Gloryscent: Redefining Beauty Standards for Women of Color
The beauty industry has been shaping the world’s standards of beauty for centuries. Unfortunately, with these standards, a lot of people feel excluded, especially women of color. Most beauty products are designed for Caucasian women, leaving people of color to feel left out.
Rafaela Gonzalez was one of these people. Growing up, she struggled with her textured hair and darker skin, always feeling self-conscious because of European beauty standards. She decided to take matters into her own hands and create a skin-care brand that serves underrepresented women of color in the beauty industry, and Gloryscent was born.
Gloryscent, labeled as a “pro-melanin skin-care brand,” aims to center women of color in their products, serving them with clean and safe beauty solutions. During the process of creating this brand, Gonzalez learned that most products for women of color contain toxic ingredients harmful to the skin. The negative impact of such chemical exposure disproportionately impacts these consumers in comparison to white women.
As a result, the brand’s mission expanded and evolved to stand for “inclusivity in clean beauty,” providing women of color with access to safe health and wellness products. Gloryscent’s inspiration comes from Gonzalez’s Caribbean roots, infusing natural beauty and ingredients from her ancestral home to most of the products. Ingredients such as arnica flower extract, willow bark, and organic ginseng promote exfoliation and skin-soothing for sun-damaged skin.
One of Gonzalez’s best-known products is the Behold Brightening Balm, which contains neem oil, a natural ingredient derived from trees that grow in the Dominican Republic. Gonzalez has a personal connection to the neem trees as they grew in her backyard during her childhood.
Aside from the Behold Brightening Balm, Gonzalez’s Gloryscent offers other products like the Soothing Enzyme Cleansing Gel, Total Body Serum, Urbana Elixir, and Manketti Oil Serum. According to Gonzalez, the idea behind these products is to provide a complete skincare routine rather than just a few products for clients to transition to clean beauty fully.
Gonzalez faced several challenges while creating effective Gloryscent products, such as figuring out the formulation process without formal training. However, this did not deter her from pursuing her passion for eliminating toxic ingredients in skincare products and offering holistic solutions to women of color.
In an industry that often exploits women of color and sidelines their beauty needs, Gloryscent’s mission is to provide tailored and healthier alternatives to the harsh and often damaging active ingredients in mainstream products, uplifting these women as they are.
Gloryscent has established itself in the market, with its products available in JCPenney stores through the Thirteen Lune ecommerce site. Furthermore, today, Gonzalez has been proud to establish the “Let’s Talk Inclusion in Clean Beauty,” a speaker series that aims to educate people about the toxic ingredients used in self-care products sold to Latinx women and other women of color.
In summary, Gloryscent is one of the few brands that focus on women of color in the beauty industry holistically. By utilizing natural ingredients and promoting clean beauty, it provides a clean and safe environment for customers to feel seen, respected, and valued in the beauty industry.
