A panel discussion with Michelle Lee, Charlotte Palermino & Peyton List during Beauty Con.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 All righty, guys.
00:17 Who's ready for our next panel?
00:18 So this next panel is actually one of my favorite subjects
00:24 back when I was in school, and it's science.
00:27 We're going to be talking about the science of beauty
00:31 and all the things that are in our favorite makeup and skin
00:34 care products.
00:35 I've definitely found myself wondering once or twice,
00:38 what's in there?
00:39 So this next conversation is going
00:40 to give us a little bit of that.
00:42 Coming to the stage now to introduce our panelists,
00:45 please welcome Michelle Lee, founder of Monologue
00:49 and former editor-in-chief of Allure magazine.
00:52 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:57 Hello, hello, everyone.
00:59 Hi there.
01:00 So I am Michelle Lee.
01:02 I am, like she said, the founder of Monologue,
01:05 which is a creative agency for beauty brands.
01:08 I also was the editor-in-chief of Allure for six years.
01:11 And I also absolutely love science,
01:13 so very thrilled to talk with our amazing panelists today,
01:17 who I will go ahead and intro.
01:18 OK, so joining me, we have Charlotte Palermino,
01:22 founder and CEO of Dew Skin.
01:24 [MUSIC PLAYING]
01:27 And we also have actress and founder of Play Beauty,
01:31 Peyton List.
01:32 [MUSIC PLAYING]
01:35 Hi, ladies.
01:41 Hi.
01:41 Hi.
01:42 How are you?
01:43 OK, so I always love starting off with an icebreaker.
01:47 Just wanted to ask you all a question
01:49 that I feel like will help set the stage for who you are
01:52 and what you really care about.
01:54 Would love for you both to tell me
01:56 what your beauty philosophy is in three words or less,
02:01 and tell me a little bit about why.
02:03 So for example, my beauty philosophy is you do you.
02:07 Like to me, I feel like that's important
02:09 because I can give you advice about a lot
02:11 of different things.
02:12 People sometimes ask about Botox or other things.
02:15 And I'm like, you do you.
02:17 Like maybe it's not something that's right for everybody,
02:19 but if that's what you want to do, go for it.
02:22 And I can give you the education about it.
02:24 OK, so Charlotte, let's start with you.
02:26 All right, so my beauty philosophy
02:28 would probably be it depends.
02:30 I think that getting my esthetician's license in 2020,
02:33 starting the skincare journey over five years ago
02:36 with my company, Dew, everyone is so different.
02:39 And so brands love to collapse information.
02:42 People love to give you a simple, straight answer
02:44 because you're like, oh, I don't have
02:46 to think about this anymore.
02:47 I can just do it.
02:47 But for us and our brand and just my general philosophy
02:50 is I really want to service people,
02:51 and I want to help you find your perfect routine
02:54 or whatever it may be in the least amount of steps.
02:56 And so for me, I'm always like, it depends
02:58 on so many different factors.
03:00 So those are my two.
03:01 And thank you, everyone, for coming.
03:02 This is very cool to see everyone.
03:04 Hi.
03:04 Love that.
03:05 Peyton, what's your beauty philosophy?
03:09 I feel like mine right now has just been beauty is subjective.
03:12 I've just been really non-judgmental
03:14 and just want to experiment as much as possible.
03:17 And I just feel like I find really different, unique,
03:20 weird things really beautiful.
03:22 And so I'm just trying to not be judgmental and just be
03:25 really open in the beauty space.
03:27 I love that.
03:28 Having been someone who grew up in the '80s and '90s
03:31 where I feel like it was not that way,
03:33 I'm always really happy to hear that.
03:36 OK, so Charlotte, I feel like anyone who knows you
03:39 and who follows you knows that you are all about transparency.
03:43 And I think we've all heard about radical transparency,
03:46 but I think you are extreme radical transparency.
03:50 We'd love to hear a little bit about where that comes from.
03:54 Why is that important to you?
03:55 And why should we all care about what's
03:58 in our products and transparency?
04:00 Yeah, I think for me the biggest thing
04:02 is that people just want to make informed decisions, right?
04:05 You never want to be scammed.
04:07 No one's like, oh, please take advantage of me or the fact
04:09 that I don't know something or just frame something in a way
04:12 where I can't make an informed decision.
04:14 And so my entire kind of philosophy around that
04:16 is let's just really explain to people what's going on.
04:20 We call ourselves sometimes like a TMI brand.
04:23 We have way too much information.
04:25 But we found this incredible community of people
04:27 who also want education.
04:29 And so when you look at, say, something
04:31 that's petroleum-free, you'll see that a lot on packaging.
04:36 It's like for us, we're like, well, what is petroleum-free?
04:38 In what context?
04:40 Because if the product is in plastic,
04:42 plastic is derived from fossil fuels.
04:44 But also a lot of plant alternatives, right?
04:47 A plant, you need tractors to farm it.
04:49 You need water.
04:50 You need to have arable land, which
04:53 is industrial agriculture.
04:54 And then there's the other part where
04:56 it's like if you're doing industrial agriculture,
04:58 a lot of the fertilizer has nitrogen in it.
05:01 Where does nitrogen come from?
05:02 The fossil fuel industry.
05:04 So for us, we're like, if you want to divest from fossil
05:06 fuels, a noble goal, I'm just not
05:08 going to sell to you based off of that concept.
05:11 I'm going to explain to you every piece of information
05:14 that you can make the decision that is best for you,
05:17 your family, your friends.
05:19 And I think that that's really what it is,
05:20 is that I see beauty as a tool for education.
05:23 And it can be used for good, or it can
05:25 be used for misdirection.
05:27 And so for us, we're like, how do we make things
05:29 as clear as possible, give all the information,
05:32 and then you make a decision?
05:33 And if you're like, I just want a simple answer,
05:35 we're like, OK, well, we'll give you just a little bit more.
05:38 We just want to pull you a little bit further in.
05:40 Yeah.
05:41 Do you hope that by you and your brand being that transparent,
05:46 that you are--
05:47 I don't want to say forcing, but you're
05:48 encouraging other brands to also be as radically transparent?
05:53 Yeah, I mean, I think for us, we're
05:55 really focused on what we're doing.
05:56 I think for me, a lot of people don't take beauty seriously.
06:00 But beauty can have impacts on how we feel, but also policy.
06:04 If we are not asking politicians for the right things to do,
06:08 and if we're like, OK, get rid of petrolatum in skincare,
06:12 but everything is still in plastic,
06:14 we're not actually moving the agenda forward.
06:16 We're not helping the climate crisis.
06:18 We're not helping plastic pollution or any
06:21 of the other ways that the fossil fuel
06:22 industry touches our lives.
06:24 And so for me, it's actually much bigger
06:26 than just what other brands do.
06:27 It's about what you do.
06:28 And I want to make sure that y'all
06:30 are doing the things that get you to the next place
06:32 where you want to go.
06:33 Super interesting.
06:34 OK, Peyton, your line play is all
06:36 about clean beauty, which certainly has
06:38 been a big, buzzy term recently.
06:40 And so we were talking about backstage,
06:43 clean means a lot of different things
06:45 to a lot of different brands, where some brands,
06:47 unfortunately, are kind of using it more as a marketing term
06:50 and maybe not really walking the walk.
06:52 How do you define what clean means?
06:55 And also just talk a little bit about how all,
06:58 quote unquote, "clean" ingredients are not equal.
07:01 Yeah, I feel like clean is becoming table stakes.
07:03 And yeah, we were talking about every brand
07:05 has a different definition of clean.
07:06 And you shouldn't have to do all this research.
07:08 It should be pretty transparent.
07:10 We just followed a big made without list
07:13 of over 1,300 ingredients of what not to use.
07:16 We make sure all of our products are non-toxic,
07:19 which seems pretty reasonable for a product.
07:22 We developed this product, Disco Dust.
07:25 It's this shimmer.
07:26 I developed it after going to so many music festivals
07:29 and just seeing the whole sink covered in glitter.
07:31 And I was getting anxious about all the microplastics
07:34 going into the ocean.
07:35 And so this is the most beautiful, shimmery product.
07:39 And it looks like glitter, but it's vegan pearl instead.
07:42 And so just developing these things
07:44 that make me feel a little bit better,
07:46 because I couldn't create products
07:47 that contributed to this anxiety that I have around beauty.
07:53 And we also partnered with Repurpose Global.
07:55 And so we're a certified plastic neutral brand.
07:58 So we basically take every piece of plastic that we use.
08:02 We also clean equally the amount from the environment
08:05 and use it to make eco wood.
08:07 And we're building playgrounds in Columbia.
08:09 So it's a really cool community that I've gotten to know.
08:14 - I'm staring at your eye shadow that you're wearing now.
08:18 Is that vegan pearl?
08:19 - Yeah, yeah it is.
08:20 - It's beautiful.
08:21 - Oh, thanks.
08:21 - It's really gorgeous.
08:22 Okay, Charlotte.
08:23 Okay, let's get a little controversial.
08:27 - Nobody ever comes to me for hot gossip.
08:30 What are you talking about?
08:32 - What are some dirty little secrets of the beauty industry
08:36 when it comes to ingredients, right?
08:38 We all know, like, I think that, you know,
08:40 there are certain consumers who are like very, very
08:43 in the know when it comes to ingredients.
08:44 And then sometimes they can kind of have the wool
08:47 pulled over their eyes on certain things
08:48 about how there are different grades of ingredients
08:51 that like all hyaluronic acid is not equal
08:54 to each other, et cetera.
08:55 Can you talk to us a little bit about some of the things
08:57 that people have to be careful of?
08:59 - So before, I mean, I could go on for a very long time.
09:02 I could write a dissertation on this subject.
09:04 But I think one thing that people don't necessarily realize
09:08 is that stability of your products
09:10 is probably the first place to start.
09:12 And that's one of the industry's
09:13 biggest dirty little secrets.
09:15 We'll just call it hot gossip though,
09:17 because I'm like, I don't want somebody reporting this later
09:20 and it's like, I'm dropping all this tea.
09:21 But basically when you're looking at the stability
09:23 of your products, think about food, right?
09:25 You don't expect your food to have a shelf life of whenever.
09:28 So what is the shelf life of your products?
09:30 And we talk a lot about, you know,
09:32 what regulation is in the United States.
09:34 You can put whatever you want in a bottle,
09:36 claim it as a percentage on the bottle,
09:39 but then it doesn't have to last for more than a day, okay?
09:42 Well, there's also some scandals where companies
09:44 literally weren't even adding in the active ingredient,
09:46 but we're not gonna go into that tea.
09:48 So when we're looking at stability,
09:50 a great ingredient to look at is retinol.
09:52 Everybody always talks about vitamin C
09:54 and that vitamin C degrades so quickly, it oxidizes.
09:58 All antioxidants have the capacity to degrade and oxidize.
10:02 So when you're looking at retinol, it is a sensitive,
10:05 she's a sensitive soul, and so she degrades very quickly.
10:08 There was a study done that showed that
10:10 some retinol products degrade up to 80% after six months.
10:14 Okay, so that means that by the time you're getting it,
10:17 that retinol, it's not there.
10:19 You're buying basically a fancy face oil
10:21 or a fancy glycerin, all of those things.
10:24 And so I think that one dirty little secret
10:26 is that if you're gonna be making a claim on an active,
10:28 my first thing is that I'm like,
10:29 ooh, do they know what stability testing is?
10:32 Do they know what challenge testing is?
10:34 And anybody who follows me knows that I am very,
10:36 how do I put this, irritated, frustrated
10:41 by the sunscreen regulations in the United States
10:43 because it actually impedes innovation.
10:46 But one great thing, I'm gonna say something great
10:48 about American sunscreen is that we do have it as a drug.
10:52 This requires extended challenge and stability testing.
10:55 I do not want sunscreen in the US to become a cosmetic
10:58 because then we know that brands are gonna do
11:00 what they've been doing, where it's like,
11:01 you can put it in and they're not doing
11:02 that very extensive testing.
11:04 And so that would be kind of like my baseline
11:07 dirty little secret is that there's a reason
11:09 why clinical brands, you're like,
11:10 oh my God, this retinol burned my face off.
11:12 It's at 1%, but this other one's so gentle.
11:15 And I'm like, I wanna send that to a lab
11:18 and see how much retinol is actually in it.
11:21 So maybe, you're a reporter, maybe.
11:24 - Good, all good, I love all of those things.
11:27 Okay, so Peyton, let's talk a little bit
11:29 about the creation process.
11:31 As an editor, I used to have some brands send me lab samples
11:35 and other things, and I love that.
11:37 I loved it, loved it, and got very into the whole
11:40 creation process, used to sometimes go to labs
11:42 and see how things were made, and just seeing things
11:44 from start to finish, to me, is just fascinating.
11:48 Can you talk to us a little bit about some of the
11:50 interesting things that you've learned
11:52 in the creation process for your products?
11:54 - The whole thing was really a learning experience for me.
11:58 I think I realized just how difficult it is
12:02 to make a clean, high pigment performing product.
12:05 But it was just a non-negotiable for me when developing it.
12:09 I feel like the developers really wanted me
12:11 to make it not clean, and so that was just
12:14 a big learning experience and a lot of trial and error
12:16 with the products, a lot of testing it out.
12:20 - Can you talk a little bit about sustainability, too?
12:23 I know we're talking more about science and ingredients,
12:26 but I feel like sustainability is so much a part
12:28 of your brand, too, that, again, it's become
12:31 such a big, buzzy word out there in the beauty industry,
12:34 but it means so many different things to different brands,
12:37 and I feel like your brand in particular
12:38 is really taking it up a notch or two.
12:41 Why was that important to you, and what are some
12:44 of the things that you're doing?
12:45 - It is really important.
12:46 I learned so much about packaging.
12:49 If it's, all of our eyeshadow palettes are paper,
12:52 and they're made out of 100% recycled paper.
12:55 Same with our blushes, any paper product,
12:57 and yeah, they're all just, I think I learned
13:01 that if you use a plastic compact and it has a mirror in it
13:05 and you put it in the recycling
13:06 and it has the recycling symbol, it is not being recycled.
13:10 If it has a mirror in it at all, it's not being recycled.
13:13 So it's just a little accessory,
13:15 the little recycling symbol.
13:16 So I just feel like I didn't, yeah,
13:19 so I don't have a mirror in the compact,
13:21 but I'm like, we can, I went to an antique store
13:24 and I found an old vintage mirror that I keep in my purse,
13:27 and I love it, and I love knowing
13:29 that our products are completely recyclable,
13:32 but there was just little things like that along the way.
13:35 - Super important.
13:36 Okay, so question for both of you.
13:38 Charlotte, we'll start with you first.
13:40 What are you most excited about,
13:42 or what do you hope to see when you think
13:43 about the future of beauty and products?
13:47 - So it's funny, one of my co-founders
13:49 is in the audience here, and she hears me talk
13:51 about this all the time, but for me,
13:53 biotechnology is actually where I'm the most interested,
13:57 and it's because I think we need to divest
14:00 from ingredients that are both fossil fuel derived,
14:02 for sure, animals, there's, why?
14:05 Don't do it, we don't need it, but also plants.
14:08 I don't think we should be using farms for cosmetics.
14:11 I think this, almost like greenwashing,
14:14 nature, nature is setting a boundary,
14:17 and nature's like, leave me alone.
14:19 And so we wanna listen to that as much as possible.
14:22 So for those who don't know, biotechnology,
14:24 it's when you take bacteria, yeast,
14:26 and you actually have them spit out
14:28 these different ingredients after you feed them food, right?
14:31 So that food can be actually waste from our food industry,
14:34 which in the United States, we waste
14:36 an obscene amount of food every day.
14:38 That yeast then spits out an ingredient,
14:41 and you can edit it to whatever the natural ingredient is.
14:44 So a great example for this is palm oil.
14:46 The way that palm oil is farmed is pretty gnarly.
14:50 You have to burn down a lot of the forests,
14:52 and a lot of this is done in the Philippines
14:54 and the global south, and you're also hurting
14:57 these amazing carbon sinks.
14:58 And so even when you see these very,
15:01 oh, we're gonna certify this as ethical,
15:03 even brands like Unilever are investing
15:06 millions upon millions of dollars in companies,
15:09 like I think I'm saying this right, Genomatica,
15:11 which is a biotechnology company.
15:13 And so one of the things that Marta Joyce,
15:15 Joyce is my co-founder, she used to do patents
15:17 at SkinCeuticals, La Roche-Posay,
15:19 so she does all of our formulas.
15:21 But basically what we do is that we actually go out,
15:23 we go all over the world, and we try to find
15:25 biotechnology ingredients to really kind of
15:28 start replacing some of things like glycerin,
15:31 things like that, but also those active
15:33 and new and novel ingredients.
15:35 And so if anyone's in Vegas on October 26th,
15:37 I'm actually talking on a panel about biotechnology,
15:40 but I think, again, it rolls back to the it depends.
15:44 I really want people to make the decisions
15:46 that they wanna make, and I see that sustainability,
15:48 it appears to be something that people care about,
15:51 but to the point where they're like,
15:52 we don't wanna hurt performance of the product,
15:54 like they don't wanna sacrifice anything,
15:56 but they want to have the good product.
15:58 So instead of trying to make all of these
16:00 design for the problem, and so for us,
16:03 I want a product that performs well,
16:04 that does everything that every other product does,
16:07 but it's actually delivering on some of those promises,
16:10 but also being very honest about the fact that
16:12 any product you buy is gonna have waste.
16:14 And so we get a little like, oh, sustainable,
16:17 I'm like, I don't know if I'm comfortable with that word
16:19 because we're not doing it perfectly,
16:21 but what we found is that people really appreciate
16:23 that honesty and they bring it out into the world.
16:25 So for me, biotech, and you're gonna hear it a lot,
16:28 you're gonna see brands launching with this,
16:30 and there's a lot of greenwashing happening right there
16:32 because biotechnology is not, oh, having a crop of corn
16:37 and then taking that entire piece of corn
16:39 and then turning it into an ingredient.
16:41 You're still using plants.
16:43 I'm talking about that and like leaving nature alone
16:47 and really just kind of taking it
16:48 into a different direction.
16:50 - Amazing.
16:50 Peyton, how about you?
16:51 What are you excited for for the future of beauty?
16:54 - Well, that was super informative.
16:56 Wow, thank you for that.
16:58 - We'll talk biotech later.
16:59 - Yeah, wow.
17:00 I've already been watching her TikToks and I'm fascinated,
17:02 but I guess I'm just excited for more innovation
17:06 and for more of this, and it's something
17:08 that I'm just taking in constantly.
17:09 And yeah, I'm really just excited for the future
17:12 of clean beauty and for truly getting clean,
17:14 and that was the whole plant.
17:16 I completely agree with you about leaving nature alone.
17:19 So I'm excited to see what happens,
17:21 but I'm learning along the way.
17:24 - So somewhat related to that question,
17:27 like listening to you talk, I'm like, you're so informed.
17:30 And one of the dangers I think of social,
17:32 like one of the great things about social media
17:34 is that you can learn so much.
17:35 One of the dangers is there's a lot
17:37 of misinformation out there.
17:39 It's a question for both of you,
17:40 but like for people out there who want to educate themselves
17:43 and make sure that they're getting the right information,
17:46 what would your advice be for them?
17:48 - Okay, so first off, everybody has a bias.
17:52 We're all humans.
17:54 I tend to go to experts, but sometimes I'm like,
17:56 what's happening over there?
17:57 Sometimes experts can also be wrong.
18:00 And so what you do is that you get as many sources
18:03 of information as possible, and you try to make
18:05 the best decision from where you can.
18:07 So when I was very briefly a writer,
18:09 you didn't take one source and take that source as truth.
18:12 You would go to multiple different sources,
18:14 see if they kind of match up and see where that goes,
18:17 and also understand that science is a study of nature,
18:22 and there is so much that we're uncovering and learning.
18:25 So don't lose hope because somebody is wrong.
18:27 Just take it as another data point to go towards
18:30 a conclusion where you might not actually get
18:32 to that final conclusion.
18:34 So for me, I love reading studies.
18:36 I am not a scientist.
18:38 I have friends who are scientists,
18:40 and one of those friends is my sister.
18:42 And I'm like, hey, Jean-Marie, I will literally
18:44 sit down with her and have her walk me through it.
18:46 And I think for me, it's more a responsibility
18:49 if I'm gonna be spreading this information.
18:52 If you're reading something and it's just for your own
18:54 edification, go have fun.
18:56 But I think for me, be very wary when somebody talks
18:59 in absolute terms, because that is a big red flag
19:03 for two reasons.
19:04 The first one is that it's great for content.
19:08 I'm right, everyone else is wrong,
19:10 and so it's really great for clout.
19:12 And so the second thing is that actually everything
19:15 is a variation of it depends, and it depends on how you
19:18 frame the information.
19:20 And then another thing that I would remind people
19:22 is that if something is very negative,
19:24 remember that humans are hardwired for negativity bias.
19:28 We are literally hardwired to remember negative information
19:32 to protect ourselves.
19:33 You saw a bear on a hill, you're gonna clock that
19:37 and be like, don't go by the bear on the hill again.
19:39 So when you see a really negative piece of information,
19:42 your knee-jerk reaction is to share it, to comment,
19:45 to give them all of these engagements and interactions,
19:47 which then boosts the virality.
19:49 So just take a minute, just take a minute,
19:52 try to find some sources.
19:53 And then if you have some friends who are in
19:55 the scientific community, lean on them,
19:57 'cause that's what I do.
19:58 - Yeah, very, very good advice.
19:59 Peyton, do you have sources or people that you lean on
20:03 when you wanna ask questions or just wanna understand
20:06 some of the science more?
20:07 - I mean, I feel like I refer to
20:11 so many different articles.
20:14 I am just constantly trying to learn.
20:16 I love Jessica Dufino.
20:17 I love all of her articles and her podcasts.
20:20 And she's gone completely independent.
20:22 So I think I just trust her because you pay a subscription
20:25 and she's alone and she is not, not unkind,
20:30 but she's very honest and blunt about beauty
20:32 and about the space.
20:33 And I really love her and I appreciate that.
20:35 I feel like she's like the tough love that I need to hear.
20:39 But then I also feel like I refer to you as well.
20:42 And I refer to editors because you guys get sent
20:44 all kinds of products.
20:45 And I loved asking you questions backstage as well.
20:48 How do you do it?
20:50 - Well, I think like Charlotte said,
20:52 I think that when you are a trained journalist,
20:54 you do ask a lot of questions.
20:55 You ask a lot of sources.
20:57 You don't just go with one person.
20:58 And it is so much about reporting
21:00 and digging for the truth.
21:02 And I do wish that more people would do that
21:04 and sort of understand that a lot of times
21:07 what seems to be the answer on the surface might not be.
21:11 But I think that we are coming up on our time.
21:13 Fascinating, loved our conversation so much.
21:16 I feel like the key takeaways are definitely for me,
21:18 transparency, honesty, real truth, everything.
21:21 Before we exit the stage,
21:23 I just wanted to have each of you tell our audience
21:26 where they can follow you
21:27 and where they can find you online.
21:28 Peyton.
21:29 - You can find me on Instagram, TikTok,
21:31 just my name, Peyton List.
21:34 The beauty brand is Play Beauty.
21:35 So.
21:36 - Awesome, Charlotte.
21:38 - Charlotte Parlay on Instagram.
21:40 Parlay is the French word for to speak,
21:42 which I feel like I talked a lot today.
21:45 And deuxskin, D-I-E-U-X, skin on Instagram
21:49 and the Tiki Talk.
21:51 - Amazing, and I'm at heymichellelie
21:53 on pretty much every social channel.
21:55 And I also just launched my own beauty sub stack,
21:58 which you can find under my name,
21:59 but it's also called Go Ahead Try Me.
22:02 Ladies, thank you so much.
22:04 This was awesome.
22:05 Thank you so much to our audience.
22:06 - Thanks everyone.
22:07 - Please join me in giving everyone a big round of applause.
22:10 (upbeat music)