March 8th is a special day for all of the wonderful women and enlightened men in the world. It marks the celebration of International Women’s Day which started back in 1910 when the attendees voted unanimously for the day. Australia’s first International Women’s Day was held in 1928 when women called for equal pay for equal work (an issue still needing focus today!), paid leave and an 8 hour working day.
Let’s all join to celebrate the achievements of women and spread awareness of the issues affecting women and actions needed to make a change across the world.
This year’s theme is especially important to us. It recognises "Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow". It gives importance to the role women play in responding to climate change by building sustainable businesses and practices.
Lük Beautifood has always been working toward our vision to produce sustainable and wearable cosmetics that create an effortless healthy glow that highlights not hides, giving every woman the courage to be and feel her most radiant and confident self every single day. That’s why we created the Lük Modern Beauty Standard.
International Women’s Day also raises awareness of the ongoing battle to #BreakTheBias to create a world free of bias, stereotypes and discrimination.
We can’t celebrate International Women’s day without getting to know the strong woman behind Lük Beautifood. We want to pay a special tribute to our amazing founder, Cindy Luken - a food scientist, chef and award-winning entrepreneur! We asked Cindy to shoot a video sharing her story about founding Lük Beautifood.
How was Lük Beautifood founded and why:
"I founded Lük Beautifood in 2012, nearly 10 years ago. I based it on the philosophy that if you eat good food then why do you put crap on your skin because we all know what goes on, goes in. So Lük Beautifood today is a consciously made, award winning, clean beauty company and we make a range of nourishing treatments and conditioning colour to apply. We're all about, and I'm all about, empowering women to feel good about themselves so we're all about natural beauty. So what we do and we do so well is that we harness the beauty in food and that is why we're called Lük Beautifood."
Why did you start with Lip Nourish™
"I started with Lip Nourish™ in my collection because I couldn't find a lipstick that I wanted to wear! Lip Nourish™ is a super nourishing lipstick made from food — it's sheer in colour so you just add a touch or wash of colour. It's also made in a slimline which means you can pop it in your pocket, in your handbag and take it with you. So my whole idea was to make a menu of half a dozen different lipsticks that were made from food, toxin-free and just looked pretty because it was just a touch of colour."
What is the Modern Beauty Standard?
"We have 3 core pillars to our brand. Clean, Conscious, Credible. There are many brands entering the market and they think it's easy but you need to know what you're doing. I'm a Food Scientist and that means we research all of our ingredients and go into the core functions of the ingredients that we use in our products."
What ingredients will you never use and why?
"Our lipsticks are made from 100% natural foods and botanical ingredients which means we'll never use synthetic ingredients in our products. That means we don't use glycols, we don't use silicones, we don't use synthetic colours and that means that our ingredients are pure. So if you do eat your lipstick, you know you're not eating toxic ingredients!"
Read more about Cindy and our Lük Beautifood story.
1. https://unwomen.org.au/get-involved/international-womens-day/about