<p>Melodie Reynolds, founder of Elate Beauty</p>

Melodie Reynolds, founder of Elate Beauty

collaboration over competition

"clean beauty, to me is about kindness and ethics"

I launched our brand in 2014, and the inspiration behind Elate was really that, at the time, as a professional makeup artist, I was growing really concerned about the ingredients that were in the products that I was putting on, not only myself, but on the models that I worked with.

But also, it wasn't just about the ingredients, it was about the fact that every single time I bought a makeup product, I ended up with a little pile of garbage at the end of unwrapping it, which really made me feel terrible. I'd always considered myself to be a good environmental citizen, and it took a few times of me unwrapping a product and creating a little pile of garbage in front of myself to realize that this was actually a problem that I was part of, and I needed to look for some solutions.

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