The Allure Guide to GOOD SPENDING

Want to put your money where your morals are? Beauty buys can be a great place to start. But you need to know the difference between good hearts and good hype. That’s not always easy. With our game plan, and a few stellar product picks, you can be sure you’re putting the most power behind your purchases. And feel extra pleased the next time you look in the mirror.

- Jessica Chia

High Returns

It can be a challenge to distinguish between real philanthropy and savvy marketing. This checklist will help clear things up.

Meet Billie, a chicly packaged razor start-up. Billie’s website says its mission is to take on the “pink tax”—price hikes on products marketed to women—and that it donates “1 percent of all revenue to women’s causes around the world.” It’s well intentioned, but also a bit vague. Is Billie making truly meaningful contributions to truly meaningful organizations? Or is it one of a growing number of beauty brands that seem to be trading, at least in part, on a loosely defined give-back mission?

See, as the world started to fall apart, a very good thing happened. Amid shortages of water, sand, and sanity, and an overabundance of horrifying political headlines, people started to care, to act, and to be conscious of what their purchases support. And businesses have reacted: “In today’s marketplace, almost every corporation has some sort of cause marketing going on,” says Bennett Weiner, the chief operating officer of the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance. But as socially centered brands become more common, so will “good-washing” (making your company sound more virtuous than it really is). “Sometimes it’s done out of ignorance and good intent; sometimes there are deceptions that try to capitalize on sympathies, especially in the wake of disasters,” Weiner says.

So you need to know what to look for: