Sappho - HERSTORY
WHY OUR BRAND IS NAMED SAPPHO NEW PARADIGM
SAPPHO (pronounced Saffo or Saf-oh) was a poet that lived in 600 B.C.
SAPPHO was hailed as one of the most important artist of her time because she wrote in first person. Until then, all the writing had been done by men, in third person and their stories were always about battles and conquests. Sappho broke the mold and wrote what was in her heart. She was sexually fluid, married, exiled to the island of Lesbos, educated and wrote about love. The Sapphic meter was named for her and she is the only female writer with a bust in the U.S. Library of Congress.
SAPPHO wrote of her emotional and personal experience of the world, and from what we know of her.
She did not let the confines of her time restrain her, in art or in life.
We draw on the inspiration of a woman that was the first to tell “Herstory” and we see our journey in clean beauty and its aspirations as qualities that reflect SAPPHO'S independence, originality and capacity for compassion.
Clean beauty has evolved from storytelling: every new customer comes with a "why I made the switch" and it has been through the sharing of these personal stories that this disruptive, original, independent movement has been fuelled. Change for the better has come about because of your story and my story, and it will continue to develop as we walk together in our quest for redefining beauty - on our own terms.
New Paradigm (pronounced par-a-dime or peh-ruh-daim)
A paradigm is a set of rules or a construct of ideas that often become what constitutes legitimate contributions to a field and in this case, the field is business. Paradigms can also be memes and the one that our name addresses is the meme of "it's just business".
At SAPPHO we believe that energy does not know what room you are standing in so who you are in business is who you are as a person. The old meme, opposite to this, has served to disconnect emotion and humanity from business decisions; that one sentence has been used as an excuse for unethical practices for too long and is also why we are in the mess we find ourselves in today.
There are consequences to bad behaviour and we are seeing these consequences manifesting as cancers, climate change, poor air quality, raging fires and the extinction of so many species.
Women are opening up businesses at unprecedented numbers and business conversations of support and encouragement are happening that never did before. "New Paradigm" written in our logo like graffiti, is a rebellious nod to the revolutionary act of making empowered, informed decisions about what goes on your body. Working with other businesses holistically, creating community and offering support are pillars of our day-to-day practices. It never was and never will be "just business" as long as people are present.
The other thing, however that is happening is that Clean beauty has been usurped by men - there may be a woman involved upfront but it is largely marketing. We see less and less transparency and larger companies keeping information given to them freely - from smaller female owned companies - to get their edge. We see misrepresentation of the word "clean" as large conglomerates get involved - and one more time a movement to save women's lives is tainted.
This last year our ethics have been put to the test - we learned of PFAS ( forever chemicals) and how to test for ORGANIC FLUORINE the gold standard for testing both studied and unstudied PFAS .
But we believe that clean beauty was imagined to save lives. We now know there is a way to measure - and now NON-DETECT BEAUTY is the new powerhouse on the block.
We are working through our line including both the packaging and formulas and being 100% transparent about the process because we believe in honesty and that knowledge empowers us to grow and make better choices for ourselves, our families and our world.
