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Get the inside scoop about what goes into creating the products for today's most popular beauty brands
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00:00all righty guys who's ready for our next panel okay so this next panel is actually one of my
00:15favorite subjects back when I was in school and it's science we're gonna be talking about the
00:21science of beauty and all the things that are in our favorite makeup and skincare products
00:26I've definitely found myself wondering once or twice what's in there so this next conversation
00:31is going to give us a little bit of that coming to the stage now to introduce our panelists please
00:37welcome Michelle Lee founder of monologue and former editor-in-chief of allure magazine
00:44hello hello everyone hi there so I am Michelle Lee I am like she said the founder of monologue
00:56which is a creative agency for beauty brands I also was the editor-in-chief of allure for six
01:01years and I also absolutely love science so very thrilled to talk with our amazing panelists today
01:07who I will go ahead and intro okay so joining me we have Charlotte Palomino founder and CEO of do skin
01:15and we also have actress and founder of play beauty Peyton list
01:23hi ladies hi hi how are you okay so I always love starting off with an icebreaker just wanted to
01:39ask you all a question that I feel like will help set the stage for who you are and what you really
01:44care about would love for you both to tell me what your beauty philosophy is in three words or less
01:52and tell me a little bit about why so for example my beauty philosophy is you do you right like to me
01:59I feel like that's important because I can give you advice about a lot of different things people
02:03sometimes ask about Botox or other things and I'm like you do you right like maybe it's not something
02:09that's right for everybody but if that's what you want to do go for it and I can give you the education
02:14about it okay so Charlotte let's start with you all right so my beauty philosophy would probably be
02:20it depends I think that getting my esthetician's license in 2020 starting the skincare journey over
02:26five years ago with my company do everyone is so different and so brands love to collapse
02:32information people love to give you a simple straight answer because you're like oh I don't have to think
02:37about this anymore I can just do it but for us and our brand and just my general philosophy is I really
02:42want to service people and I want to help you find your perfect routine or whatever it may be in the
02:46least amount of steps and so for me I'm always like it depends on so many different factors so those are
02:51my two and thank you everyone for coming this is very cool to see everyone hi love that Peyton what's
02:57your beauty philosophy I feel like mine right now has just been beauty is subjective I've just been
03:03really non-judgmental and just want to experiment as much as possible and I just feel like I find
03:10really different unique weird things really beautiful and so I'm just trying to not be
03:14judgmental and just be really open in the beauty space I love that having been someone who grew up
03:20in the 80s and 90s where I feel like it was not that way I'm always really happy to hear that
03:26um okay so Charlotte I feel like anyone who knows you and who follows you knows that you are
03:33all about transparency and I think we've all heard about radical transparency but I think you are like
03:38extreme radical transparency um would love to hear a little bit about like where that comes from like
03:44where why is that important to you and like why should we all care about what's in our products and
03:50transparency yeah I think for me the biggest thing is is that people just want to make informed
03:55decisions right you never want to be scammed like no one's like oh please take advantage of me or the
04:00fact that I don't know something or just frame something in a way where I can't make an informed
04:04decision and so my entire kind of like philosophy around that is let's just really explain to people
04:10what's going on we call ourselves sometimes like a TMI brand like we have way too much information
04:15but we found this incredible community of people who also want education and so when you look at say
04:22something that's you know petroleum free you'll see that a lot on packaging it's like for us we're
04:27like well what is petroleum free and in what context because if the product is in plastic plastic is
04:34derived from fossil fuels but also a lot of plant alternatives right a plant you need tractors to farm
04:40it you need water you need to have arable land which is industrial agriculture and then there's the other
04:47part where it's like if you're doing industrial agriculture a lot of the fertilizer has nitrogen in it
04:52where does nitrogen come from the fossil fuel industry so for us we're like if you want to divest from
04:57fossil fuels a noble goal I'm just not going to sell to you based off of that concept I'm going to explain
05:03to you every piece of information so that you can make the decision that is best for you your family your
05:09friends and I think that that's really what it is is that I see beauty as a tool for education
05:14and it can be used for good or it can be used for kind of misdirection and so for us we're like how
05:19do we make things as clear as possible give all the information and then you make a decision and if
05:25you're like I just want a simple answer we're like okay well we'll give you just like a little bit more
05:29we just want to pull you a little bit further in yeah do you hope that um by you and your brand being
05:35that transparent that you are I don't want to say forcing but that you're encouraging other brands to
05:41also be as radically transparent yeah I mean I think for us like we're really focused on what
05:47we're doing I think for me a lot of people don't take beauty seriously but beauty can have impacts
05:52on how we feel but also policy if we are not asking politicians for the right things to do and if we're
05:59like okay get rid of petrolatum and skincare but everything is still in plastic we're not actually
06:06moving the agenda forward we're not helping the climate crisis we're not helping plastic pollution or
06:11any of the other ways that the fossil fuel industry touches our lives and so for me it's actually much
06:16bigger than just what other brands do it's about what you do and I want to make sure that y'all are
06:21doing the things that get you to the next place where you want to go super interesting okay Peyton
06:25your line play is all about clean beauty which certainly has been a big buzzy term recently and so we
06:32were talking about backstage you know clean means a lot of different things to a lot of different brands
06:37where some brands unfortunately are kind of using it more as a marketing term and maybe not really
06:42walking the walk how do you define what clean means and also just talk a little bit about how all
06:49quote-unquote clean ingredients are not equal yeah I feel like clean is becoming table stakes and yeah we
06:55were talking about every brand has a different definition of clean and you shouldn't have to do all this
06:59research it should be pretty transparent we just we followed a big made without list of over 1300
07:05ingredients of what not to use we make sure all of our products are non-toxic which seems pretty
07:11reasonable for a product um we developed this product disco dust it's this shimmer I've developed
07:18it after going to so many music festivals and just seeing the whole sink covered in glitter and I was
07:23getting anxious about all the microplastics going into the ocean and so this is like the most beautiful
07:28shimmery product and it looks like glitter but it's vegan pearl instead and so just developing
07:35these things that make me feel a little bit better because I couldn't create products that
07:39contributed to this anxiety that I have around beauty um and we also partnered with repurpose global
07:46and so we're a certified plastic neutral brand so we basically take every piece of plastic that we use we
07:53also clean equally the amount from the environment and and use it to make eco wood and we're building
07:58playgrounds in columbia so uh it's it's a really cool community that I've gotten to know um I'm staring
08:07at your eyeshadow that you're wearing now is that vegan pearl yeah yeah it is it's beautiful oh thanks
08:12it's really gorgeous okay charlotte um okay let's get a little controversial um nobody ever comes to me
08:20for hot gossip what are you what are you talking about what are some dirty little secrets of the beauty
08:26industry when it comes to ingredients right we all know like I think that you know there are certain
08:32consumers who are like very very in the know when it comes to ingredients and then sometimes they can
08:37kind of have the wool pulled over their eyes on certain things about how there are different grades
08:42of ingredients that like all hyaluronic acid is not equal to each other etc can you talk to us a little
08:47bit about some of the things that people have to be careful of so before I mean I could go on for a very
08:53long time I could write a dissertation on this subject but I think one thing that people don't
08:58necessarily realize is that stability of your products is probably the first place to start and
09:03that's one of the industry's biggest dirty little secrets um we'll just call it hot gossip though
09:08because I'm like I don't want I don't want somebody reporting this later and it's like I'm dropping all
09:12this teeth but basically when you're looking at the stability of your products think about food right
09:16you don't expect your food to have a shelf life of whenever so what is the shelf life of your
09:20products and we talk a lot about you know what regulation is in the United States you can put
09:26whatever you want in a bottle claim it as a percentage on the bottle but then it doesn't
09:31have to last for more than a day okay well there's also some scandals where companies literally weren't
09:36even adding in the active ingredient but we're not going to go into that tea so when we're looking
09:40at stability a great ingredient to look at is retinol everybody always talks about vitamin c and that
09:46vitamin c degrades so quickly it oxidizes all antioxidants have the capacity to degrade and
09:52oxidize so when you're looking at retinol it is a sensitive she's a sensitive soul and so she degrades
09:58very quickly there was a study done that showed that some retinol products degrade up to 80 percent
10:04after six months okay so that means that by the time you're getting it that retinol it's not there
10:10you're buying basically a fancy face oil or a fancy glycerin all of those things and so I think
10:16that one dirty little secret is that if you're going to be making a claim on an active my first
10:20thing is that I'm like oh do they know what stability testing is do they know what challenge testing is
10:25and anybody who follows me knows that I am very um how do I put this irritated um frustrated by the
10:32sunscreen regulations in the United States because it actually impedes innovation but one great thing I'm
10:38going to say something great about American sunscreen is that we do have it as a drug this requires
10:44extended challenge and stability testing I do not want sunscreen in the U.S. to become a cosmetic
10:49because then we know that brands are going to do what they've been doing where it's like you can put it
10:53in they're not doing that very extensive testing and so that would be kind of like my baseline dirty
10:58little secret is that there's a reason why clinical brands you're like oh my god this retinol burned my
11:03face off it's at one percent but this other one's so gentle and I'm like I want to send that to a lab
11:09and see how much retinol is actually in it so maybe you're you're a reporter maybe all good all good I love
11:17all of those things um okay so Peyton let's talk a little bit about the creation process um as an editor
11:23I used to have some brands send me lab samples and other things and I love that I loved it loved it and
11:29got very into the whole like creation process used to sometimes go to labs and see how things were
11:34made and just seeing things from start to finish to me is is just fascinating um can you talk to us a
11:40little bit about some of the interesting things that you've learned in the creation process for your
11:45products the whole thing was really a learning experience for me I think I realized um just how
11:52difficult it is to make a clean high pigment performing product um but it was just a non-negotiable
11:59for me when developing it I feel like the developers really wanted me to make it not clean um and so
12:04that was just a big learning experience and a lot of trial and error with the products um a lot of
12:09testing it out um can you talk a little bit about sustainability too like I know we're talking more
12:15about science and ingredients but I feel like sustainability is so much a part of your brand too
12:20that again it's become such a big buzzy word out there in the beauty industry but it means so many
12:26different things to different brands and I feel like your brand in particular is really taking it
12:31up a notch or two um why was that important to you and like what are some of the things that you're
12:35doing it is really important I learned so much about packaging um if it's all of our eyeshadow
12:43palettes are paper and they're made out of 100 recycled paper um same with our blushes any paper
12:48product and um yeah they're all just I think I learned that if you use a plastic compact and it
12:55has a mirror in it and you put it in the recycling and it has the recycling symbol it is not being
13:00recycled um if it has a mirror in it at all it's not being recycled so it's just a little accessory
13:06the little recycling symbol so I just feel like I I didn't yeah so I don't have a mirror in the in
13:12compact but I'm like we can I went to an antique antique store and I found an old vintage mirror
13:17that I keep in my purse and I love it and I love knowing that our products are completely recyclable
13:23but there was just little things like that along the way super important okay so question for both
13:28of you um Charlotte we'll start with you first what are you most excited about or what do you hope
13:34to see when you think about the future of beauty and products um so it's funny one of my co-founders
13:40in the audience here and she hears me talk about this all the time but for me biotechnology is
13:46actually where I'm the most interested um and it's because I think we need to divest from ingredients
13:51that are both fossil fuel derived for sure animals there's why don't do it we don't need it but also
13:58plants I don't think we should be using farms for cosmetics I think this um almost like greenwashing
14:05nature nature is setting a boundary and nature's like leave me alone and so we want to listen to
14:12that as much as possible so for those who don't know biotechnology it's when you take bacteria yeast
14:17and you actually have them spit out these different ingredients after you feed them food right so that
14:23food can be actually waste from our food industry which in the United States we waste an obscene amount
14:28of food every day that yeast then spits out an ingredient and you can edit it to whatever the natural
14:34ingredient is so a great example for this is palm oil the way that palm oil is farmed is pretty gnarly
14:40um you have to burn down a lot of the forests and a lot of this is done in like the philippines and
14:46like the global south and you're also hurting these amazing carbon sinks and so even when you see like
14:51these like very like oh we're gonna certify this as ethical even brands like unilever are investing
14:57millions upon millions of dollars in companies like I think I'm saying straight genematica which is a
15:02biotechnology company and so one of the things that Marta Joyce Joyce is my co-founder she used to do
15:08patents at like SkinCeuticals La Roche-Posay so she does all of our formulas but basically what we do
15:13is that we actually go out we go all over the world and we try to find biotechnology ingredients
15:17to really kind of start replacing some of like things like glycerin things like that but also those
15:24active and new and novel ingredients and so if anyone's in Vegas on October 26th I'm actually
15:29talking on a panel about biotechnology but I think again it like rolls back to like the it depends
15:34I really want people to make the decisions that they want to make and I see that sustainability
15:39it appears to be something that people care about but to the point where they're like we don't want
15:43to hurt performance of the product like they don't want to sacrifice anything but they want to have the
15:48good product so instead of trying to make all of these like design for the problem and so for us I
15:54want a product that performs well that does everything that every other product does but
15:58it's actually delivering on some of those promises but also being very honest about the fact that any
16:03product you buy is going to have waste and so we get a little like sustainable I'm like I don't know
16:09if I'm comfortable with that word because we're not doing it perfectly but what we found is that
16:13people really appreciate that honesty and they bring it out into the world so for me biotech and I you're
16:18going to hear it a lot you're going to see brands launching with this and there's a lot of
16:22grain washing happening right there because biotechnology is not oh having a crop of corn
16:28and then taking that entire piece of corn and then turning it into an ingredient you're still using
16:33plants I'm talking about vats and like leaving nature alone and really just kind of taking it into
16:39a different direction amazing Peyton how about you what are you excited for for the future of beauty
16:45well that was super informative wow thank you for that we'll talk biotech later yeah wow
16:51I've already been watching her tiktoks and I'm fascinated but I guess I'm just excited for more
16:57innovation and for more of this and it's something that I'm just taking in constantly and yeah I'm
17:02really just excited for the future of clean beauty and for truly getting clean and that was the whole
17:06plant I completely agree with you about leaving nature alone so um I'm excited to to see what
17:12happens but I'm I'm learning along the way so somewhat related to that question like listening
17:18to you talk I'm like you're so informed and one of the dangers I think of social like one of the
17:24great things about social media is that you can learn so much one of the dangers is there's a lot
17:28of misinformation out there it's a question for both of you but like for people out there who want
17:33to educate themselves and make sure that they're getting the right information what would your advice
17:39be for them okay so first off everybody has a bias we're all humans um I tend to go to experts
17:46but sometimes I'm like what's happening over there sometimes experts can also be wrong and so what you
17:52do is that you get as many sources of information as possible and you try to make the best decision
17:57from where you can so when I was very briefly a writer you didn't take one source and take that source
18:03as truth you would go to multiple different sources see if they kind of match up and see where
18:07that goes and also understand that science is a study of nature and there is so much that we're
18:14uncovering and learning so don't lose hope because somebody is wrong just take it as another data point
18:20to go towards a conclusion where you might not actually get to that final conclusion so for me I love
18:26reading studies I am not a scientist I have friends who are scientists and one of those friends is
18:32my sister and I'm like hey Jean Marie I will literally sit down with her and have her walk
18:37me through it and I think for me it's more a responsibility if I'm going to be spreading this
18:42information if you're reading something and it's just for your own edification go have fun but I think
18:47for me be very wary when somebody talks in absolute terms because that is a big red flag for two reasons
18:55the first one is that you know it's great for content I'm right everyone else is wrong and so
19:02it's really great for clout and so the second thing is is that actually everything is a variation of it
19:08depends and it depends on how you frame the information and then another thing that I would remind people
19:13is that if something is very negative remember that humans are hardwired for negativity bias we are
19:20literally hardwired to remember negative information to protect ourselves you saw a bear on a hill you're
19:27gonna you're gonna clock that and be like don't go by the bear on the hill again so when you see a
19:31really negative piece of information your knee-jerk reaction is to share it to comment to give them all of
19:37these engagements and interactions which then boosts the virality so just take a minute just take a minute
19:43try to find some sources and then if you have some friends who are in the scientific community lean on
19:48them because that's what I do yep very very good advice Peyton do you have sources or people that
19:53you lean on when you want to ask questions or just want to like understand some of the science more
19:58I mean I feel like I refer to I so many different articles I am just constantly trying to learn I
20:07love Jessica Dufino I love her all of her articles and her podcasts and she's gone completely independent
20:13so I think I just trust her because you pay a subscription and she's alone and she is not
20:19not unkind but she's very honest and blunt about beauty and about the space and I really love her and
20:25I appreciate that I feel like she's like the the tough love that I need to hear but then I also feel
20:31like I refer to you as well and I refer to editors because you guys get sent all kinds of products and
20:37I loved asking you questions backstage as well how do you do it well I think like Charlotte said I
20:43think that when you are a trained journalist you do ask a lot of questions you ask a lot of sources
20:48you don't just go with one person and it is so much about reporting and digging for the truth and I do
20:54wish that more people would do that and sort of understand that a lot of times what seems to be the
20:59answer on the surface might not be but I think that we are coming up on our time fascinating loved our
21:06conversation so much I feel like the key takeaways are definitely for me transparency honesty real
21:11truth everything before we exit the stage I just wanted to have each of you tell our audience where
21:17they can follow you and where they can find you online Peyton you can find me on Instagram TikTok
21:22just my name Peyton List the beauty brand is Play Beauty so awesome Charlotte Charlotte Parlay on
21:31Instagram Parlay is the French word for to speak which I feel like I I talked a lot today and do skin
21:37D-I-E-U-X skin on Instagram and the Tiki Talk amazing and I'm at hey Michelle Lee on pretty much every social
21:46channel and I also just launched my own beauty sub stack which you can find under my name but it's also called go ahead
21:52try me ladies thank you so much this was awesome thank you so much to our audience thanks everyone join me in giving
21:59everyone a big round of applause
22:01welcome to Wagner you're here so now there's two of us
22:31I got your back she is so cool even you would borrow clothes from her I would only borrow clothes
22:35from Rihanna you kind of made me look like you I don't get good vibes from her you're not my friend
22:44who even are you it is not your fault that you work with psychopaths I think I was wrong about Hazel
22:51I told you
22:53what about your friends
22:55incredible conversation coming up next who likes to shop in the building anybody anybody like to shop
23:17we got a segment shop beauty con live we talked about it a little bit in the last panel we're going
23:23to be giving you the lowdown on all the best products from play beauty with Peyton list and
23:29sofia dennis stick around for that
23:40you
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