This week, VRT reported that Kruidvat sells a makeup line called SheGlam without mentioning anywhere on the shelf that it belongs to Shein, a company that has also faced accusations from Amnesty International and Public Eye about labour conditions in its supply chain.
This is what made me really stop and pauze with this news article...
Shein's textiles have already been tested, more than once, by people with actual lab equipment. Greenpeace Germany found PFAS in Shein jackets at levels up to 3,300 times the EU limit, late in 2025. A Korean regulatory investigation, cited in an American lawsuit filed in Texas, found phthalates in children's shoes and accessories at up to 428 times the legal limit, and that same case alleges lead and formaldehyde in Shein's children's clothing. Closer to home, the Belgian textile lab Centexbel worked with Test-Aankoop in 2024 and found harmful substances in 10 out of 25 Shein children's garments they tested.
None of those results are about SheGlam's makeup itself. As far as we can find, nobody has run that kind of independent lab test on the cosmetics yet. That's not proof the makeup is unsafe. It is a real blank spot, and given what keeps turning up in the rest of that supply chain, it's one worth noticing, especially because SheGlam leans toward a young audience.
If you're a parent, or you're just someone who likes to know what's going on your own face it’s maybe time to search closer to home.
We can’t hand you a simple badge that guarantees which brands are safe. What we can tell you is what’s true for us. Marion, our skincare formulator and herborist, designs the recipes. We go to a labratory, here in Belgium, and we formulates every nourist product from Marion’s own experience with reactive skin. What we make is produced here (and in the Netherlands) too, by people we know, in a process we're happy to walk you through if you ask. Everything is vegan and cruelty free. We leave out synthetic fragrance and and other potential irritants, because those are the most common triggers for skin that's already easily upset, including on faces still figuring out what they can and can't handle.
Working conditions matter to us too. Part of our own packaging and shipping runs through a social economy partner, Mirto, here in Belgium, work that gives people who find the job market harder than most an actual place to be. Producing locally also means the chain from formula to finished bottle stays short enough for us to actually see it, and it keeps that work, and the local economy it supports, close to home instead of scattered across a supply chain none of us could trace. Where we can, our plastic packaging uses ocean waste plastic, plastic that's already out there, pulled out of the ocean instead of left behind, rather than new plastic made just for us.
That kind of transparency costs more than staying quiet does. A local supply chain and formulas built ingredient by ingredient will never compete with mass production on price. We've made peace with that, because the alternative is asking you to trust a product, its ingredients, and the supply chain behind it, that we can't fully explain either.
You don't need to throw out everything that isn't made here, and you don't need to panic about what's already in your bathroom. What's worth asking, every time, is simple: does this brand actually know what's in its product, and can they tell you.
Ask us anything. We'll tell you exactly what's in your bottle, and why it's there.
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