Kindred Black
Kindred Black | New York, NY
Category: Skincare, Beauty, Perfume
Kindred Black was founded in 2015 by Alice Kindred Wells and Jennifer Black Francis. Environmentally focused, the brand offers natural, plastic-free artisan skincare, cosmetics, and botanical perfumes paired with unexpected finds for the vanity, bedside, and home.
We founded Kindred Black because we were burnt out on the fashion industry. Feeling like we were drowning in a sea of plastic packaging waste, harsh fabric chemicals, and endless travels through countries with little regulation on manufacturing (and the air quality to prove it), we knew it was time for a change.
From the moment we conceived of our new endeavor we made the decision that instead of being the "please recycle this plastic bag" kind of company, we were going to take the onus of environmentalism on ourselves and make the tough and sometimes expensive choices that that would necessitate. In other words, talking about how important sustainability is means nothing if we dump it all squarely on your shoulders to deal with. We want you to love shopping with Kindred Black because we are luxury beauty paired with beautiful, unusual finds, but behind the scenes there's more to it than that.
We spend more than double in many cases to make sure that all of our packaging is in line with our mission. Our materials are plastic free and we use recycled boxes, recycled tissue paper, recycled kraft and shipping paper, water activated paper tape, and our custom wrapping papers are made with 100% PCW and are printed near our office with vegetable and soy inks. To replace plastic bubble wrap we use the most amazing and effective paper padding called Green Wrap, an alternative to plastic landfill that is biodegradable, compostable, SFI-certified, and fully recyclable. Our outer cartons are made by a family-run workshop with a lighter weight, uncoated paper that is FSC certified and acid, heavy metal, and elemental chlorine free. We wanted the unboxing experience to be as special as what’s in the box and our challenge was to create something beautiful that didn’t create a lot of excess waste.
To this day, everything we do is informed by our mantra “love for our mother” – a planet-first mindset shared by the incredible artisans that we’re lucky enough to work with every day. We continue to seek ways to reduce our footprint, and to mine the eras of history when beauty was procured from nature and not a lab.