The Fresh Face of Self-Expression
Cassandra’s Beauty & Grooming Report Is Here
Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but as an industry that used to rely heavily on a singular image to sell products: a thin, white, cisgender woman, the beauty world is showing not just progress but may be on the precipice of rejuvenation as today’s youth shift their ideas on identity, gender, body type, sexual orientation, and more. In this month's The Fresh Face of Self-Expression report, Cassandra uncovers how today's youth continue to push the entire concept of beauty and the beauty industry forward, challenging notions that products have to be packaged in pollutive plastic or look like the perfect, gendered image of the past. Here, we’re offering a sneak peek of the report by spotlighting three beauty brands that are doing just that.
GOOD LIGHT
Asian American author and founder David Yi and co-founder Michael Engert, launched Good Light, a skincare line created in response to the beauty industry's hypermasculine/hyperfeminine divide. Yi has worked to craft Good Light into a brand that differentiates against the plethora of skin care options available in terms of inclusivity and performance. Rather than gender-specific, Good Light is beauty beyond the binary, focused on moving culture forward by promoting a more inclusive definition of beauty through product and purpose.
JUNOCO #TOBEHUMAN
California-based Gen Z skincare brand JUNOCO is on a mission to realize a more sustainable beauty industry and champion skin positivity. That’s why they recently launched a campaign entitled #ToBeHuman to reiterate that “true beauty is boundless.” The campaign's goal was to move past the awkward stages of finding what society deemed our “flaws” and lead the conversation toward honesty and radical self-acceptance through positive influence and energy. To promote skin positivity, Junoco invited a diverse community of forward-thinking leaders with different skin tones, backgrounds, and personalities to be photographed.
KINSHIP
Kinship was founded by two veterans in the beauty and cosmetics industry, the former vice president of marketing at Benefit Cosmetics Alison Haljun and co-founder of Juice Beauty Christin Powell. For more than two years ahead of launch, the Kinship founders worked with a Kinship Circle of 20 Gen Z-ers to develop products. Today, the Kinship Circle comprises 125 young people who give input on logo, color, typography, packaging design, and beta product testing. Other than their key prebiotic ingredient, the brand is committed to a minimal number of ingredients, and amid a whole wave of natural, organic, plant-based, and cruelty-free beauty products popping up in the market, Kinship offers innovation in the world of sustainability: eco-friendly packaging made from ocean plastic waste.
For additional information about this report and how to become a Cassandra Member, please contact michael.corti@cassandra.co or visit us here.