The Indie Beauty Expo takes place in New York this year on August 24 and August 25 (2016) at the Metropolitan Pavilion on 18th Street.
And we’re going to be there! We hope if you’re in the area, you’ll come by and say “hi.”
This is one of the biggest events celebrating independent beauty, wellness, and lifestyle brands like CV Skinlabs. The expo was founded to support the growth and success of indie brands like ours, as it’s our commitment to safe, natural, and healthy formulas that have influenced the trend toward better skin care products in the market.
The event is bound to be exciting, and gives you a chance to explore all the fresh beauty and wellness products out there right now.
We’ve come a long way from where we started. It’s hard to imagine now what it was like only a few decades ago, when we had a really hard time finding any skin care products that we could call “natural” or “organic.”
Most were filled with mineral oil and other petrolatum products, sulfates, dioxins, chemical fragrances, and synthetic solutions that were supposed to help moisturize skin but often ended up making it dryer in the long run.
Today you can enjoy real butters, oils, antioxidants, and other natural ingredients in your skin care, all because a few of us stood up and said, “Enough is enough!”
It’s been a movement for toxin-free beauty products, and though we still have a long way to go, we can look back at our progress with pride.
We Slowly Became Aware of the Toxins We Were Exposed To
Though some people have been making their own natural skin care for hundreds of years, most of us weren’t aware there were alternatives to petrolatum-filled creams and lotions until about 10-15 years ago.
That’s when you could say the market started waking up. Studies came out about the potentially damaging effects of some of the chemicals used in these products.
We discovered that sudsy products like shampoo and liquid soap contained toxic 1,4-dioxane, a contaminant linked to cancer. Cancer-causing formaldehyde and formaldehyde-releasing preservatives were also found in these same shampoos and liquid soaps, even those used for babies.
We learned that most of the fragrances used in beauty products were made up of hundreds of unknown chemicals-unknown because the manufacturers are not required to list the ingredients on the labels-and that these chemicals were causing sensitivities and allergic reactions.
The FDA and other researchers found lead in our lipsticks and mercury in our mascaras. Nail salon workers succumbed to headaches, nausea, and sometimes after years of exposure, respiratory and skin ailments, as well as more serious problems like cancer, abnormal fetal development, miscarriages, and other reproductive issues.
Phthalates, found in color cosmetics, lotions, body washes, and other products, were linked to asthma, diabetes, hormone disruption, and reproductive problems. Talc-long found in baby powders and feminine hygiene products-was connected to cancer, to such an extent that the courts are now filled with injured plaintiffs filing lawsuits against the manufacturers.
Triclosan, found in our antibacterial soaps and other products, was hailed as the best way to kill germs on the go, until we found that it was not only contributing to the rise of antibiotic superbugs, but that it was linked to hormone disruption.
Chemical sunscreens like oxybenzone, benzophenone-3, and octyl methoxycinnamate, which were supposed to protect the skin, were found to disrupt endocrine activity, and in some cases, to actually increase free radical damage.
As the European Union (EU) started banning some products, we perked our ears. Ethanolamine compounds, for instance, like MEA, DEA, TEA, and others were banned there because of concerns about the formation of carcinogenic nitrosamines. (They’re still allowed in the U.S.) Butylated compounds like BHA and BHT, which are used as preservatives in a variety of products, were linked to hormone disruption too, and the EU prohibited its use in cosmetics. (It’s still allowed in the U.S.)
On and on the story went. And as consumers, we started getting fed up.
Why should we have to expose ourselves to these types of ingredients?
The truth was, we didn’t have to. As soon as we realized that, we stood up for change.
Indie Companies Took the Lead to Develop Safer Products
The big companies, though, didn’t hear our voices. They didn’t hear us when we said we wanted more natural ingredients in our products. They didn’t hear us when we asked for fewer toxic ingredients, and better research on safer formulas.
Even when they seemed to pay attention, they tended to take a piecemeal approach. Oh, here’s a new “natural” product, but wait, it contains only two essential oils thrown in with the same old formula as before.
That wasn’t real change.
It was the smaller, indie companies that took the reins. We were the ones who started from scratch, who went back to the beginning to formulate products that were truly made with real ingredients.
I know that’s what we did here at CV Skinlabs. We took our time.
- Only safe ingredients: We screened every ingredient we ended up using, just to be sure it had no connections to any health problems or skin irritations. We knew that many ingredients were linked to allergic reactions, hormone disruption, and even modern-day diseases like diabetes and even cancer, and we weren’t having any of that in our products.
- Products that really work: With customer safety in mind, we created formulas that were not only natural and non-irritating, but that actually worked to heal and soothe all types of skin-even sensitive and medically treated skin.
- Skin-friendly ingredients: We chose only bio-compatible ingredients with scientific data supporting their results to actually improve the condition of the skin.
- Real-world results: Unlike many brands, we clinically tested our products to gather real results from real people.
- Increased awareness: As pioneers in the non-toxic movement, we wanted to show that we don’t have to slather chemicals and potentially toxic ingredients on our skin to look good. At the same time, we wanted to create informed customers who would no longer settle for less than they deserved. That’s why we combined our product line with this informational blog, to help educate our customers about the benefits they could enjoy with products that were conscientiously designed.
Our work and dedication resulted in a line of products that you can feel safe using, while enjoying the real benefits that come from our process of screening, testing, and combining truly nourishing, medicinal, effective ingredients, rather than lab-derived substitutes. Moms, dads, doctors, nurses, celebrity makeup artists, wellness advocates, holistic care experts, and more now recommend our award-winning line because they know what the products can do.
Come See Us!
I hope you’ll come see us at the expo, but even if you can’t, I’d love for you to celebrate with us. There are now a number of healthy options out there for you to choose from, and it’s only going to get better. Today, your skin can thrive under a new era of healthy, nutritious, natural, and organic beauty products that you can feel good about using on your whole family.
But we have a long way to go.
The U.S. still allows a number of questionable ingredients to be used in our products. We’re working to increase awareness of the potential dangers, and to encourage people to demand better. Yes, we have more options than ever before, but we’re just beginning to scratch the surface of how the chemicals that remain in our products affect us over a lifetime of exposure, say nothing of how they’re affecting our planet.
So we celebrate the accomplishments we’ve made, and at the same time, we vow to continue the fight so that in another ten years, even more of us will be enjoying safe products without having to worry about toxins related to cancer, hormone disruption, allergies, skin irritation, and more.
That’s a movement I can get behind. How about you?
What do you think about the advances in natural, safe skin care?
SourcesSarah Maslin Nir, “Perfect Nails, Poisoned Workers,” New York Times, May 8, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/11/nyregion/nail-salon-workers-in-nyc-face-hazardous-chemicals.html?_r=0.“Chemicals of Concern,” Safe Cosmetics, http://www.safecosmetics.org/get-the-facts/chemicals-of-concern/.
