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On a mission to prove that beauty is more than just skin deep

26 July 2021

Laura Mallows is the owner of a vegan skincare company that celebrates real beauty, real skin, and real bodies, and she wants to help turn self-conscious selfies into a celebration of self-love.

The Self Love Beauty Brand

Laura suffers from severe acne so built her own beauty brand to help others.

The beauty industry creates a lot of anxiety and insecurity in women – they promise the world, but don’t deliver.

Suffering with acne-prone skin and scarring, Laura has always struggled to find a suitable skincare regime. After years of scrolling for solutions on social media, she realised that the heavily edited images and unrealistic beauty standards were fuelling her frustration, anxiety and depression. Laura began to question the impact the beauty industry was having on other people’s body confidence and mental health, and why brands themselves weren’t being held accountable. She says 'I was angry, so I wanted to create a beauty company that got rid of those marketing ideals.'

In January 2020, her beauty company was born. Laura began posting make-up free selfies and sharing stories about her own insecurities to promote her products on social media. The response she received was incredible.

I wanted to put an image out there for Instagram, so young people aren’t always faced with photoshopped unrealistic models. I want their Instagram to be filled with real people.

Laura has noticed that her own body-confidence journey has helped others find their voice. ‘I work every day until 2am replying to DMs. I get hundreds of messages from girls saying thank-you because they’ve seen a post of you without makeup on -they felt that they were weird or anxious for having spots or cellulite.’ she says. ‘Them saying thank you, to me, feels like success.’