Fun fact: There are 7.4 billion people in the world, with equally as many skin tones and colors. But you wouldn’t know it, based on the completely non-diverse selection of foundations and concealers in the makeup aisle, which serves up a whole bunch of beige and cream formulas, with a few tan-ish outliers. Because okay. Sure.
Which is why our little hearts sang when we heard of a new player on the scene called Sahi, a ridiculously inclusive beauty brand that’s fully devoted to “medium” skin tones—namely, those found in Latina, Arabic, Mediterranean, and Indian men and women, with the sole purpose of making people feel confident in their own skin.
“If you have darker skin, you know that ethnic skin tones are very under-served in our industry, especially those with yellow and olive under tones,” says founder Shelly Sahi, who created the brand just two years ago, beginning with a Kickstarter campaign in 2015, before winning multiple grants and competitions that allowed her to bring her passion project to mass markets and consumers.
“When you don’t see yourself represented in makeup, there’s the feeling that your skin color is somehow bad,” says Sahi, “and I don’t want people to think that brown is bad.” So although the brand over-performs for medium skin tones, offering medium-hued foundation shades in neutral, yellow, and green undertones, it also carries “very light” shades in pink and yellow undertones, plus “extremely dark” shades in yellow and neutral.
(Not sure of your undertone? Try this old-school trick: Look at the veins under your wrists. If they look blue, you likely have pink undertones; if they’re green, you have yellow undertones; if they’re an equal mix of both, then you’re probably neutral. It’s not an exact science, but it’s a good starting point).
“The cool thing is that we know that every single shade and formula actually works on real skin tones, because we tested them all on real people,” says Sahi, who created a proprietary face chart to base the brand’s shades off of the skin tones of hundreds of women. “I come from a hard sciences background, so I put a lot of data toward making the perfect undertones and foundations.”
Velvet Finish Diamond Foundation, $45
BUY IT: sahi.com.
The same data was put toward the rest of the brand’s products, too, like its iridescent baked blushes, its velvety contour palette, and all of its metallic foil eyeshadow singles: “Our products work for all humans of all colors, period,” says Sahi. Which, she adds, is also why you’ll never see cutesy shade names like chocolate, mocha, or French vanilla on any of her products: “We’re not food, and we should be proud to say that we’re brown, or white, or peach, or black,” she says. “I want our customers to embrace their natural skin tones and be confident in how they look.”
And seeing as we’re probably still a few (dozen) years away from the beauty industry becoming fully inclusive of all shades and undertones for the typical human being, we’ll be keeping our fingers crossed for Sahi to eventually take over the world.
XL Contour and Baking Palette, $39.50
BUY IT: sahi.com.
Or, at the very least, dominate the shelves of our local drugstores. But until then, we’ll settle for mass-ordering every product online, which, thankfully, is stocked with options.
Private Blend Liquid Lipstick, $24.50
BUY IT: sahi.com.
[“source=marieclaire”]