By Bee Shapiro
- March 19, 2014
In 1994, when the Somali supermodel Iman started her cosmetics line based on foundations in a broad range of colors, she said she wasn’t interested in ethnicity or race. “The mission statement has not changed,” she said one morning not long ago. “It was for women of skin of color and addressing skin tone.”
“That’s different from a cosmetic line that’s for ‘women of color,’ ” Iman continued. “In this country, ‘women of color’ is just considered black.” At the time, most beauty companies focused on Caucasian skin tones, with a few brands like Opal and Fashion Fair targeting the African-American customer. Iman wanted to be more inclusive. “For example, a Filipino woman could have as dark a complexion as me,” she said. “Why were we limiting ourselves?”
Two decades later, the spectrum of foundation shades has considerably widened. Last fall, at a revamped counter at Macy’s in Herald Square, Lancôme unveiled Foundation Finder, a tool to find the correct shade for each formulation of skin makeup. “Five years ago, I couldn’t match some women who would come in — it was frustrating to turn people away, who might have had coloring like mine,” said the counter manager, Emmanuel Macareno, noting his golden Hispanic complexion. “Even three years ago, we had more color but we didn’t have the range. It was all neutral colors. Now there are more warmer colors.”
Currently, new Lancôme foundations are introduced with a minimum of 20 shades, said Silvia Galfo, the senior vice president for marketing at the brand. This year, the company will introduce some with as many as 30.
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Some brands with makeup artists behind them like M.A.C., NARS and Make Up For Ever have been more inclusive from the start, said Vic Casale, a founding partner of M.A.C. Cosmetics who is now the chief of innovation for Cover FX, which was founded in 2000 but which recently got a makeover. Such companies have long featured lipstick and cheek colors with stronger pigments, which show up better on women with darker skin, he said.
But the foundation category has been slower to catch up. Brands like Lancôme may boast of 30 skin shades, but only five of them will be for women of color, Mr. Casale said. When it comes to Cover FX’s 28 shades, he said, “I made the colors specifically so that they are one step — about 3 percent — away from each other.”
“We joke sometimes, a new shade is born every day,” he added. “And it’s true, the world is getting smaller and smaller. People are moving everywhere. You’ll have an African-American marry someone from, say, Japan. Or somebody from Europe marries somebody from Korea. It’s not as pigeonholed as it used to be.”
