Courtesy of Milk Makeup
Although the vegan make-up brand Milk is named after a creative studio in New York, the reference was lost on many. Co-founder Georgie Grenville admits that their customer service team has spent a lot of time reassuring consumers that there is, in fact, no cow’s milk in their cosmetics. But now the brand’s new skincare line is centred completely around milk—just not from animals.
“We wanted to make a really hard working core product that would work for day and night that was really inspired by lifestyle things that we actually drink and eat,” Grenville tells SLEEK. “We are all having a lot of oat milk.”
Beyond oat milk, which adds an anti-inflammatory element to the products, there’s fig milk which soothes skin, while argan milk locks in moisture. Still, the star of the formulation is ‘Desert Milk’, a formulation made from fruits that are known for retaining moisture in arid climates such as aloe vera, jojoba, baobab and the neon green flesh of the Kalahari melon, which inspires the line’s packaging.
Courtesy of Milk Makeup
“The challenge of making a vegan moisturiser with only vegan ingredients led us to this combination of milks—which is essentially the oils blended with water to make a kind of emulsion,” Grenville says. “The difference between oils is that they are cold pressed out of the seed and milks are blended with water in a whipped way to make an emulsion.”
While waterless beauty products have been a big trend in the industry, the Milk co-founder believes that water has its benefits for moisturising as it makes it easier for the skin to absorb the ingredients that are emulsified in it. “The water carrier makes it easier to hydrate your skin,” she says. “For beauty products, vegan milks aren’t strained as much as they are for drinking, because you want those benefits.”
While 2020 saw the release of the Vegan Milk Moisturiser and the Vegan Milk Cleanser, Grenville hints that the brand may be turning to this blend of milks to expand the product range.
The Vegan Milk line is available from Sephora.