Ninety-year-old influencer Baddie Winkle just launched vegan skincare at Sephora.
Helen Ruth Elam Van Winkle, aka Baddie Winkle or just Baddie, is an Instagram star known for rocking colorful, eccentric, style with confidence. Her vegan-friendly collection with cruelty-free brand INC.redible Cosmetics, is now available at Sephora.
The collection includes products like the Baddie Double Perks Rainbow Sheet Boob Mask, a vitamin C infused mask — that happen to look like like giant rainbow pasties — with promises to “visibly perk up your pair.” Typically featured in face serums, vitamin C accelerates collagen and elastin production when applied to the skin.
“Collagen is the protein fibers that make skin plump and prevent sagging; elastin are also protein fibers that help skin bounce back,” Susie Wang, co-founder of vegan beauty brand 100% Pure, told the Huffington Post. Wang patented a method of keeping vitamin C in skincare products from oxidizing, a common issue that’s earned the ingredient a reputation for being difficult to formulate.
Winkle’s collection also includes clear, strawberry-scented vegan lip gloss infused with vitamin B12, which nourishes and plumps. There’s also a rainbow highlighter, but it contains carmine — an ingredient derived from the crushed shell of cochineal beetles — which is used to give food and cosmetic ingredients a vibrant red color. But soon, there may be a vegan solution to carmine, thanks to a fiery red sweet potato developed by Danish scientists.
For the month of June, $1 from Baddie Winkle’s collab will go to the Tides Foundation, a nonprofit charity that supports social justice, education access, and environmental sustainability.
‘stealing ur man since 1928’
Baddie Winkle’s fame happened by chance: in 2014, the Kentucky native’s great-granddaughter asked to snap a photo of Winkle wearing a rainbow tie-dye Grateful Dead t-shirt and cut-off jeans.
“So I said, ‘OK!’ But from there, you know, it went viral and I was so surprised,” Winkle told NPR in 2017.
Prior to social media stardom, Winkle managed a small 15-acre farm in Waco, Kentucky. Today, she has an Instagram follower count of 3.8 million, including the likes of Miley Cyrus and Paris Hilton. She served as a muse for cruelty-free makeup brand Urban Decay, dazzled in an incredible crystal-studded see-through bodysuit at the 2016 MTV Music Awards, and in 2017, became a published author. She’s also an advocate of legal cannabis. Her tagline, “stealing ur man since 1928,” is as bold as her outfits.
“I think they saw a great-grandmother that didn’t care what anybody thought about her. ‘Here’s a rebel. We like her,’ ” Winkle mused on why her style resonated with so many people.
Baddie Winkle’s vegan-friendly collection with INC.redible Cosmetics is now available on Sephora.
