Cruelty-free cosmetics brand Beauty Bakerie has launched a new range of Cake Mix Demi Matte vegan foundations, available in 30 shades and ordered dark to light.
On a quest to empower women and men, Beauty Bakerie offers a range of concealers, eyeshadows, lipsticks, highlighters, and more, all named after various baked goods and caffeine treats; such as the Love You Latte Concealer. Writing on the company’s website, founder Cashmere Nicole, a Black female entrepreneur, says, “our mission is to be sweet and sweeten the lives of others.”
The brand carries out this mission with minimal harm to animals, offering a variety of vegan cosmetics and none that are animal-tested. “Being ‘Better, not Bitter’ means protecting our fur babies, too!” the website reads.
Numbered one to 30, the new line of fur-baby-friendly, medium-coverage foundation begins with the darkest shade first, a rare move in the beauty industry. According to the brand, the shades are numbered this way to encourage “unity, understanding, and love.”
As pointed out by Beauty Bakerie on Twitter, many consumers are “conditioned” to think that foundations should be ordered in a certain way, with a dark to light shade progression considered as “out of order.” There is no rule regarding which way a brand should order its products, but as Nicole told Teen Vogue, darker shades are often, unfairly, pushed to the back of the line.
“For Black women, in particular, we are reminded everywhere we go, on a daily basis, multiple times throughout the day, that we are second,” Nicole explained to the publication. “You go into a store and you are bending down to nearly the ground to get your shade, or you go to a beauty store’s website, and when you’re looking for your shade you’re scrolling to the bottom of a list.”
She continued, “When we launched the foundation we sat down so many girls asked what they thought about the shade range, and shade #1 was this girl named Julia, and she had really, really, dark, dark, rich skin…they said, ‘what do you like about Beauty Bakerie Cake Mix?’ and she giggled in the most innocent way and said, ‘That I’m number 1.”
The Cake Mix Demi Matte foundation range is available from the Beauty Bakerie website for $28 a bottle.
