The debut of Fenty Beauty (the makeup line for the ages) had little makeup-loving boys and girls everywhere fiending to get their hands on the makeup products as soon as the website launched at midnight on September 8th. It now has competing makeup brands scrambling to show off their ever-so “wide” range of chocolate shades.
It’s no secret that some of our favorite makeup brands have excluded brown skin tones from their collections. For many years there has been a failure to provide foundation and contour shades that cater to dark skin women. Brown and dark skin women have always had a sparse amount of options to choose from. Often times, when a brand releases darker shades they either have pink, red and even ashy undertones that don’t compliment deep skin complexions. It is also common for the darker shades to be released after the light shades.
Some brands even go as far as completely excluding the dark skin community from their brand marketing both on social media and advertising. Just scroll through your favorite brands and you will be able to count on one hand how many times a dark-skinned model is featured per month.
Youtube beauty gurus and makeup artists have shed light on these issues more over the years. Now, makeup brands are being called out left and right. For this reason, Fenty Beauty isn’t just any makeup line. It is a color spectrum of representation for almost every human skin tone. The line provides 40 foundation shades from the lightest of skin complexions like people with albinism and the deepest brown skin tones.
The array of colors not only gives a wider selection of people more options, but it also makes a statement to all beauty brands everywhere that beauty comes in many shades. Every woman deserves to be catered to.
It isn’t fair that a brown/dark skin black woman or a dark olive-toned Indian woman walks into a beauty store and has to spend an hour trying to search for the right foundation shade. Most of the time, these women have to mix different foundation shades just make it match their skin. Meanwhile, 80 percent of the store has an array of pale colors with different undertones.
Instead of partnering with other brands like Mac or Sephora to create a small limited edition collection, Rihanna used her success and resources to create a whole brand that stands alone from the rest. This gave her the freedom to release as much as she wanted for whoever she wanted. As a black Caribbean woman, she recognized the need and demand for inclusivity.
In addition to the wide selection of foundations, she released 20 contour sticks, 16 bold/blinding highlighters and shimmer sticks, a lip gloss, beauty tools and more. The Fenty Beauty website even has a cool Foundation Shade Finder feature where users can toggle through different skin tones and see how they match with different models. This gives you the best chance at finding the best foundation shade for your skin right from the comfort of your own home.
There is no doubt anything that Rihanna releases is bound to be a roaring success considering the impact she’s had on the music and fashion industry over the years. She has now used her platform to set a standard in the beauty industry. The bar is set high for every makeup brand going forward. The best part about this revolutionary makeup line is that there is something for everyone!
Featured image via “Madrid” by claudia.schillinger / CC BY-ND
