As any vain vegan can tell you, makeup that is vegan, cruelty-free AND high quality is (to say the least) a challenge. And trying to match all that with the affordability of big box brands, especially in lipstick and foundation which tends to double or even triple in price with the cruelty-free labels, is a variable that just serves to increase frustration.
Enter Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics, a vegan, cruelty-free, as well as paraben and other-harsh-preservative-free line that has the vibrant range of pigments that brings makeup nerds to swear by MAC. It's a very professional series, offering even pure uncut pigments, which are to be used with extreme discretion.
For me, the most interesting product was their featured Lip Tar. Supposedly it mixes the longevity of lipstick with the application ease of gloss. They also apparently take well to mixing custom colors, including even black and white.
Sadly, for the merely practical makeup afficionado, the only foundation option they offer is the painfully professional airbrush series intended for HD and Special FX. However, they claim the OCC Ink to be capable of "covering tattoos as well as creating them".
And so, for me, my search for a quality, vegan, cruelty-free foundation continues. I have a complexion of mixed ethnicity that's challenging even for mainstream cosmetics. Please commiserate by checking out Beauty Without Cruelty's offensive range of Incredibly Fair to Very Fair on Alternative Outfitters and their confounding palette on BWC's own website which, er, more inclusively adds foundations for people of Salmon, Mauve, Tangerine, and Grey complexions...
(EDIT: As of 2/16/2010, the BWC color palette at Alternative Outfitters has been updated to a more humanoid palette, although depressingly Aryan).
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Grey complexions? Like dead
Grey complexions? Like dead people?
You'll be pleased to know
You'll be pleased to know that consumer-friendly foundations are coming soon, with concealers and powders on the way too. Thanks for covering our brand! It's not easy being a color-comprehensive Vegan line, and we're thrilled to get in touch with the very community we're reaching out to (and a part of ourselves)!
Thanks for looking us up and
Thanks for looking us up and responding! I'd love to hear if you get that consumer-friendly foundation line and I'd be more than happy to review and cover it here.
At least you don't have a
At least you don't have a "salmon" complexion?
Currently I'm loving Aveda's "Nourish-Mint" Smoothing Lip Color in Cherrybud. I don't know the price because my mom paid for pretty much everything I got the week of my wedding.
I'm also a fan of Organic Girls lip gloss, which I got on eBay for like $8 or something.
Tangentially related, their kaolin clay conditioner (sounds like an unlikely recipe for success, no?) works wonders at dispelling the thin, limp qualities that my hair apparently got from the personalities of my puritan ancestors.
I don't know much about foundation/concealer though. I avoid it because of my oily skin and propensity to sweat a lot. I do know that the Aveda student who did my makeup for my wedding did a good job covering up my plentiful blemishes. A cursory internet search suggests that Sesame is their darkest color of foundation, which should be probably darker than you need (though certainly way to light and pink for, say, Sudanese women). I also find it humorous that it promises "up to 16% improvement in radiance".
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