Euro Style

Natural Beauty, Ugly Beauty

April 30, 2007

Editor-in-Chief

Natural Beauty, Ugly Beauty

Ethical, social and environmental issues are becoming the defining messages of our time. At Pearlfisher, we are listening hard. We have the ability to make questionable products more desirable and landfill sites more full, and so we have to try harder not to do so.

As designer and consumer, I’m also interested in beauty and desirable packaging, and connecting all three is a holistic beauty. Thankfully there are a lot of new brands who share these ideas and who are starting to think with a new “environ-mentality”.

I was in India with my team recently and we stayed in an Ayurvedic spa receiving wonderful natural treatments. The whole experience was based around an inspiring simplicity where nature and wellbeing came together in beautiful surroundings and amazing Indian people. However, whilst there we were shocked by the contrasting, intense ugliness of parts of the journey—refuse burning on the roadside, poverty and pollution. It made me think that we need to reappraise both beauty and beauty packaging in a similar way.

To date, much of the beauty industry has been about face value, and to some extent beauty packaging is similar—beauty products in beautiful packaging, adorning our shelves for a while and then polluting our environment for a much longer time.

Just as in fashion, every now and then there’s a shift in attitudes as to what beauty means. With growing environmental concern, maybe there will start to be shift in perception of the new visual codes of beauty packaging to get beyond the relationship of the skin deep.

We need to look at the good and bad environmental influences we can all have, from the product, brand ethos, the need it meets and the materials used. The relationship between a sustained beauty image and sustainable beauty brands will all eventually become linked to the overall holistic beauty message.

Established brands have taken a compartmentalized approach to the environment, but now those with a totally integrated message are quickly upstaging this. Let’s take a look at them both, The Natural Beauties, and The Ugly Beauties, starting with the former.

Along with the Body Shop, Aveda is obviously one of the long time leaders in this area. They’ve just launched their Environmental Compact Collection, which is made of three different refillable compacts; each one is made of recycled metal and has a lead free mirror. For a long time, Aveda has had a strong sound stance toward the right use of plastics and materials in simple, but well and beautifully designed, packaging that respects environmental issues.

New brand Cargo PlantLove lipstick focuses on consumer demands for high quality eco-friendly products. The packaging is totally recycled, indeed the outer packaging even contains wild flower seeds, which can be put in your garden—just wet and grow. The lipstick tube itself is the first to use PLA biodegradable plastic and the range includes 12 shades designed by celebrities, such as Courtney Cox, Mariska Hargitay, Lindsay Lohan, Evangaline Lilly, Sarah Chalke and Maria Menounos.

If ever there was a strategy to influence the masses, a celebrity endorsement works and shows us that the environmental trend has mainstreamed. In the same way that Hollywood celebrities adopted the Toyota Prius as the eco-car of choice, it’s now nice to see celebrity responsibility influencing the world of beauty. Let’s hope the integrity remains over time. Cargo president Hana Zalzal hopes that it might lead “other industries to consider packaging innovations that are kinder to our environment.”

The consumer demand is there and thus supply will be big business. Biodegradable or recyclable packaging is becoming an increasingly important issue for the cosmetics industry, both in an effort to comply with increasingly strict government laws on recycling, and falling in line with the consumer desires to seem more ethical. One packaging company responding to this is RPC, who last year launched a line of biodegradable cosmetic packaging, including a lipstick tube and compact, produced using PHA, a polymer made from organic sugars and oils.

Origins has been ahead of the game for a while. Its packaging and literature reads, “Origins’ commitment: Preservation of earth, animal and environment.” The whole Origins chain, from testing ingredients, to suppliers, materials and packaging is vetted for reasons of good conscience and they do whatever they can to protect the earth and its resources. Consequently, the consumer can feel free to indulge in and enjoy their products without hesitation.

L’Occitane uses materials such as plain aluminium caps and kilner jars that in places are totally recyclable and can also have a second use. Maybe they should inform the consumer of this opportunity, which at the moment seems a little under-exploited. Paper labels and PET bottles are used for most of the range, with PET being great for recycling, and paper, while not excessive yet, adds to the authenticity of the brand.

They also have their own environmental standards regarding production and ingredients. They have a clean factory where they use environmentally friendly packaging in minimal amount. Material is used together with controlled origin ingredients, and they support sustainable development in Burkina Faso, Africa with the use of their Shea Butter.

Additionally, L’Occitane has a commitment to the sight impaired. Many products, labels and packaging feature Braille labeling and they support local blind outreach programs.

And now onto some of the environmentally Ugly Beauties…

Max Factor, in the effort to create great looking packaging, has fused multi-plastic components and materials such as SAN, or surlyn, that are unable to be separated and therefore cannot be recycled as easily as PE, PET or PP. With some of the metalized packaging, there is no recycling information on the pack, and overall they appear to have a complex package production, therefore probably drawing on excessive resources and reducing recyclability.

Dior Capture Totale uses heavy metalized components, meaning that the packaging is not recyclable. A double-wall jar made out of two sections, and often in two different materials, retailed in a carton, then cellophane wrapped, is another example of excessive packaging which, despite creating an allure of beauty, is actually excessive, wasteful and will soon be understood by a more discerning consumer to be grossly over-packaged.

Olay Regenerist also suffers from excessive packaging. A thick walled jar, with top and bottom insert sleeves, made out of different materials, creates in my view an over-package presented on the shelf. Beyond this, there is no information on how to recycle the packaging, which leaves the entire onus on the consumer to interpret what may or may not be recyclable materials. It may attract the eye, but may also in the future create nagging doubt within the consumer’s conscience as to the meaning of all the excessive packaging.

With excessive packaging, consumers currently seem to be happy to be buying into style-over-substance, but over time will this change and the mass-market demand both?

As I wander down the aisles of the fragrance counters of duty free or department stores, I’m constantly amazed at the sheer excess and complexity of most fine fragrances. One favorite fragrance of mine, Gucci, is a major culprit with its enormously thick glass base, which accounts for about 40-50% of the overall packaging volume. If we can get beyond image, it’s surely wasteful, but also costs Gucci an awful lot of money to make and ship, increasing its carbon footprint.

If the designer were to consider how to create a desirable pack mindful of these considerations, a brand such as Gucci could save 30% in shipping costs and use less glass. A simple design change and re-thinking of the role of packaging can both save and make money for a brand, as well as gain more respect.

We are witnessing the rise of ethical consumerism, and while some of the topics discussed may feel a little niche, I think very soon all influential fashion industry and beauty editors will pick up on topics of growing concern, and this type of “environ-mentality” will become more mainstream sooner rather than later.

The visual codes of excessive beauty packaging and exploitative policies will soon become as reviled as the cosmetics testing on animals used to be. This poses a problem for the beauty industry, and I’m certainly not advocating bland, dull and worthless looking packaging, but they say a problem is an opportunity in disguise.

My design philosophy has always been about brand truths expressed well to create enormous consumer desire. Design can do this by embracing the new “environ-mentality” and brands can also communicate this.

All design challenges are about resolving problems, and in this respect that’s all we have to do: think differently about what holistic beauty means, by looking at a host of new creative opportunities which can appeal to the hearts, minds and desires of the beauty consumer whilst addressing our changing environment. We can use design to minimize the bad, the excess or unnecessary and maximize the sustainable, the pure and the ethical. Packaging speaks volumes about a brand, the good, bad and the ugly.