With over 15 years of experience as a makeup artist, Gloria Noto set off to be the change she wanted to see in the beauty industry. After firsthand seeing how the beauty space is polluted with harmful chemicals and ingredients—and lacking inclusivity and representation—, Gloria (who uses she/they pronouns) wanted to lead by example. With Noto Beauty, the company’s commitment to gender fluidity and diversity and inclusion within the clean beauty space is intentional. Frenshe sat down with Gloria to chat about the future of beauty and what makes NOTO Botanics different.
What does true diversity and inclusion mean to you in the beauty industry?
To me it means not only having representation in your campaigns, but also the message coming within the company and the practices the company adopts. It needs to be a holistic and authentic approach. It can’t just be a concept that a brand feels is on trend. It needs to be real.
What is something you are hoping to achieve with NOTO?
I am hoping to make NOTO feel like a full embodiment to the customer. I want you to not only love and see results from the amazing product, but feel connected to the community, be inspired by the art we create to share with you, and feel seen.
What would you like to see more of/less of in the beauty industry?
I would love to see more authentic vision from larger brands, rather than the usual “inspiration” taken from smaller brands that are working extra hard to share their personal vision. I would love to see more queer, trans, and non-binary folks as faces of the brands as well. The clean beauty movement is still fairly new and there’s definitely a lot of ambiguity over what clean actually means.
How does your company practice transparency around ingredients and packaging?
We try to make this a bit part of our conversation with our customer. Be it in our product detail pages on the website, the types of informative community email’s we share with our newsletter sign ups, and sustainability page links on our website as well. We believe that minimal shifts make the greater change, so we are in a constant state evaluating how we, as a smaller business, can make those shifts. We try to make our packaging as sustainable, and either bio-degradable or recyclable as possible, we try to source ethically farmed ingredients, fair trade, and child labor free (always) , as possible. And Deep dive into what type of ingredients are truly helpful to your overall wellbeing. It has to be a full circle approach.
What are you most proud of with NOTO?
What I am most proud of is the incredible community we have built, one that feels inspired and connected to what we are putting out. Without that, it would be pointless. I am also so proud of taking this out of my kitchen when I first started, to building a team of incredible folk who treat NOTO like their own. At the end of the day, it’s all about connection.
What does the future of NOTO look like to you?
The Future looks like expansion. I would love NOTO to be available to everyone who is interested in trying it. Being able to reach larger audiences and grow our community. Having more collaborations and making more art through NOTO is also high on my list.