The Rose Standard: How We Choose Every Product

How do we decide what makes it to our shelves and into our treatment rooms? We scrutinise every product for your health and safety first. Then we look at sustainability and company values, because like you, we vote with our dollars.

Why our standard is stricter

We've been setting the bar for clean beauty in Chicago since we opened, and our standard is built on the best clean beauty knowledge available, including the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics' Red List of chemicals of concern. Most of the time, it goes further than a clean beauty store's.

Here's why. A shop is a place where someone tries a tester. A spa is a workplace. Our nail technicians and estheticians smell, touch and apply these products all day, forty hours a week, for client after client. That is a very different exposure from a quick swipe on the back of your hand, and it's why we hold every product to the standard we'd want for the people breathing it in all day. When it's safe enough for them, it's safe enough for you.

What you will never find here

If a product contains any of these, it doesn't come in the door:

Parabens — preservatives linked to hormone disruption
Phthalates — plasticisers often hidden inside "fragrance"
Synthetic or undisclosed fragrance — if a brand won't tell us what's in its scent, we pass
Formaldehyde and formaldehyde-releasing preservatives
PFAS ("forever chemicals")
Triclosan and triclocarban
Oxybenzone and other hormone-disrupting UV filters
Heavy metals — lead, mercury, arsenic and cadmium
Talc
Hydroquinone, resorcinol and coal tar
Toluene
BHA and BHT
Sodium lauryl and laureth sulfate
PEG compounds and other ingredients that can carry 1,4-dioxane
Ethanolamines (DEA, TEA, MEA)
Methylisothiazolinone and methylchloroisothiazolinone
Mineral oil and petroleum-derived fillers

The science keeps moving, and so does this list. When the evidence on an ingredient changes, we change with it.

Five things we do before approving a product

1. Look for like-minded brands

From our values to our ingredient standards to independent ownership, we look for brands that share our mission.

2. Ingredient review

Ingredients before anything else. Does the product meet the standard above? How are the ingredients sourced? Are they sustainable? Do they match the price? Will they actually work for our clients?

3. Performance review

We test every product for two to three weeks with a small team of people with varying skin types and skin tones, to understand how it feels, how it reacts, and whether it works.

4. Shop small

We choose to support fellow small businesses. For some of our brands, Lena Rose is their first retail partner, and we give them honest feedback on customer experience, packaging and back bar needs.