I like to think of fast beauty and fast fashion as similar to fast food: it’s quick, it’s easy, it feels good in the moment (especially when I’m hungover) but I usually regret it later. Fast beauty is the sale of products rapidly produced by mass-market retailers at low cost. It’s often the stuff you find in chemists, supermarkets and – now more than ever – online. Fast beauty is why I believe we need to slow down and make better choices about consumption.
I launched my beauty brand Fluff in 2018. When we released refillable compacts and skincare in 2019, there weren’t many other brands doing the same. The concept of “reduce, reuse, recycle” hadn’t quite landed with beauty consumers. While this has become the mantra of countless brands offering cosmetics refills today, I’d argue that the message hasn’t quite sunk in. We’re still stuck on the first word: reduce. We’re all still selling and buying so much stuff.
Fluff has been labelled part of the slow beauty movement, and yet I feel like I can’t keep up. In 2023, one of our TikTok videos reached 21 million people and our US customer base doubled in a matter of days. We sold out of products and had to rush to order more, alongside upping our resources and hiring more staff to meet demand. If social media could do this in a matter of days, how quickly would we grow in a few months or even years? Who actually decides our pace?
Perhaps the idea of slow beauty is more compelling (or marketable) than the reality of it, but its intentions are still important. Slow beauty typically denotes a few things. Firstly, a slow beauty brand’s messaging usually promotes a simplified, reduced routine that focuses on celebrating skin as it is. You generally won’t find 10-step skincare regimens full of trending ingredients. But at its core, slow beauty may promote vegan ingredients, ban animal testing, and steer clear of polyethylene glycols or parabens.
Then comes packaging – ideally there’ll be a circular approach to production, in which little to no single-use plastic is used. This might be accompanied by a refill model, as well as compostable or paper packaging.
But here’s where this all comes undone. Where the business of beauty intervenes. It’s the beauty industry’s job to illicit fomo, particularly in women. (I should know – I was a copywriter before I was a beauty founder.) Have you noticed how so many men just wash their face with soap and water? Yet so many women hang onto scientific revelations and trends, promising us a glimpse of maintaining our youth for just that little bit longer.
Furthermore, sustainability is trending right now. Brands are profiting off the idea of products that are “green, clean, and protective”, even selling “no makeup makeup” – but the use of these terms isn’t regulated and they lack solid definitions. Finally, when it comes to packaging, some would argue aluminium or glass are better than plastic, but which one uses more water to produce? What about the emissions involved when sending refills back to manufacturers? What about the fact that most compostable mailers need to be processed by an industrial facility?
Here’s the thing about slow beauty: everything is a trade-off. But most brands don’t care. The most sustainable thing we can do is slow down our consumption and that’s on both businesses and consumers. But I’m also trying to run a business that I believe should exist. A business that acknowledges that as consumers we want to consume, so when we do, we should try and do it lightly and with integrity.
Patagonia does this well. But when it comes to beauty, I don’t know. I love what Kindred Black, Josh Rosebrook and Agent Nateur are doing in the States. More locally, I look to brands like Sansceuticals, MV Skin Therapy, Sodashi, and Mukti Organics.
As a consumer, you can look for beauty brands that aren’t fast, with forward-facing comms and transparency on suppliers as a start (often, brands don’t actually have ready access to this information). You can also look for standards, certificates and accreditations, but these are resource-heavy to obtain.
So perhaps even more simply, you can look at the following: is the brand telling you that your worth is assigned to what you wear or buy? How many products is it selling in a beauty routine? Do you feel good or bad about yourself when you consume the band’s content? Can you understand or pronounce what’s in the makeup or skincare? Is there heaps of plastic? It’s not rocket science. Or even cosmetic science. It’s just common sense.
If you’re interested in learning more about the beauty industry, I will forever recommend Jessica Defino who writes in detail about beauty culture and consumption. You can also find me writing about the overlap of business and personal life on my Substack @erikakgeraerts, or on Instagram.
Broadsheet publishes a range of opinion stories from independent contributors. The ideas and views expressed in these pieces don’t reflect those of Broadsheet or its staff.
