Inclusive Beauty, For Real: What It Should Mean for Every Skin
There's a particular kind of silence that happens at a beauty counter. If you've experienced it, you know exactly what I mean.
You ask for your shade. The consultant pauses, scans the testers, picks up the deepest one on the stand and holds it against your jaw with a hopeful little "this might work?" It doesn't. It's a full shade too light and the undertone is wrong, leaving your face looking ashy against your neck. Or you're very fair and the lightest option is still somehow orange. Or you have olive skin and every shade looks either pink or yellow, nothing in between. You leave with nothing, or worse, with something that sort of works if you blend it down your neck and never stand near a window.
Most of us have a version of this story. For many people, it isn't a one-off. It's the background hum of shopping for beauty.
So when the industry started talking about inclusivity, it felt like progress. And in many ways it was. But somewhere along the way, "inclusive" became one of those words brands use so often it almost stopped meaning anything. A shade range launches with forty foundations to great fanfare, and a year later half the deepest shades are quietly discontinued. A campaign features a beautifully diverse cast, but the formula was only ever tested on one kind of skin. A brand posts a black square and never mentions it again.
We think inclusivity should be judged by what's in the bottle, not what's on the billboard. Here's what that means to us.
Made by a melanin-rich founder, made for everyone
KEM was founded by someone with melanin-rich skin. That shapes everything: the attention to how a concealer looks on deep skin in daylight, the obsession with dark marks and how they behave, the refusal to accept a grey cast as "just how it is".
But the answer to being left out isn't to build something that leaves other people out instead. KEM is made for every skin tone, every skin type, every age and every gender. Fair skin, olive skin, freckled skin, deep skin, mature skin, teenage skin, oily skin, sensitive skin. The founder's experience is the reason we pay attention to details others skip. It's not a limit on who the products are for.
There's a version of beauty that treats deeper skin as a niche, a special edition, a separate shelf. And there's a version that treats it as one of many normal starting points that every product should work for. We're building the second one.
Inclusivity starts with the formula
Shade ranges that are built, not stretched
Here's a quiet truth about many shade ranges. A formula is developed and perfected for light-to-medium skin, then darkened or lightened at the edges to "extend" the range. The result is deep shades that look flat, chalky or oddly red, and fair shades that look pink or grey, because the pigments weren't balanced from scratch for those skin tones.
A real shade range is designed from the deepest shade to the fairest with the same care. Like Butter Concealer runs across 20 shades, from Porcelain and Marshmallow through Toffee Nut and Warm Olive to Mocha, Muscovado and Cacao, with warm, neutral and olive-leaning options along the way. Not as a statement. As a minimum.
Soft Set Powder comes in tones from Canary and Buttercream to Warm Fudge and Brownie, because a "translucent" powder that turns grey on medium and deep skin in photos isn't translucent. It's just white.
Colour that shows up on everyone
Blush is one of the clearest tests of whether a brand has thought about every skin tone. Too sheer and it vanishes on deep skin. Too intense and it's unwearable on fair skin. Too much white in the formula and it looks chalky on anyone with warmth or depth.
The answer is pigment that can be built up or sheered out. Satin Melt Powder Blush and Multifacet Kreme Liquid were made to work that way: a single shade can be a soft wash of colour on fair skin and a rich, visible flush on deep skin, depending on how you apply it.
Skincare that understands how different skin reacts
Every skin can be dry, sensitive, congested or uneven. But skin responds differently. Deeper skin tones are more likely to develop lingering dark marks after irritation, so harsh, high-strength formulas can backfire. Fair and reactive skin may flush more easily. Mature skin often needs more barrier support. Hormonal skin changes month to month.
So we formulate for comfort first. Actives like azelaic acid, lactic acid and alpha-arbutin in our Superskin Exfoliating Pads are balanced with glycerin, aloe, panthenol and betaine. Our moisturiser, Hydradaze, is built around barrier lipids. Effective, but kind. That combination is what inclusive skincare looks like in practice.
Bodies, not just faces
Inclusive beauty includes the parts of the body people feel self-conscious about and rarely see discussed: textured skin on the backs of the arms, razor bumps, darker underarms and inner thighs, rough knees, marks from old ingrown hairs. These are common for everyone, across every skin tone, and they deserve the same thoughtful care as your face.
That's why The Body Routine exists. Not to "fix" bodies, but to give everyone good, honest tools for skin they feel comfortable in.
Inclusivity in the way we talk
Products are one half of it. The other half is the conversation.
So much skincare advice still assumes a default reader. Articles describe dryness as "redness", which is true on fair skin and misleading on deep skin, where it often looks ashy. Breakout advice ignores the dark marks that follow for many readers. Makeup tutorials show one face and expect it to translate to every face.
On this blog, we're trying to do it differently. When we describe a concern, we'll talk about how it shows up across different skin tones. When we recommend a shade, we'll suggest options across the range. When we don't make the right product for you, whether that's an SPF, a foundation, a retinoid or a mascara, we'll tell you about other brands that do, because good advice matters more than a sale.
And we'll be honest when something doesn't work for everyone, because that's part of respecting you, too.
What belonging actually feels like
Here's the thing about inclusivity that numbers and shade counts can't fully capture. At its best, beauty is a social thing. It's the bathroom at a party where five friends share one mirror and a single lip colour. It's your sister borrowing your concealer before a wedding. It's teaching your niece how to blend blush. It's the group chat lighting up because someone found the perfect shade.
When products only work for some of the people in that bathroom, someone is always left watching. When they work for everyone, beauty becomes what it should be: something shared.
That's the feeling we want KEM to create. The getting-ready-together feeling. The "can I try yours?" feeling. Everyone at the mirror, nobody making do.
Why "nude" was never neutral
To understand why inclusive beauty matters, it helps to zoom out. For much of the twentieth century, the everyday objects that were supposed to match "skin" were designed around one skin tone.
Crayola only renamed its "flesh" crayon "peach" in the 1960s. Ballet dancers with brown skin spent decades dyeing or "pancaking" their pink pointe shoes with foundation to match their legs, until Freed of London began making brown and bronze pointe shoes in 2018. Plasters, tights, bras, prosthetics and even the default skin tone in emoji were long built around a single idea of what "nude" meant. Plenty of people grew up being told, in a hundred small ways, that the neutral shade wasn't theirs.
Beauty inherited a lot of that thinking. For years, deep foundation shades were treated as optional extras, available in a handful of stores or not at all. Brands like Iman Cosmetics, Black Opal and later Fenty Beauty helped change what customers expected, and the industry was pushed to catch up.
That history is why inclusivity can't just be a launch campaign. It has to be built into how products are formulated, how they're stocked, and how long they stay on the shelf.
Five questions to ask any brand that calls itself inclusive
You deserve to know whether a brand's inclusivity goes deeper than the advert. Here are a few questions worth asking, of us and of anyone else.
Are the deepest and fairest shades actually in stock? A shade range that exists only online, or is always sold out at the edges, isn't really a range.
Do the swatches and product photos show a full range of skin tones? And in real lighting, not only under perfectly flattering studio light?
Does the skincare advice consider how different skin reacts? Does it mention dark marks, ashiness or how irritation affects deeper skin? Does it consider redness and reactivity on fairer skin?
Is there more than one face in the room? Look at the people behind the brand, the experts it works with, and the faces it features over time, not only in one campaign.
Do they listen? When customers say something doesn't work, does anything change?
No brand is perfect. But brands that take inclusivity seriously should welcome these questions, not dodge them.
The getting-ready-together guide
Let's make this practical. If you've ever got ready with a group of friends whose skin tones span the whole range, you'll know how often one person ends up with nothing to borrow. Here's how to build a shared kit that works for everyone at the mirror.
Skincare everyone can share. A gentle cleanser, a hydrating toner and a good moisturiser work across skin tones. Keep a cleansing balm in the bathroom for the end of the night.
Blush in buildable, saturated shades. Choose richer shades with enough pigment to show up on deep skin, then let fairer friends apply with a light hand. A berry, an apricot and a warm rose cover most people beautifully.
A tinted setting powder, not just translucent. Keep a light and a deep shade so nobody ends up with a grey cast in the party photos.
A lip colour that works on everyone. A warm berry or a brick red flatters a remarkable range of skin tones, especially when blotted for a softer stain.
Concealer is personal. This is the one product everyone should bring their own. Shade matters too much to share.
The goal isn't one product for every face. It's a mirror where nobody is left watching.
What we're still working on
Inclusivity isn't a finish line. It's a practice, and we won't always get it perfect.
We want to keep widening our shade ranges. We want to keep showing our products on a full range of skin tones, ages, genders and body types, in real lighting rather than just perfect studio light. We want to keep developing skincare that considers how different skin responds. And we want to keep listening.
If you can't find your match, tell us. If a formula doesn't work for your skin, tell us. If you'd like us to cover something on this blog that never gets talked about, tell us. That feedback genuinely shapes what we make next.
Inclusivity is bigger than skin tone
When people talk about inclusive beauty, the conversation usually starts and ends with shade ranges. That matters enormously. But it's only one part of what it means for beauty to genuinely work for everyone.
Age. Beauty marketing still often treats anyone over forty as a separate category, usually labelled "anti-ageing". Skin changes with age, and it deserves thoughtful care, but a 58-year-old wants to feel beautiful, not fixed. We'd rather talk about comfort, glow and confidence than about fighting time.
Gender. Skin doesn't know what gender you are. Men have dry patches, dark marks, razor bumps and under-eye circles too. Non-binary and trans people deserve products and advice that don't assume who they are. Everything we make is for anyone who wants it.
Sensitivity. Some people's skin reacts to almost everything. Some people find strong scents overwhelming. Some people have conditions such as eczema or rosacea that change how they can use products. Being considered about formulation and clear about ingredients is part of being inclusive.
Budget. Not everyone can spend the same amount on their skin, and good advice shouldn't depend on how much you can spend. That's one reason we recommend other brands, at a range of prices, when we don't make what you need.
Knowledge. Plenty of people never had someone to teach them about skincare and makeup. They learnt from an older sister, a cousin, a YouTube tutorial at midnight, or not at all. We want this blog to be the friend who explains things properly, without judgement, whatever you already know.
A note to the people who've always been the afterthought
If you've spent years being told your shade is "coming soon", or mixing two foundations to find something close, or quietly accepting that the products in the advert weren't really made with you in mind, we see you. You deserved better, and you still do.
And if you've never had that experience, we hope you'll enjoy being part of a brand where everyone gets the same care and attention. The mirror is better when everyone's at it.
Your questions, answered
Is KEM only for dark skin? No. KEM was founded by someone with melanin-rich skin, and we pay close attention to how our products perform on deep skin, but every product is made for every skin tone and type.
How do I find my concealer shade online? Start with your undertone (warm, cool, neutral or olive), then your depth. Our guide How to Find Your Undertone walks you through it, and we're always happy to help if you get in touch.
Why do you recommend other brands? Because we don't make everything, and you deserve complete, honest advice. If we don't make the right product for your routine, we'd rather point you somewhere good than leave a gap.
Before you go
KEM is beauty made by someone who knows what it's like to be an afterthought, for everyone who has ever felt like one, and for everyone who simply wants products that work.
If you're new here, start with what you need most. The Face Routine for skin that feels calm and looks even. Or Like Butter Concealer, to finally find a shade that's yours.
Welcome. There's room at the mirror.
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