Multi-hyphenate Sabrina Dhowre Elba has left almost no stone unturned. The businesswoman, philanthropist, model and Goodwill UN ambassador commits herself fully to whichever undertaking she sets her sights on, so it's not hard to believe that she's a somewhat of a perfectionist.
Her immense passion for her work translates immediately as we begin speaking, and it doesn't take long for us to start dissecting our favourite skincare buys. As a qualified aesthetician, her wealth of knowledge stems far beyond the products she has created at S'ABLE Labs, the skincare brand she founded with husband Idris Elba in 2020.
It's this grasp on the skincare industry that has earnt the brand its several awards for innovative formulations and commitment to sustainable and ethical practises, and Elba prides herself on her desire to continue learning.
“I’m frustrated if I don’t know [something] and I'm in a room where people do know," she shares. "I think, what do I need to do to know the things that they know? The labs are probably tired of me. I love going in and asking, so why is that done? Why would you change this?” Arguably, this is what makes the skincare collection such a success, particularly in a market that has yet to catch up with the needs of melanin-rich skin.
Now stocked by SpaceNK, S'ABLE Labs is bringing melanin-inclusive skincare to the forefront of consumer beauty. Below, Dhowre Elba delves into the history of the brand and where her desire to disrupt the skincare industry stems from.
Sabrina Dhowre Elba: My Life In... Philanthropy
Amelia Yeomans: The beauty industry is quite saturated these days, but you identified a gap in the market that you thought you could fill. What was that gap, and what inspired you to take up space in the industry with S’ABLE Labs?
Sabrina Elba: Oh, I love the idea of taking up space. It was a space that definitely needed taking up when I was younger. Like most people, I had teenage acne and was frustrated with my skin. I was growing up in Vancouver, Canada, so I didn't have a lot of girlfriends that looked like me, and I just remember thinking, why is my skin reacting so differently? I didn't have enough of an understanding about my skin because I wouldn't say the beauty industry, at that time, particularly catered to melanin rich skin. As a Black woman, I just didn't think anything was speaking to me directly.
As I got older and skincare knowledge got somewhat more democratised, I started to realise that I'm not the problem and that it was the industry that was the problem. So I started doing some research and recruited a good friend of mine [to help launch the brand]. I realised that melanin rich skin is a little bit more bougie, I like to call it; it's a bit more sensitive and prone to inflammation, which can cause and lead to post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation, which lingers because of skin barrier damage—it just needs a bit more love. It's cheaper for a brand to formulate for skin that doesn't need the extra care, but then you get skin that's just left out of the equation.
We decided to create a brand that was going to include the needs of melanin rich skin but would cater to everyone, and the reason for that is because if you do cater to the most sensitive subgroup, you actually get a product that's better for everyone.
We love to use antioxidants because they're one of the best ways to protect against inflammation, so we use African ingredients that are packed with antioxidants because the best antioxidants come from Africa. I grew up with a lot of these ingredients, so we wanted to make sure they were the cornerstone in all the formulations and people could get to know them, but because we combine them with great science, it just makes for really efficacious formulations.
I do feel we came out in a time where there were a lot of celebrity brands [launching] and it was quite annoying to feel like we got lumped into a very saturated space when we created something because it didn't exist. I just think there is a misconception there, but we started this brand ourselves and and self-funded it and it came out of passion and responsibility and just a real ethos and mission to see more done.
AY: Do you see skincare and community as quite entwined? How do you view the relationship between the two?
SE: Everyone has a different idea of wellness; for me it is community. I'll often call my mum just to feel a bit better, or my sister, even though we'll probably get into an argument, but it does genuinely make me feel better. When we started the brand, [it was about] relating to people in the community about some of the ingredients or introducing ingredients to a community—it was just always at the heart of the brand, so I do feel community has just become a big part of it.
Also, we've seen a lot of support rallying around what we're doing with our formulations and unique ingredients. It feels like there's been an underserved group of people for such a long time who are finally feeling seen and recognised and heard, and building that has been one of the most fulfilling things I've ever done.
We take particular care when we source ingredients as well. We source all of our ingredients from communities in Africa that we know and we get to meet, and that allows us to have responsible and transparent supply chains that don't involve things like child labour. The ingredients story for us has become such a massive part of the brand now, and so fun to talk about because we get to introduce people to ingredients that 9 times out of 10 they haven't heard of or didn't realise were so efficacious.
AY: You’re a UN Goodwill Ambassador for the International Fund for Agricultural Development; where did your interest in farming and agriculture come from?
SE: I think originally it did come from this passion to change narratives. My mum was a strong African woman and she always told me, "African people are strong, don't believe what you see on TV, they're not waiting for handouts." I think just that little voice in the back of my head was always there when I started doing some more advocacy and philanthropic work. I wanted to show that, actually, people in the global South in general are very hard working and can just be victims of circumstance, especially when it comes to situations they didn't cause, like climate change, which we're seeing all across the global South now.
When I first went to visit IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development) and saw the work that they were doing around agriculture and how, actually, if you just provide rural people with a chance, a leg up, an investment to start their own business, they can then feed their families, send their children to school and such. They're also helping to protect the earth because climate change needs nature-based solutions, and people who are in agriculture and farming are supporting biodiversity. They're protecting forests, they're protecting rural land. It all goes hand in hand.
But now, five years on from becoming a UN Goodwill Ambassador, I realised that even in the beauty industry, a lot of these people are in an abusive agricultural sector rather than one that should be beneficial. You have things like unfair wages, dangerous environments, and child labour because of unfair working conditions, and we're trying now as a brand to bring some visibility to that.
AY: How do you balance the growth of the brand with your mission to stick to ethical practices?
SE: I think we see a lot of brands start off very small and everything's great [ethically], and then as they grow, they wonder ‘how do we navigate this with how we want to do things?’. I'll be the first to say it's so much easier as a startup to do it the right way because it's a lot harder to go back and change everything [for established brands].
With startups, it is expensive to have the right packaging, sustainable practices, even to have ESG accreditation like a B Corp. But for us, when it comes to the raw materials and the sourcing, we've decided this is always going to be a mainstay in the brand, so we find partners who are willing to work with us that way. When you start to cut out the middle man and work with farmers directly, you're actually enriching communities and families, and we're finding people really resonate with that.
AY: Is there anything you've seen throughout your time building the brand that altered your way of thinking, or made you realise things should be done in a different way than what you'd previously thought?
SE: I think starting a skincare brand is an unlearning, because you realise how much marketing is in your head. I'm a trained aesthetician now, and I call that [course] the un-marketing course because every question I had I realised was so rooted in false advertising. I had the curtains pulled open for me. A lot of times we are doing too much [with our skincare] and actually, consistency in your routine and eliminating ingredients, like we do, that are going to cause further irritation or cause long-term damage for short-term results, then you're going to have healthy skin—and healthy skin is at the forefront of everything we do. It was unlearning, simplifying, educating. I think starting the brand has just changed my whole idea of the skincare industry.
AY: What made you want to launch a lip balm in particular?
SE: I cannot tell you how long we have been trying to create the perfect lip. Name a lip balm, I've tried it. But I think there were a couple of things missing in the market: one was long lasting hydration; we wanted to create something that was long lasting that had a real increase in moisture. Our clinicals do show a 127% increase in moisture in just 4 hours, but also that's sealed and acts like a Humectin that attracts more moisture as well.
Because we use enzymes and tetrose inhibitors in our ‘hyper prevent tech’, I feel this lip balm does actually stand out from others. We don't typically think about hyperpigmentation on the lips, but actually hyperpigmentation around my lips would make me not like my own lip colour, so I'd be constantly covering it up with lipstick. And I now feel, because my lips look brighter, more even toned, and plumper, I'm more confident with my lips.
AY: Looking back on the beginning of the brand, is there anything that you would do differently or that you think that could have been approached in a different way?
SE: For me, it would have been about surrounding myself with the right people a bit quicker. I think I always had this idea that I could do it all myself. But actually, having a great team is only going to help you get to where you're going a lot faster. I wish someone had said to me, invest now in the right team, do that first and then everything will fall into place.
AY: When you look to the future of the brand, is there like one big thing you have in mind you'd like to achieve?
SE: I would love to see A-Beauty become a household name. I love that people resonate with it, and I think we are so, so privileged to have an entire continent to pull from in terms of the botanicals that we're going to use and formulate with. With S’ABLE Labs, the ‘labs’ was added because it was always meant to be a think tank and a space for us to create, so we definitely want to see the brand expand and go into other areas.
You can shop the S'ABLE Labs Moringa Lip Salve now.
