The messiness of clean

As Components found for Business of Fashion back in October, interest in makeup brands whose reputations are built on their clean credentials is ascendant. Exactly what “clean” even means in beauty’s linga franca, however, is up for grabs. Products that Sephora assigns its “Clean at Sephora” badge are unlikely to receive Ulta’s “Clean Ingredients” label, and products labeled by either retailer as clean are unlikely to receive any sign of clean at all on TikTok Shop.

Caveats: TikTok Shop’s notorious frontier-like standards regime means that, while there is a “clean ingredients” flag, there is no storewide rule for its application; different sellers of the same products will various attach or not attach the label to the same products. If anything, the messiness of TikTok demonstrates that the lack of any sort of “NSF Certified” equivalent means that no one knows when to even call a product clean and when not to.