for anyone who wears makeup,

and that task is even harder for people of color,

but there's a brand that's trying to make it easier for us.

Since Mented Cosmetics launched in 2017,

their mission has been pretty simple:

Make it easier for women of color

to find their perfect shade.

We're trying out their foundation, eyeshadow,

and nude lipsticks to see if we should swap out

the products we normally use for Mented's line.

- OK, first of all, this is the perfect freaking shade.

What!

Narrator: Black American buyers spend about

$1.1 billion per year on beauty products.

But despite our buying power,

finding the right shade as a woman of color

is still a huge problem.

- As a woman of color, I think it's really hard

finding makeup for myself.

I could never find the right nude lipstick

because I feel like it always makes me look too washed out.

- My biggest challenge is

finding a way to match the different

complexions I have on my face,

making sure that my foundation matches my neck and my chest.

- I'm between two shades,

which means I have to purchase two foundations

and then do some sort of science experiment

to try to find the perfect match.

Narrator: That's because making

the perfect shade really is a science,

a science that even the biggest cosmetic labs

have had trouble mastering. Here's why.

Most shades are mixed with white,

yellow, red, and black pigments,

but when making darker shades,

chemists tend to mix too much of the black pigment.

This results in limited undertones,

which can make brown skin look bruised or washed out.

To alleviate this problem,

Mented Cosmetics is focusing

specifically on brown skin tones.

- If I sort of look at a distance, you can see

this one just has a touch more red,

which I think makes it vibrant.

- Mented is a pigment-first beauty brand

celebrating women of all hues and

focusing on women of color.

- I remember our early struggles

with trying to find the perfect nude lipstick.

It was always about feeling othered and left out,

and we were just constantly disappointed...

- Yeah.

- With all of the products

that made us feel ashy or chalky.

KJ: On our site, we have a shade finder

that's going to show you every

single lipstick on many, many different skin tones.

Our customer-service team gets emails

every day from women

literally sending photos of themselves

and being like, "Which one should I wear?"

And we answer every single one.

Narrator: We headed to Mented's headquarters

in New York city to see if their makeup

lives up to the hype.

- OK, guys, so we made it to Harlem.

We're right in front of Mented's headquarters,

about to hopefully find our perfect shade.

Alana: Do you think they'll find it?

Doyinsola: I think so.

After seeing Jackie find her perfect match,

I'm hopeful.

- Look at that, like, it's my skin.

- Hopefully that will be us.

- Let's do it!

Alana: All right, let's go!

Narrator: We decided to go for a neutral,

office-friendly look.

Up first: the foundation.

- As a person of color, your face

and your neck is going to be completely

different colors, so you have to

find a way to balance those tones.

So I like to start with a swatch on the side

of the face, so I'm going to be using shade M-40.

Narrator: Mented has 16 foundation shades

ranging from light, tan, medium, and deep.

Up next: eyeshadow.

The palette has nine warm, neutral shades

made with vegan and cruelty-free ingredients.

- So I keep reading brown skin tones shouldn't wear, like,

lighter eyeshadows.

Is that true, or?

- I feel like you can wear whatever

shadow you want to, and honestly, I feel like

deeper-complected women look great in brighter eyeshadows.

Narrator: And finally, the perfect nude lip.

- So I always have a difficult time

finding nude shades for my lips.

Do you have any tips for, like, choosing

the right nude lip color?

- When picking a nude lip color,

you don't really want to go too light or too dark,

so I like to treat the lips how I treat blush.

Blush is usually a color that you will

naturally get if you were to pinch your cheeks.

If you were to pinch your lip,

what color would that be?

- Oh, my God, wow!

This is like the perfect freaking shade.

- It looks very dewy.

I'm sure as I wear it throughout the day,

I won't be worried about it drying out.

- I normally don't wear eyeshadow,

but I think, like, this is something

that I would wear for, like, to go to work.

Narrator: With brands like Fenty,

Pat McGrath, and Shea Moisture,

Mented isn't alone in creating beauty

products that cater to diverse consumers,

but despite their work, the cosmetics

industry as a whole still has a long way to go.

- I think for a lot of brands, what they've gotten

wrong in the past is this assumption that beauty

should be one-size-fits-all, and what we think

we're doing right is starting with her

pigment and saying, "This is a product that's going

to work specifically for you."