Clean Mascara Got A Major Upgrade: 5 Best Summer Launches

Just as clean lipsticks are only getting bolder, clean eyeshadows are far from basic, clean mascaras are becoming more sophisticated. No longer do natural-leaning formulas compromise performance, and according to Koestline, we have ourselves to thank for the recent boom: “Because of consumer demand, there has been a big innovation push toward a cleaner ingredient list,” she says. (Your dollar speaks volumes, after all.) “There are many more clean film formers, gelling agents, and plasticizers available on the market now than before.” 

Quick anecdote: Koestline, years ago, was able to seek maybe a few hundred clean ingredients to use when formulating color cosmetics. Now? She has over 10,000 available to help her land a more complex formula—which just goes to show how far the industry has expanded. 

Brands are also getting more creative with naturally derived ingredients to achieve the same dramatic payoff as a conventional mascara. For example: “Beeswax is known to be a softer wax that gives volume and carnauba is a harder wax that assists with lengthening and curl,” Kirsten Kjaer Weis, founder of her namesake clean beauty brand Kjaer Weis, tells mbg. When creating the new Im-Possible mascara, they played around with a ratio of these two waxes and introduced certified organic acacia gum into the formula—an ingredient responsible for what Weis can only describe as “va-va-voom” volume. 

Beauty fans are also more educated than ever before—so when they, say, vocalize concerns about the eye area absorbing the chemicals it comes into contact with, the industry quickly catches on with safer product offerings. And when they subsequently crave safer options that also put in the work? Enter, the wave of complex, high-performing numbers. It reinforces the point: If we’re hungry for it, manufacturers will ultimately make it happen, even for a notoriously finicky product, like clean mascara. 

“Mascara is a great example of a product that’s historically been deemed ‘too difficult’ to create in a safer, high-performing way,” adds Gregg Renfrew, founder and CEO of Beautycounter, regarding the brand’s new Think Big All-in-One Mascara. “We’ve proven that it’s possible.”