1 month ago
19
Red lipstick is one of the most popular beauty products ever made. It’s also commonly formulated using a vibrant red dye made from a female insect called the cochineal beetle.
A quick search on leading beauty retailer websites reveals hundreds of products that feature carmine, including blush from Stila, eye shadow from Fenty Beauty, and lip color from Maybelline, M.A.C., Chanel and dozens more mass, prestige and luxury brands.
Carmine can be listed on ingredient labels as “cochineal extract,” “crimson lake,” “natural red 4,” “C.I. 75470” or simply “carmine.”
Announced Tuesday, California-based Debut Biotech has created a vegan, bio-identical alternative to carmine using biotechnology. Biotechnology works by creating identical copies of a molecule in a lab, which can take years to decades, then creating the ingredient at scale through fermentation. In layman’s terms, biotech beauty leverages sugarcane to create a bio-identical copy that’s often cheaper, safer and offers more ingredient purity.
Continue reading this article on glossy.co. Sign up for Glossy newsletters to get the latest on the business of beauty, fashion and pop culture.
English (US) ·