Make-up artist. Green beauty lover. Green beauty blogger.

These are the ways Lou Dartford describes herself. She is a makeup artist living in London, whose first purpose is to make people feel beautiful through using good products, not only for their performance but also and mostly for their good ingredients – natural elements which won’t hurt the skin nor the environment.

We met Lou in London where we discovered her beauty routine, what was her path towards clean beauty and the brands she loves to use to sustain this green movement.

Read on if you want to discover tips and tricks about green beauty and why we have to talk more and more about it.

You started out with Special Effects, how did you discover your passion for makeup and how did you evolve it?

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I always wanted to be a makeup artist.

I remember as a kid wanting to be one. I can’t remember what it was that made me want to be one, I had a theatrical makeup kit that my mum and dad bought me and I have pictures of me with a gash on my head and stuff. I did my careers project on it at school when I was 13, but the school didn’t really encourage it as a career choice. It wasn’t at all what it is now. After my ‘A’ Levels I applied for London College of Fashion and went on to study a degree in Costume and Make-up for the Performing Arts, that was for three years.

I ended up specialising in technical effects which wasn’t as make-up based as I would have liked, it was more puppetry and monster making. I did it for a while working on films and worked on the first Harry Potter film which was great. I also did some TV and theatre too. However, I realised that I wanted to do more make-up so I did a short course in photographic make-up and after that changed my direction. I much preferred making people look beautiful than like monsters!

“I always wanted to be a makeup artist.”

How did your blog start and what are the topics that you love to share the most?

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The blog has been on and off for a few years now, I’ve always enjoyed beauty writing, and the blog was an idea to write about the products I was using in my kit. Then I started talking about green beauty, so it made sense to make the blog about my green beauty discoveries.

I like to share how-tos and help people with their makeup application. I really like doing product reviews and also more in-depth articles. I’ve been a beauty editor for a few magazines and I like the whole thing, researching and digging a little bit deeper. So, all of it, really!

How do you find inspiration for the editorials?

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Kind of allover really: inspiration can come for a particular image that I’ve seen on something, and I want to expand on it, or I get ideas from nature, colors and or watching a film and so on. Inspiration can come from a pattern or something, all kind of things.

What’s your look of the moment, if you have one?



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I like to do skin, I love doing skin that looks natural, and that looks like skin, fresh and glowy. I never tire of it; I could do it for hours. It’s almost like meditation sometimes.

“I love doing skin that looks natural, and that looks like skin, fresh and glowy. I never tire of it.” 

What’s your personal skincare routine?



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It changes because I’m often trying new products but in general I’ll do a double cleanse, especially if I’ve spent the day working in London and my skin is extra grimy.

First I’ll use an oil, either a single plant oil or a blend from a brand to break down make-up etc, and then I’ll use a wash off cleanser after that. Next, I’ll use a hydrating toner to freshen my skin, and then a serum with hyaluronic acid in it – I’ll change this up depending on how my skin is. I’ll always use some kind of plant oil, I love them, they are just so feeding and good for your skin. I’ll apply using gentle massage movements. It’s not just your skin though, it’s your senses as well. So many of the oil blends you can get have the most amazing smells designed to relax you; so at the end of the day, before you apply them to the skin breathe them in with three deep breathes.

I used to always leave my skin routine until the end of the evening, I’d just be off to bed and I’d remember that I needed to clean my face and it would be a chore. Now I do it earlier in the evening and I can take the time to do it properly, it’s much nicer for me and my skin. My daughter still likes me to stay with her while she falls asleep, the bathroom is next door to her room so I go in there and do my routine while she settles down, it’s my wind down time too.

What is your favorite look among the ones you did?

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I enjoy doing all of them. It’s just nice to do makeup, I love doing natural skin, so I do that look a lot, but it is always great to have a play with colour too. It’s good to get out of your comfort zone as well sometimes. I did a show last season that was very bold and not my usual style but I enjoyed it as it pushed my make-up.

“It’s not just your skin though, it’s your senses as well. So many of the oil blends you can get have the most amazing smells designed to relax you.”

Non-toxic beauty is the topic you talk about the most. How did your interest in it begin and did it evolve through time?



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It started about ten years ago, the whole green beauty thing. I’ve always looked after myself internally, I’ve always been interested in healthy eating and healthiness in general, but I’d never questioned what I was putting on my skin. I stumbled across an organic skincare range and it started me thinking. I was eating organic food and taking supplements, but then I was just smothering anything on me and not even questioning it.

Some of which ingredients were actually linked to illnesses and skin sensitivity. I started to ask myself, “why am I using all these products, all these ingredients when I could use something greener, something better.” Some of the stuff is quite scary and when you read the ingredients you ask yourself, “why would I want to use that product if it could damage my health or skin? Why would I want to use it?”

So, it just kind of evolved and I started thinking that, because I was doing this on myself, I should be using it on my clients. I then made the decision to make my kit as clean and green as it could be, back then you couldn’t really do it, but now it’s just getting so much better.

I think there’s no awareness; people don’t know because it’s not spoken about so much. I think it’s important to start and talk about it more and more and more. 



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Yeah, I think for people, myself included, you would go to your local Boots or Chemist or makeup shop and why would you question these products?
 Because it’s been tested, someone tested them, so you think, “well, they’re not going to hurt me.”

But you know, they have been tested to a degree but maybe they’ve been tested for three months on a study but actually putting these products on our skin every day, year on year on year, and actually putting them with other products every day, every month, every year, for twenty or thirty years, our bodies do absorb some of what we put on them. There’s a statistic that gets floated around that says that our body absorbs around 70% of what we put on, this is much debated.

But, actually, think about nicotine patches, hormone patches: there is some kind of trans-dermal thing, some stuff does go into our bodies, the question is how much? It varies from person to person, it depends on the product, it depends on the molecular size – essential oils, for example, have a small size so can get deep down into the skin. Many products have a penetration enhancer, which is chemical that takes the rest of the ingredients further down into the skin.

So, whichever way, our skin does absorb to some degree what we put on it, it does.

And there’s also the environmental issue as well: like packaging, mineral oil, non-sustainable palm oil, we all know what it’s doing to the orangutans – there are so many different factors, and that’s what green beauty is about: cleaner ingredients that are good for our skin but also good for the environment.

We do need to start talking about better stuff.

Do you think there’s a brand now that is doing some sort of revolution in this sense?

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There are loads of them now. You get RMS, Ilia, Kjær Weis, Ere Perez from Australia, and The Organic Pharmacy, which has just launched lovely products which have glass packaging, which is fab.

There is also Pinch of Colour; it’s a waterless makeup brand.



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Yes, they don’t use water! Where are they from?

New York. 



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Yeah, that makes sense in a way.

Also, in Los Angeles there are a lot of brands that are following this beautiful trend.

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Yes. I think that because there is the demand for it, brands out there can hop into it and think naturally. The consumer really wants it at the moment. I think it’s one of the fastest growing trends.

If you could bring three products to a desert island, what would they be?

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I have to say sunscreen. Otherwise, I’ll burn. I’d probably do some kind of moisture balm that I could put on my lips and my hands. And then maybe a pencil that would double up as an eyebrow pencil, a little bit of eyeliner and that I could put on my lashes as well.

“I think it’s one of the fastest growing trends.”

What will the future of beauty be for you?

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Clean beauty. The way that it changed in the last few years is amazing, and it’s only going to get better. It’s just the way forward for so many reasons, for our skin, for the environment…it’s the only way.

There’s all this hype for vegan, organic and natural, and it has to be, there’s a big surge in it, and I’ve seen more and more makeup artists doing it. For me it’s definitely the way forward, we can’t go back and use more conventional brands: once you learn this kind of things, you can’t go back, unlearn them.

Now there are a lot of options. And beauty for me is changing things faster than, for example, fashion – which is the second most pollutant industry in the world. And beauty is doing a fast change.


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We were saying the other day that it is so much easier to go green with your makeup because they’re doing great packaging and formulation, it’s much harder to go green with your clothes because the designers and brands that are doing it aren’t as cool maybe. Green fashion is definitely not as accessible as green beauty I don’t think.

“…we can’t go back and use more conventional brands: once you learn this kind of things, you can’t go back, unlearn them.
”

What’s beauty for you?

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I guess green beauty is my passion.

For me the green beauty is not just makeup, there are so many issues within it, like the all environmental thing. And also, green beauty is a way you can help people be environmentalist and to change. Because people say, “I can’t do this, I can’t help, I’m not going to recycle because me, one person, it’s not going to make a difference.”

But it’s not true, you can! You can buy this organic lipstick, or you can choose to buy from this brand that is using sustainable ingredients, is using recyclable packaging. So Green beauty becomes more like a movement, it’s not just about makeup, everybody wants to feel good, everyone wants to look good, and we actually can do that and be a bit “political.”

You can sustain a cause.



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Exactly. It has become my way because if I wasn’t a makeup artist, I would be some kind of Greenpeace activist. This has always been my way to be an activist and say, “Come on, let’s save the planet: you can do it with your lipstick.”

It’s more than a job, and it’s more than makeup.

Photos by Johnny Carrano.

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