Since Rihanna launched Fenty with 40 shades every single cosmetic company has released their own and Lush Cosmetics is one of them. Lush released a 40 shade series of solid foundations this month called Slap Stick foundations. These new foundations are found on the different Lush European websites such as UK, France, Germany, Austria, and more.

Image from Lush UK Facebook.

While these new foundations are vegan and cruelty-free before you get too excited and pay £16.95 there are a few things you should need to know...

Image from Lush UK

"This medium-coverage foundation, composed of 14% pigment and 45% Indonesian coconut oil, makes mask-like foundations a thing of the past, keeping your complexion looking fresh all day long at no compromise to your preferred level of coverage."

14% pigment? That's all? RCMA and other professional grade foundations are 40% or more pigment. RCMA foundations boast a whopping 50% pigment! This is why you need so little to work to with.

One raw material that you won’t find in the final formula is a nut butter. “I was thinking about using a lot of butters,” says Jemma, “But some people are quite sensitive to butters, particularly cocoa butter, and some people find that butters sit on their skin. They can be quite thick. And I was thinking, once you’ve got pigments mixed in with it, it’s going to travel over your face.” - Lush product inventor Jemma.

The new Slap Stick foundations boast 29 ingredients but let's take a closer look at those ingredients and why it's a problem for so many people with allergies and sensitivities.

Screenshot from Lush UK.

The first ingredient is "extra virgin coconut oil" and since it's 45% of the total ingredients this is a HUGE red flag for so many people. There is a thing called the "Comedogenic Scale", created in 1979 by Dr. Albert Kligman, which rates things, like oils, on a scale of 0 - 5 with 0 being "non-comedogenic and will not clog your pores" to 5 which is "High - will cause clogged pores and acne breakout".

The word "comedogenic" is a combination of two words: "comedo" which means "a small bump or blemish on the skin usually containing a plug of sebum in the skin pore" (aka a pimple/acne). and "-genic" that means "producing, forming" so the word combined means that it can cause a pimple.


Can you guess where coconut oil lies on that scale of 0-5? Yes? No? Well, if not then I'll tell you. It's typically considered to be a 4 which means it's highly likely to clog pores which can lead to acne.

Image provided by Kevin James Bennett.

On top of that, coconut appears on both the cross-reactive food list for those with a latex allergy but was also placed on the FDA's list of what they consider to be a tree nut. So if you have a latex allergy or sensitivity or even a tree nut allergy or sensitivity you might want to avoid these foundations.

Also, for those of you with tree nut allergies, you might also want to avoid argan oil as that's also on tree nut allergy lists. It's not high on the allergy lists but it's still there so just be aware of that.

Dear Lush,

If you plan on keeping these foundations around, drop the coconut oil. There are far better oils out there and while coconut oil is cheap, it's a known allergen and a known comeogenic.

More from Lush UK Facebook: