplace, so has the once-pointy subject of their removal. But it isn’t all exes’ names and embarrassing ink that motivates people to part with body art
A tattoo’s permanence was once considered part of the package, equally a source of frisson-like appeal and finger-wagging peril. But as tattoo removal grows more commonplace, many of those associations are now in flux.
In recent years the laser removal process – which breaks up the ink into smaller fragments that can be spirited away by the body – has been embraced by many of the celebrities who helped cement body art’s 2010s pop culture ascendancy, from the Kardashians to the Osbournes. Recently, Saturday Night Live’s Pete Davidson set about scrubbing his famously inked frame – which spans the gamut from stoner gags to famous exes – in order to pursue more film roles.
Continue reading...The Friends star’s LolaVie range launches this week in an already overcrowded celebrity beauty field – so how does she make it stand out?
Jennifer Aniston is to launch her own beauty brand, LolaVie, on Wednesday. But can the star of Friends and The Morning Show make it in the ever more crowded celebrity beauty space?
The competition is fierce, with Ariana Grande, Hailey Bieber, Kim Kardashian and Harry Styles all rumoured to be following Rihanna, Jennifer Lopez, Kylie Jenner and Alicia Keys into the skincare market.
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