Mineral Makeup: Story of a Startup

So Close and Yet So Far Away

2012-02-02T10:08:00.000-08:00

Here it is, 2012, and Alice Cosmetics will be four years old in March. Barack Obama is still in the White House, and we now know that he is a good singer, while Mitt Romney is not. Busy not keeping up with this blog, I have done quite a bit of other social networking. (Or "Social Discovery," the newest term for this style of communicating on the Internet, which before that was called Web 2.0.)

You can find me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Squidoo, and Twitter, and this year I will have some YouTube videos too. I have done a blog for Hewlett-Packard's small business division. My web developer has closed its doors and I have switched to a wonderful powerhouse named Sarah Johnson to take the helm. My Alice Cosmetics Forum (http://alicecosmetics.proboards.com/index.cgi) is two years old but I haven't announced or advertised it yet. My products have sold in more than half the states in the lower forty-eight, Puerto Rico, Edinburgh, London, Sydney, and more.

About to start a new blog from my website proper, www.alicecosmetics.com, called In the Looking Glass, a Blog from Alice Cosmetics on Makeup, Beauty, and the Weather, I say farewell to Blogspot and its beautiful graphics. I invite my readers to "like" me on Facebook, read my new blog and comment on it (debuts in about a month), and write and ask to be on my emailing list for news of specials, coupons, and discounts. Discover mineral makeup if you haven't already, and care about beauty in all things.

Thank you for reading my blog. You can still make posts on it!

Yours sincerely,

Patty Gray
Founder and President
Alice Cosmetics

Obama, Denzel Washington, and the Peace prize

2009-10-12T19:55:00.000-07:00

Back in June of 2008 I wrote that I thought presidential candidate Barack Obama was not what I would call handsome. Nice looking, nice smile, maybe, but not handsome. Well I now see him as handsome, in fact the closest thing to Denzel Washington I've seen. Also, I guess I'm one of the few who believe there was merit in awarding him the Nobel Peace Prize. That he has changed the world's view of America by carrying out this campaign promise is more than enough. He is really a very smart and true man. I am a hopeless partisan. More soon on Alice Cosmetics.

Mineral Makeup 101

2008-06-26T12:28:00.000-07:00

Mineral makeup is heating up chat rooms far and wide, and beauty blogs are writing about it daily. YouTube is chock full of videos on how to apply it. Women are raving about the light, natural, long-lasting glow that simply can't be duplicated by other types of makeup, and they are saying they will never go back to their former pressed and liquid foundations.

Mineral makeup is essentially pure, finely ground minerals applied directly to the face with a brush. It looks like a powder but is really a foundation, and it feels feather-light on your face. Because the titanium dioxide and zinc oxide in its formulas are resistant to the sun's rays, it has also been touted as a sunscreen, although it has been speculated that to act as a full-spectrum sunscreen one would have to use so much of it that it would look cake-like on the skin. Mineral makeup is also water and sweat resistant, so it has great staying power.

It all started with Bare Escentuals, the company that began doing QVC commercials around the year 2000 and still does to this day. Bare Escentuals is responsible for bringing mineral makeup to the attention of the general public, but its original premise, that the minerals are "pure and natural," is not technically accurate. For example, its mineral veil (finishing powder) contains methylparaben and propylparaben, petroleum-based preservatives. Some of its products also contain corn starch (disguised as "zea mays"), hardly a mineral excavated from the earth. Its foundation also contains bismuth oxychloride, which can cause itchiness and breakouts for some women.

Mineral makeup actually began, in its simplest sense, centuries ago. The red lips of Cleopatra and her dark eyes were no doubt achieved with iron oxides and other minerals to be found along the Nile. Bare Escentuals, which still dominates the field, actually dates back to the seventies when its founder, Diane Ranger, coined the phrase. Makeup artists and dermatologists have been using and recommending mineral makeup for many years. Dermatologists in particular have recommended it for patients suffering from acne and roseaca because of its non-reactive, good coverage, and it is also used following plastic surgery and dermabrasion because it is so gentle.

Today, the field is populated by companies akin to Bare Escentuals – the "big-box" varieties of mineral makeup (Leeza Gibbons's Sheer Cover and Jane Iredale's products are in this category), by the "drugstore" varieties, most of which continue to use preservatives and other toxins in their formulas, and by small companies found primarily on the internet. In all three categories, companies have added dozens of "natural" ingredients touted as good for the skin, but dermatologists and others remain skeptical about confusing makeup with a good skin care regimen.

Given the overwhelming popularity of mineral makeup, it is clear that it is not a fad, that is it here to stay. Many companies have started to return to the notion of mineral makeup in its original sense - pure, ground minerals without additives or harmful ingredients.

Alice Cosmetics is among this group of "second-generation" mineral makeup companies and aspires to be a leader in the field.

Copyright Alice Cosmetics 2008. All rights reserved.

Why Alice?

2008-05-26T20:00:00.001-07:00

My funny and indomitable mother was named Gertrude Alice Keebler. Of course she hated that. So she set about changing her identity and became Kay (for Keebler, her last name). I've always admired her for that – to be a young woman in the 1930's and make such an assertion stick was no minor accomplishment.

Though happily known as Kay by friends and family all her life, she did concede a bit to officialdom by signing checks and other legal documents as G. Alice Keebler, then after marriage, G. Alice Gray. When choosing her headstone, her heirs felt a moment’s indecision, but in the end, we opted for what we knew she would want, G. Alice Gray.

So what about Alice? A perfectly nice though under-used name. An accessible, welcoming name. A name that took second place to an initial! Alice it was.

Of course there is that other Alice—the one created by Lewis Carroll in 1865 and the one I studied as a graduate student in Oxford once upon a time. Clearly books for adults as well as children, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are classics along with their beloved namesake. Carroll’s Alice is always curious, always adventurous, always undaunted.

Not a bad thing to hitch our wagon to her star, linking our search for beauty as we age gracefully with her enchanted travels through the looking glass.

Copyright Alice Cosmetics 2008. All rights reserved.

Mineral Makeup Madness:

2008-05-18T21:14:00.000-07:00

The Three Types of Mineral Makeup Companies
Too Hot, Too Cold, Just Right

Already irritated by the misconceptions out there about mineral makeup, I dared to watch several of the many mineral makeup videos on YouTube tonight. As varied in quality as the brands now available, most were too long, too dull, too slow, and too out of focus to keep me interested. Making matters worse is that some of the best brands do not appear to be represented at all, good video or bad.

Let's be clear. There are three main types of mineral makeup companies. One consists of Bare Minerals, also called Bare Escentuals, and the half dozen or so others of that ilk. With their huge budgets and appetite for QVC time, these companies have become a new "main" stream of makeup, the big boxes of the field.

Bare Escentuals is by far the dominant player and its product is excellent. The problem is that its formulas contain not only bismuth oxychloride and other ingredients that irritate the skin (in many cases causing breakouts and itchiness) but also some of the preservatives their "purity" claims would seem to deny. The list of ingredients on a jar of mineral veil, for example, includes methylparaben and propylparaben, two of the most toxic preservatives used in makeup, and BE uses cornstarch as well (disguised as "zea mays"), which is a cheap filler and a vegetable, not a mineral.

Jane Iredale's product line, Leeza Gibbons' Sheer Cover, and Youngblood (the latter available only in spas and salons) are also in this class of mineral makeup giants. Jane Iredale offers much more than mineral makeup but tries to make the case that makeup and skin care can be one in the same. They cannot. Makeup is makeup, and no matter how many "natural" ingredients are put into her formulas, from burdock root to aloe gel to oatmeal derivatives and supposed anti-aging ingredients, it is simply wrong to confuse cosmetics with a good skin care regimen, the essential requirement of which by the way a good face washing twice a day. Please, don't sleep in your makeup.

Many of these companies (and some of the small ones and the mainstream ones) offer pressed powders and liquid versions of mineral makeup, which are virtually a contradiction in terms: as soon as moisture of any kind is introduced, it gives the product a shelf life, i.e., bacteria can thrive in moist environments. The best kinds of mineral makeup really do stick to the pure ingredients and have no expiration date. These primary ingredients are titanium dioxide, mica, zinc oxide, iron oxides, and several others. If there are more than seven or eight ingredients in any formula, be circumspect.

The second category of mineral makeup company (of which beware) comprises all the mainstream brands of makeup from Revlon to Almay that have jumped onto the bandwagon and created "mineral makeups" for the drug store shelves, many with celebrity endorsements. While some claim "no preservatives," their lists of ingredients are so long and so tiny-typefaced that one has to wonder whether simply the inclusion of minerals in the formulas alone is what entitles them to use the phrase mineral makeup.

Finally, the third category of mineral makeup company consists of small, independent mineral makeup companies, likely to be available only on the internet, and clamoring for whatever portion of the market they can capture. The websites of many of these brands are amateurish and too busy with Google ads and bells and whistles to allow smooth navigation. But it is in this category that the best of the best mineral makeup resides. There seems to be a trend back to the original concept of mineral makeup, i.e., pure, ground minerals from the earth applied directly to the face with a brush, and this is a good thing. These companies can be found in organic search results and in the pay-per-click ads in the right-hand column of Google searches.

Read your ingredient labels, try samples before you buy, and beware the ones that lowball their pricing and offer steep discounts – they appear desperate and may be using unnecessary fillers to trim costs.

Copyright Alice Cosmetics 2008. All rights reserved.

Toe in the Blogwater

2008-04-26T09:39:00.000-07:00

I might as well call this blog Story of an Upstart. Never thought of myself as an upstart until recently, at an age that shall remain undisclosed. Just as easily call it Story of a Downstart, since what I am looking at here is the second half of my life.

But before I begin, does anyone else out there think it curious that people think of Barack Obama as handsome? Handsome? Many words come to mind that would suffice. Tall. Lanky. Thin. Boyish. Great smile. Nice looking. Cute, perhaps ... that woman's word men often don't like being called. But handsome? I think not. And I don't even begin to understand Obama Girl. Or is that satire?

"You're so cute," I would say to Ex Boyfriend. "No, handsome," his reply. But handsome to me means grandness of some kind. A gorgeous car or an architectural masterpiece or Robert Redford.

I like Barack Obama, and he may be our next president. I'm a longtime Hillary supporter, but I confess I do get it when people indicate, in so many ways, they just might not like her quite as much as I do.

In any case, my startup, Alice Cosmetics, may live or die by how well the next president goes about fixing our economy.

Copyright Alice Cosmetics 2008. All rights reserved.