Is Tarte Cosmetics Really All Natural?

Tarte is the ever so popular cosmetic brand sold at Sephora. They market themselves as non-toxic and they formulate all their products without the following:

But is Tarte really safe? On Cosmetic Database Tarte has a score of 1-8. This means that some of their products are really good, and some are really bad. After doing some extensive research into the ingredients that Tarte uses I would say that Cosmetic Database is a little bit outdated because it does show that Tarte uses propylparaben in 4 of their products. I can say for sure that as of right now Tarte doesn’t use any Parabens in their products, just as advertised.

Let’s take a look at some items that I’ve used from Tarte (click the images if you are having a hard time reading what the image says):

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

                                                                           

For both of these items the overall score is 4. Which for me is what I personally like to stay under. Again the importance of this changes depending how much of the product I am using and how often.  For the Matte Bronzer on the Tarte website I don’t even see the Retinyl Palmitate listed as an ingredient, so again I believe that this needs to be updated on Cosmetic Database.

If you look at majority of Tarte products on Cosmetic Database you will see that most of them rate under 4 and a lot of them are rated a 2. To me I think that this is great. I think that for a mainstream brand Tarte is doing a pretty good job at keeping the toxic chemicals out. I do however think that there is room for improvement. Majority of the ingredients listed for Tarte products I cannot pronounce, let alone know what they are just by looking at them. Just take a look at the ingredients for Tarte’s Matte Bronzer here:

Let’s compare this to a well-known brand that uses organic ingredients in their products. Here is the ingredient list of the RMS Beauty Living Luminizer:

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

I think you can see the difference that I am talking about. Overall I do think that Tarte is safe, since most of their products rate low on Cosmetic Database. However, I would not call Tarte an all-natural brand. I think it’s great that a lot of people use their products not even knowing about the toxic chemicals in makeup and are wearing something that is a lot safer for them than the average mainstream brand.  I do use Tarte products but am very careful about checking the ingredients before making a purchase. I am sure that as time goes by the ingredient list in Tarte products will only improve.