The Backstory:

(Please skip to “The Review” portion of this blog post if you are not interested in the backstory as to why I switched to these lipsticks):

The whole point of my blog is to allow others to share my journey towards increasing my practice of the deen as I progress through life. It is a very difficult thing to do when living in a non-Muslim majority country where the line between halal and haram is often blurred. We have to face the daily grind of making choices, endless choices, between halal and haram options with our limited understanding and knowledge. These choices span every category of life, including food, socialization, interaction, attire, and even personal care and cosmetic products. Therefore, I like to share on this blog what I have learned so far and to provide halal alternatives to those on a journey similar to mine.

Oftentimes, the importance of choosing halal options in the personal care and cosmetics categories are less apparent because most people don’t even realize that their favorite products include haram ingredients. For example, are most of you aware that carmine, which is a color obtained from crushed insects, is used in majority of lipsticks? Or that ethanol/ethyl alcohol is sometimes used in cosmetics? Or that many of the ingredients, such as phenoxyethanol and heavy metals, used in lipsticks can cause slow damage to your health with regular use? Since skin absorbs a lot of what is put on it and lipsticks are often unintentionally ingested with use, it is equally important for me to make sure that my lipsticks have the least harmful ingredients possible as I have thyroid issues made worse with toxins and because the holy Qur’an advises:

“O ye people, eat of what is on earth, lawful and good.” (2:168)

“Let not your own hands contribute to your destruction” (02:195)

Since I became aware of the problem that a lot of cosmetics and personal care products are not halal-friendly nor safe for our health, I decided to slowly transition to better alternatives. One of my recent goals was to transition all of my lipsticks to halal-friendly ones and, boy, was it difficult (truly frustrating!) to find ones that were both halal-friendly and relatively harmless. I found halal-certified lipstick brands that contained harmful pigments or natural brands that either contained ethyl alcohol/ethanol or were not vegan (so we could avoid carmine and potentially other haram animal by-products).

Unfortunately, after much research, I personally could not find a halal-certified lipstick that contained the least harmful ingredients possible according to Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) Skin Deep Cosmetics Database. However, I did find a non-halal-certified brand named Real Purity that sells vegan, natural, and ethanol/ethyl alcohol-free lipsticks according to their website and customer service in June 2018. All the lipstick ingredients appear to be halal and relatively safe with the best of my knowledge after I emailed customer service to verify this:

June 6, 2018:

Hi Tabassum,

Thank you again for reaching out to us!

The lipsticks do not contain soy or any type of alcohol.

Have a wonderful rest of you week!

 

Best Regards,

Cheryl Johnson

Customer Service Assistant

RealPurity, Inc.

Phone-1-800-253-1694

Fax – 1-812-473-0803

June 7, 2018:

Hello,

Yes, they are vegan.

Best Regards,

Cheryl Johnson

Customer Service Assistant

RealPurity, Inc.

Phone-1-800-253-1694

Fax – 1-812-473-0803

I asked on June 7, 2018: On a few different websites it says the realpurity red color lipsticks (such as clover red) may contain carmine. Is this true? I hope you don’t mind me confirming as it is very important to me to avoid any animal byproducts.

Response from customer service on June 8, 2018:

Hello,

That is not correct. Unfortunately, we cannot control some of our dealers website’s. When we see the issue we do reach out to them and ask them to update their information.

Best Regards,

Cheryl Johnson

Customer Service Assistant

RealPurity, Inc.

Phone-1-800-253-1694

Fax – 1-812-473-0803

As you can see, I did the painstaking task of contacting the lipstick brand to confirm (to the best of my knowledge, and Allah knows best) that the ingredients they use in their lipsticks are permissible for us, In Shaa Allah. However, please take a look at the ingredients tab for each lipstick or contact customer service yourselves at the time of purchase in case of changes to the ingredients. Finally, please note I only researched the lipstick ingredients and cannot confirm if their other products are halal or natural at this point in time.

The Review:

I’m sure that if halal and natural ingredients are not important to you, then you will find better lipsticks. I, myself, was not expecting the best quality since my research led me to just one brand that I felt confident met all my requirements. What would be the chances that the lipsticks themselves were also wonderful? Well, I was pleasantly surprised that the Real Purity lipsticks are actually of excellent quality considering that they only contain natural ingredients. Not only are they highly pigmented, they are also non-drying on the lips when applied with chapstick. My lips feel wonderfully moisturized even though I chose more of the matte colors. I will say, however, that I usually prefer lipsticks that are even more matte but these were so beautiful on and non-drying that I did not care. The colors are also very beautiful and look lovely on darker skin-tones and darker, uneven lips.

(Left to right: harvest blush, parfait, rose, and clover red)

As you can see from the lipstick swatches above, the colors are gorgeous! The harvest blush color is my personal favorite so far as it looks really nice with my skin-tone and dark lips. It also draws less attention, which may be important to many of you. This color is perfect for warm skin-tones. My skin color is more neutral, so certain cool colors like, rose and parfait, can look good on me too. The clover red is good for both warm and cool skin-tones according to the website and it is more of a true-red color. The great thing about Real Purity is that they list which type of skin tone each lipstick goes best with. Please read the description properly because some of the lipsticks are frosted or shimmery.

One great thing about Real Purity lipsticks is that you can purchase samples of any of the lipstick colors prior to purchasing the full-sized version so that you can feel more confident about your color choices. Though, some people have mentioned in the reviews, that the sample colors can sometimes be a little off from the full-size lipstick colors.

Overall, I love the Real Purity lipsticks and you can see that many others do as well from the great reviews on their website. I cannot believe that I loved each of the colors I purchased when it is usually really difficult for me to find lipsticks that look nice on me. Therefore, I highly recommend this brand and hope you will think about switching to more natural, halal lipstick alternatives too.