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https://www.blackenterprise.com/10-beauty-brands-owned-by-black-women/
For Women’s History Month, BLACK ENTERPRISE is highlighting a bevy of Black woman-owned businesses in an effort to amplify their brands and fortify a BUY BLACK initiative. Now that major corporations and big box brands are rolling back diversity, equity and inclusion and changing their tune around the support of minority businesses, it’s only right we lean in. These female entrepreneurs are not only changing beauty standards but also establishing economic roots and representation. Through their success, we recognize the resilience, creativity, and influence of Black women in the beauty space. Here are 10 Black woman-owned beauty brands to get us started.
The Lip Bar
The Lip Bar was established in 2012. Melissa Butler had the courage to challenge the beauty industry’s standards. A former Wall Street analyst, she left the corporate world to make daring, vegan lipsticks from her Brooklyn kitchen. After being rejected on Shark Tank, Butler turned the setback on its head and rebranded The Lip Bar to TLB, a celebrated beauty brand offering affordable, inclusive, and high-performance products.
Black Girl SunScreen
In 2016, Shontay Lundy started Black Girl Sunscreen, a 30 SPF lotion for women of color. It is a product that was created due to the owner’s frustration with the existing sunscreens that could leave a white residue on Black skin. Lundy created a formula that is fully absorbed and protects melanin without leaving any visible cast. Since it launched, the brand has blown up in popularity and is now sold at major retailers like Ulta. Black Girl Sunscreen has an ever-expanding global presence, all while educating consumers on sun safety and empowering people of color to care for their skin.
The Honey Pot
Beatrice Dixon founded the Honey Pot Company after she had battled with bacterial vaginosis for eight months and had a life-changing vision in a dream. In 2014, she created a plant-based feminine hygiene line to provide a better, chemical-free option for people, different than the current options available. Dixon, who has a background in pharmaceuticals, retail, and natural foods, grew the brand to include a full range of feminine products. The Honey Pot Company has expanded to major retailers since being established. Dixon has been recognized for her accomplishments; she has been named an Entrepreneur Top 100 award winner for 2019 and has won several industry awards.
Fenty
In 2017, after noticing that there was a gap in the beauty industry, despite her having collaborated with top brands, Rihanna launched Fenty Beauty. She noticed that a lot of products didn’t cater to all skin tones, skin types, or hair textures, and she had to correct that. Fenty Beauty became a global sensation after quickly making waves with its high-performance formulas and an inclusive range of shades. Today, the brand remains a trendsetter and a leader in the beauty industry. It keeps on building up its loyal fan base based on the principles of inclusivity and product quality.
Ami Cole
Ami Colé was founded by Diarrha N’Diaye-Mbaye in 2020, and she started the brand because she also realized that there was a need for beauty products for melanin-rich skin. Having a background in the beauty industry, Cole felt it was time to create a brand that could fill this gap. Harlem-located, Ami Colé is a skin-loving formulas developer that encourages people to own their true beauty and, thus, have a more connected experience with themselves and their excellence, all while being inspired by Senegal.
Golde
Golde was launched in 2017 by Trinity Mouzon Wofford and her partner, Issey. Golde was launched from a Brooklyn apartment with their first product, the Original Turmeric Latte Blend. Since then, the brand has expanded to include a skincare line that uses the goodness of superfoods to enrich and restore the skin. Made with natural, vegan ingredients, Golde’s skincare products are easy to incorporate into everyday routines for a simple yet effective approach to self-care. The brand focuses on clean, recognizable ingredients, making wellness accessible and enjoyable so users can feel their best and achieve healthy, glowing skin with Golde.
LYS Beauty
A Black-owned clean cosmetics brand launched in 2021 by Tisha Thompson, a seasoned beauty industry expert, LYS Beauty is an inclusive, self-love, and high-performance beauty brand. Sephora Clean-certified, LYS, was launched to help fill the gap in clean beauty and provides all skin tones, types, and budgets with skincare-infused formulas. The brand’s products are vegan, cruelty-free, and free from harsh ingredients like talc, fragrance, and mineral oil. LYS Beauty, with an empowerment, accessibility, and sustainability focus, encourages self-expression and embraces the concept that makeup should bring out the best in your natural beauty, not conceal it.
Briogeo
In 2013, her mother, a chemist and doctor, Dr. Rebecca Twine, helped Nancy Twine launch Briogeo, a clean, botanical-based hair care brand founded on her childhood memories of creating homemade beauty treatments with her mother. Nancy worked in finance and felt the need to create a brand that offers natural ingredients with scientific innovation for all hair types and textures after having lost her mother unexpectedly. More than a decade later, Briogeo is still dedicated to advancing clean hair care and is still developing new formulas to support healthier, more confident hair. It continues to grow.
Bread Beauty Supply
Created by Maeva Heim in 2020, BREAD Beauty Supply was born to make hair care for textured hair simple with clean, effective, and easy-to-use essentials. Maeva was brought up in her mother’s braiding salon in Perth, Australia. Still, she eventually realized that the industry did not provide easy-to-use, all-inclusive products for curls, coils, and braids. BREAD provides high-performance, no-fuss formulas to help you style and do wash day with ease. Expanding rapidly, the brand is available at Sephora, Ulta, Boots, SpaceNK, Selfridges, and Amazon, with over 40 beauty awards.
Pattern
PATTERN Beauty was founded by Tracee Ellis Ross in 2019 with the vision to celebrate and support the curliest, coolest, tightest hair textures. PATTERN is a Black-owned and Black-founded brand committed to uplifting Black beauty and joy through its products, messaging, and community to enable wearers to embrace their natural hair. PATTERN was founded to empower natural hair. PATTERN wants Blackness to be honored and valued and imagines a world for every curl, coil, and kink to thrive.
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One of the best scenes in Andor season two’s third episode is the tense dinner where the overbearing mother of Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) meets her son’s girlfriend, ISB officer Dedra Meero (Denise Gough). The entire scene is comically awkward, although one gets the idea that Dedra actually does care for Syril and sticks up for him to his unrelenting and eternally unappeasable mother, Eedy (Kathryn Hunter). When she asks Dedra about her parents, Dedra says her parents were criminals who died when she was 3 years old, and she was “Raised in an Imperial Kinderblock.” But none of that tracks for us, for a few reasons. Was this whole explanation another one of Dedra’s lies?
First off, the timeline in that statement just doesn’t add up. In this episode, we are about BBY 4, which means four years before the events of A New Hope. So, the Empire has existed for roughly 15 years only at this point. The actress who plays Dedra is 45 years old. Even if we’re being generous and saying she’s playing younger, perhaps as young as 30, she would have still been a teenager when Palpatine declared his New Order. So there’s no way she was raised in a fascistic Imperial facility. Certainly not since she was three years old.
Of course, the Galactic Republic probably had “Kinderblocks” for orphans too, and they just became Imperial in name after Palpatine became Emperor. So maybe what Dedra said is true, from a certain point of view. (Sorry, we had to.) But the way she told Syril’s mother made it sound like she was literally raised by Imperial dogma, and timeline-wise, that just can’t be the case. But then, for all we know, Dedra’s parents weren’t criminals at all, or even dead. Everything she said might be a fabrication.
Dedra’s statements actually point out one of Andor’s only big flaws: timeline discrepancies. Rogue One suffered from this too. In that film, Cassian said he’d been fighting the Empire since he was six years old. Now, we know he had a rough childhood, but the Empire didn’t exist when he was six. It often feels like Tony Gilroy’s main inspiration for the Empire in Andor is the Soviet Union. At least, the USSR as depicted in films of the ‘70s and ‘80s. During that time, the USSR had been around decades, with most grown adults raised in that system. But in the time of Andor and Rogue One, every adult has a memory of the Republic era. Yet it never really feels that way.
All of that aside, it still feels as if Dedra Meero is lying to Syril’s mother about her backstory. Would the Empire have taken in the child of criminals to such a high position within the ISB? Given how much the Empire caters to those with wealth and power, it seems unlikely. This just lends credence to the theory that Dedra is the secret daughter of Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn), which would explain why she keeps getting passes after so many failures at the ISB. Maybe before Andor reaches its conclusion we’ll find out the truth about Dedra Meero’s past. Or maybe this was all a rare instance of Dedra Meero being entirely truthful for once.
The post Why Dedra Meero’s ANDOR Backstory Doesn’t Entirely Hold Up appeared first on Nerdist.
Watching true crime documentaries is, as I’ve learned, part of the female experience. You can label the act an act of “girlhood” if you must but many women find themselves obsessed with true crime shows and stories. Why? It’s unfortunately necessary for our survival.
I’ve often watched a true crime story to understand how to pick up signs, what to avoid, and take in what has happened to other women to keep myself and other women safe. That’s the sad reality of the world we live in. While yes, male presenting individuals can also be a victim to the wrath of a serial killer, more often than not, it is those of us who present female that end up in a murder doc. And that’s what makes Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer such a terrifying watch.
After the highly successful first season of Andor came to us in 2022, fans had eagerly been awaiting the follow up after being captivated by the characters and their story arcs. Season 2 concludes the journey of Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) as the events lead us right up to a fan favorite, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Ariel Kleiman, Janus Metz, and Alonso Ruizpalacios share directing duties while Tony Gilroy, Beau Willimon, and Dan Gilroy wrote three episodes each. Besides Luna, there are quite a bit of returning faces including Bix Caleen (Adria Arjona), Syril Karn (Kyle Soller), Dedra Meero (Denise Gough), Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly), and Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård), with some additional familiars that are best kept a surprise for now.
Every character has their own dilemma to face over the course of the 12 episodes that keep you on the edge of your seat the entire time. The final season of Andor answers which characters will seek out their purpose, settle for an ordinary lifestyle, or meet their demise. At the forefront of it all, we are taken on a thrilling journey to uncover the truth as Cassian gets rid of his doubts and ventures into his newfound life from a nobody to a hero.
One of the most fascinating things about the series is its ability to have quite a few storylines that manage to keep you intrigued and interested the whole way. Oftentimes, when a project has a lot of character arcs developing simultaneously, it can become fairly overwhelming and thus leading to a loss of interest. Andor defies that as each story ties in to another, making it enjoyable to piece things together as the season progresses. You find yourself trying to predict what happens next as each episode opens up another hurdle for each mission they are individually on.
Despite the series title, it doesn’t place a primary focus solely on Cassian Andor, but instead sheds that attention on the entire cast. With that being said, it’s a must to point out that Luna shines as he delivers a standout performance, perhaps the best of his Star Wars appearances. His chemistry with Arjona is subtle and in no way overpowering to where this becomes a hero looking to save his damsel in distress. Instead, their romance pours into Cassian’s purpose, further fueling his actions and desire to lead the rebels to a victory.
Although the season spans over 12 episodes that range from 40 to 55 minutes each, you can tell much more was supposed to take place but was ultimately consolidated. Showrunner Gilroy tells SFX that the series was set to take place over over five seasons, but was reworked shortly after COVID. “We were halfway through shooting Season 1…and the monumental size of the show, the effort, and everything else was just dawning on us… I didn’t have enough calories to do it and Diego’s face couldn’t take the time because it just takes too long to make…”
This is likely in reference to Luna being around 50 years old at the conclusion of the original five-season plan. So to still capture the same story they wanted to convey, time jumps were sprinkled throughout this season. From a cinematic perspective, there are several shots that are fairly breathtaking, including one of Bix and Cassian walking out of a building at night and Syril standing in the courtyard with chaos erupting around him.
I bring that up to commend the manner in which Andor plays out like a big screen film rather than a TV series. Without naming names, some shows feel like just that; projects that were diluted and cheaply thrown together and rely on the lore alone to attract viewers. The action sequences are so reminiscent of Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith and could arguably have been turned into a feature length film instead of a series (not that I’m complaining at all). Even the music in a few of the party scenes is solid and caught my attention as they were so current and upbeat, you wouldn’t think you’d find them in a Star Wars piece.
Andor coming to a close after only two seasons is both beautiful and bittersweet. It’s quite a treat to have been able to dive more into Cassian’s character, but sad that it ended so quickly. It would have been great to explore his relationship with Bix more, since every other character’s storyline wrapped properly ahead of Rogue One. The realistic sets and wardrobe lend to the series’ overall tone of being a bit more realistic than the space sequences we know and love. Luna leads an intense cast of bright actors and gives his career best. With its elite storytelling, Andor has concluded as the best spin-off that has come from the Star Wars franchise by an absolute longshot.
The final season of Andor premieres on Disney+ April 22, 2025, with the release of the first three episodes.
The post ‘Andor’ Season 2 Review: Captivating Storytelling Leads to More Than Just a Spin-Off appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.