“The Spectrum” of L’Oréal Cosmetics Helps Women Put Their Best Face Forward

Our beloved Michael Jackson once sang that “it don’t matter if you’re black or white.” We wholeheartedly agree, but in the cosmetic world it isn’t that simple. For as long as make up has existed, the colors have been limited and fall short when it comes to matching “The Spectrum” of skin tones, especially for people of color. The people at L’Oréal USA are trying to change that with some fancy chemistry—we f***ing love science!

“The Spectrum” is mini-documentary from Rain that shadows chemist Balanda Atis as she works to understand the nuances of skin tone and how L’Oréal can create foundations to match each and every one (a tall order!). The video shows how Atis studied over 20,000 data points to get the whole picture, as well as how L’Oréal’s Women of Color Lab took its measurements from 57 countries to create “The Spectrum” of foundations necessary to colormatch the rainbow of existing skin tones.

The video hasn’t gone viral by any means, with around 40,000 views on YouTube and 100,000 on Facebook, but L’Oréal is proud of its efforts to create #BeautyForAll because like we’ve always known, beauty comes in every color.