Pride Month

Sephora's Pride 2019 Campaign Was Made By and For the LGBTQ+ Community

The beauty retailer is doing more than selling rainbow makeup (but it's pretty good at that, too.)
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Every June, beauty (and fashion and sometimes even dental hygiene) brands pull out all the rainbow-themed stops to celebrate Pride Month. For its part, Sephora wanted to do more than be the go-to retailer for all your Pride beauty looks. The makeup mega-giant announced a campaign called "Identify As We," a video spot with the message "we belong to something beautiful."

Both in front of and behind the camera, the campaign is populated with exclusively members of the LGBTQA+, transgender and gender-fluid community. Activists and influencers like Fatima Jamal and Hunter Schafer appear, putting on makeup, showing off beautiful hairstyles, or just plain old making out.

The video ends with the words "We Belong to Something Beautiful," which alludes the new company manifesto that Sephora published in tandem with Pride Month. It includes a mandate to build a community "where diversity is expected, self-expression is honored, all are welcomed, and you are included."

"From our hiring practices to in-store programming, we are always striving to cultivate a welcoming environment that lets everyone know that they can participate in beauty and they belong," Deborah Yeh, Sephora's CMO, tells Allure. The company's initiatives include Bold Beauty classes, free 90-minute makeup sessions tailored to transgender folks. (Classes are offered all year round, not just during Pride Month.)

Yeh details a few more of the company's resources for its queer-identified employees: "We also offer employees an array of resources, including SephoraPrism, an LGBTQA+-focused employee resource group, while all of our health plans cover benefits for LGBTQA employees, including those who are transitioning." The brand will also donate $1 to supporting organizations with every item sold from the Sephora Heart Pride collection.

As we enter Pride Month, critics have asked brands to focus on tangible steps to help their queer employees and customers. For its part, Sephora previously announced that all stores and corporate offices will be closed on June 5 for inclusion workshops.

As Yeh told Allure, "diversity, inclusivity and empowerment have always been and will continue to be the driving force of everything we do at Sephora." We're glad to see the brand educate its employees and customers in these same values — and equip those who want it with sick rainbow makeup.

Watch the full video below:


More on Pride Month:


Now, watch three makeup artists turn a model into a Van Gogh painting:

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