The Dirt on Clean Beauty

New Year, new you. January often starts with resolutions about self-improvement of mind and body. For many, that can mean an embrace of clean beauty, in its myriad forms.

Swiss glacier water to remove your makeup? La Prairie can give you that for $120. Intrigued by the possible regenerative powers offered by the microbes in Finnish forest mulch? Snap up a cleansing cake from Luonkos for 33 euros (about $35). Curious about algae and sea kale sunscreens, vegan lipsticks or gritty exfoliating soaps made from spent coffee grounds? Look around and it seems as if more and more consumers are jumping on a beauty bandwagon that promises clean skin — and an even cleaner conscience.

The research consultancy Brandessence estimates that nearly one-third of the United States market is now labeled clean, with an increase of 12 percent expected from 2020 to 2027. Currently, clean beauty has 5.6 million hashtag views on Instagram and 1.2 billion on TikTok.

And many brands are jostling for a place in the market, among them indie start-ups like Merit and Saie Beauty and major luxury names like Dior, which released its first alcohol-free, water-based perfume, and Stella McCartney, fashion’s eco-queen, who introduced a natural origin skin-care line.

But what does clean beauty actually mean?

“If you ask 10 different people what clean beauty means, you’ll get 10 different answers,” said Caroline Hirons, a prominent British skin-care influencer. When you scrape away at it, she said, it “doesn’t really mean anything.”

Much like the murky term “sustainability” in fashion, there is no clear definition of clean beauty — and no consensus on the specific substances and chemicals that should be avoided or embraced. As awareness of the lack of regulation in the beauty industry has risen in recent years, so too has skepticism about the “clean” movement.