40 Shades of Profits: Changing the Standard of Foundation Shade Ranges

As simple as it sounds, buying foundation is no small feat for some people. Not only do you have to find a formula that works for you but most importantly you have to find a shade that blends in with your skin. Picking a color that works for you isn't just finding the shade that matches the closest to your color, but you also have to factor in things like undertone and finishing texture. These factors probably sound like a different language to the average joe, but to beauty lovers, it's a common occurrence.

Black women have been an afterthought in the beauty community. Much like how award shows such as the NAACP and Soul Train awards were created to give black entertainers praise and recognition not afforded to them by mainstream award shows, black beauty brands have popped up every once in a while, to serve the underserved.

For black women, finding a shade that works for you without having to mix it with another shade, or creating a cocktail as some makeup lovers call it, is as simple as finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

The concept of mixing foundation shades to create the perfect shade is a tale as old as time. While this practice is not unique to black women, it is one that is extremely prevalent in the makeup-wearing experience of the black woman. It is a practice that inspired brands like Fashion Fair cosmetics to be created.

Fashion Fair cosmetics was created in 1973 by Eunice Johnson. Along with her husband, John H. Johnson, Eunice founded Johnson Publishing Company. JPC is famous for creating and publishing renowned magazines Ebony and Jet. For over 20 years, the Johnsons toured all over the world with the Ebony Fashion Fair Tour. The tour highlighted black fashion designers and models while raising money for charities close to the Johnsons' heart.

After years of doing these tours, Johnson noticed all the fashion models were mixing foundation shades to create the perfect shade to suit their skin color. She approached numerous existing brands asking them to expand their shade range but was met with a resounding no from every brand she reached out to. Ultimately, Johnson decided if she could not get a brand to create the shades black women needed, she would find a way to create them herself.

According to a Washington Post article written by Robin Givhan, Johnson took the concoction mixed up by models to chemists and from there the iconic beauty brand was crafted. The Johnson started small and created a mail-order capsule that was so popular it inspired a full cosmetics line. The brand would go on to be sold in department stores for decades before the brand was sold to new owners after Johnson Publishing Company filed for bankruptcy in 2010. During this time, the brand quietly fell off shelves causing its beloved consumers to find another brand to fill the void.

Fashion Fair wasn't the only brand marketed to black women. In 1994, supermodel Iman's eponymous makeup brands and much like Fashion Fair was lauded and celebrated by black women for its shade range. Iman's brand catered to the needs of black women but the brand was oftentimes hard to find on the shelves of stores that claimed to carry the brand. It seems even when a brand is created from black women, it's still lost among the hundreds of different brands predominately used by white women.

Over the years, countless black-owned beauty brands popped up and generated a niche following but nothing took off quite like Fenty Beauty in 2017.

The beauty industry was set ablaze in September of that year when Rihanna launched her newest business venture, Fenty Beauty. Up until 2017, Rihanna was mostly known for her music career and her budding fashion collections with brands like River Island and Puma. While she's graced the covers of countless magazine covers, the beauty industry was new territory for the songstress.

Long before Rihanna announced she would be launching a beauty brand, the beans were spilled about the impending beauty venture when “Fenty Beauty” was trademarked in 2015.

While fans in beauty industry insider hypothesized on what the future brand would look like, Rihanna and her team worked diligently to create a brand that was not only inclusive but catered to marginalized beauty consumers like black women.

The first product launched by the brand were foundations with a shade range of 40. Fenty Beauty was not the first brand to have 40 shades and brands like Make Up For Ever could not wait to scream from the mountain tops they did it first.

In an Instagram post published shortly after Fenty Beauty launched, Make Up For Ever posted pictures of its famous Ultra HD foundation with the caption “40 shades is nothing new to us. Since 2015, the #ultraHDfoundation released 40 shades for everyone’s unique skin tone understanding the difference between red and yellow undertones. With expertise, time and passion — we shall continue to develop and improve our products for pros, for you, for everyone."

Many social media users called the brand out for seemingly "hating" on Fenty Beauty. While the post was distasteful at least and ignorant at best. It showed Make Up For Ever, completely missed the reason behind Fenty Beauty’s success. Having 40 shades is not what made Fenty Beauty fly off the shelves the way it did. It was the range of the shades.

At the time of Fenty Beauty’s launch, Make Up For Ever Ultra HD foundation line also had 40 shades but only 13 of those shades were tailored to black women with medium to dark brown skin. Of Fenty Beauty’s 40 shades, half of them were modeled by black women. Not 13 shades of foundation on one black arm, but an actual model wearing the foundation. Black women were highlighted in a way they had not been highlighted since brands like Fashion Fair and Iman Cosmetics launch years ago. For once, there was an array of models from the lightest light to the darkest dark model foundations shades, giving potential buyers to chance to compare themselves to colors being sold.

For the longest, brands hid under the excuse "dark shades don't sell" as their rationale behind not extending to darker hues but within a week of being on the market, Fenty Beauty busted that myth. Of the initial 40 shades launched in September 2017 the first shade to sell out was the darkest offering with half of the ten darkest also selling out shortly after.

A week after Fenty Beauty’s launch, the whole industry was on notice. Rihanna spent two years of her life creating a brand that was made for everyone. In an interview with Refinery 29, Rihanna stated she wanted to create something for everyone. She didn’t want anyone to feel left out.

“It was really important for me in every product, I was like, there needs to be something for a dark-skinned girl; there needs to be something for a really pale girl; there needs to be something for someone in between.”

According to Time magazine, Fenty Beauty earned $72 million in its first month, earning nearly five times more than what similar brands earned at that time. It's easy to say the brand performed as well as it did because Rihanna is a superstar and people will naturally buy whatever her face is on but by saying that you're a disservice to all the hard work Rihanna and her team put in.

Fenty Beauty is a success because it saw the value in making a product that was inclusive of all shades, not just the ones they deemed profitable. It would have been easy for Rihanna to create a brand that catered to "traditional" shade like most prestige brands but like Eunice Johnson and Fashion Fair, Rihanna saw there was an underserved market that deserved to be tailored to.

While Fenty Beauty is not the first brand to have 40 shades, now 50, shades in its collection it is the first brand to treat having that many shades as a standard and not a trend. Shortly after the release of the Pro Filt’r Foundation, brands that have been on the market for years such as Maybelline, Revlon and Covergirl announced they would be extended their color range to be more diverse. In 2016, Maybelline's cult-favorite Fit Me Foundation line only had 16 shades. A year and some change later, the brand announced they would be widening their range to 40 shades.

So, what changed? Maybelline has been on shelves for decades. Surely, they’ve heard their 16 shades were not enough but up until 2018, not much was done. The change is after the success of Fenty Beauty, brands are realizing it is profitable to be inclusive.

For everyday makeup consumers like Dionne Echelon, it's very much apparent brands aren't being more inclusive out of the kindness of their heart but for the possiblity of deeper pockets.

"Now, a lot of brands are making melanin acceptable products because they know our buying power and being darker is 'trending'," said Echelon. "The strides we [black women] are making has its pros and cons, we are not represented but also used a puppets in propaganda."

Makeup brands are not changing because they are losing customers, they are changing to keep up with Fenty. Fenty has turned the industry on its head and has shown other brands having 40 shades should not be a trend but should be the standard.