The Essence BeautyBox, which features samples specifically curated for women of color, debuts next month — not a moment too soon.
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Essence magazine is offering a new beauty service to give its subscribers the opportunity to try products specifically tailored to their needs.
The monthly sample boxes, which will feature five products — as well as tips and tricks from Essence's beauty experts — will cost $15 each.
The service comes at a time when more attention is being paid to the ways darker-skinned women of color are routinely ignored by beauty brands.
Essence, which has a primarily black readership, has always focused on beauty needs of black women. As an effort to support community enterprises, the subscription service will also feature one product each month from an independent, black-owned business in addition to more well-known brands.
"When you think about beauty boxes that cover all categories — skincare, color, hair — most likely, for an African-American woman who's subscribed to one, she's probably going to find at least one thing that doesn't work for her whether because of skin color or because of the hair situation," Essence's Beauty & Style Director, Pamela Edwards Christiani, tells BuzzFeed Life.
"With that in mind, does she want to pay for a subscription to a box — no matter how great it may be — if out of six things, two of them she probably will give away?" she continued. "We thought this is a really good opportunity for us to have a truly curated box so she has all categories and we also get to highlight entrepreneurial black-owned businesses. ... So she's getting not just what's new and launches but also being educated and inspired at the same time."