Shades Made Visible

For years, Filipino beauty meant choosing the closest match and settling. This nurse-turned-entrepreneur helped made Filipino beauty be defined by Filipinos themselves

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Ideas of Filipino beauty have long depended on templates not native to its people. For decades, the West's light complexion was the ideal, rooted in colonial histories and reinforced by media, advertising and product marketing featuring fair-skinned faces as most desirable. Studies and cultural commentators alike note that this preference for fairer skin was not because of aesthetic but rather traditional societal biases where lighter complexions were associated with prestige and success, while natural brown or golden undertones of majority of Filipinos represented the marginalised.

Buttressing this colonial characterisation are international brands occupying a big space in mall counters and online carts, not specifically made for the Filipino skin.

It was a gap the local beauty industry had long overlooked, until brands began to reckon with it. Among the first responders was GRWM Cosmetics.

Mae Layug-Madriñan, founder, CEO and president of GRWM Cosmetics, shares her impetus. "I started this brand because, in the early days, my shade simply didn't exist unless I bought expensive global brands," she explains.