Melissa Vincent was 12 years old when she tried on makeup for the first time.
But when she smoothed foundation on her face, it was cakey and heavy, she said. Even worse, it didn’t blend easily into her skin tone.
“I couldn’t find anything that worked for me,” the 25-year-old Toronto resident told Global News.
For many people of colour, struggling to find makeup that matches their skin tone is a familiar experience. The beauty industry itself has often come under attack for not being inclusive of its diverse customer base.
Are some brands lagging behind?
In an informal survey in 2018, Toronto-based Makeup for Melanin Girls founder Tomi Gbeleyi polled 5,500 women about the beauty industry. Gbeleyi found 80 per cent of women faced challenges in finding a foundation that matched their skin tone, Bustle reported.
Nielsen market research group found that African-American women spend $7.5 billion annually on beauty products, and spend 80 per cent more on ethnically targeted beauty products than their non-Black counterparts.
And Canadians spend more on prestige beauty products than any other country in the world, with the NPD group reporting that we spend on average $1.4 billion annually on luxury beauty brands.
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