Le Labo has built its reputation on a stripped-back aesthetic, hand-mixed perfumes, and a narrative of conscious luxury. With refill stations, minimal branding, and talk of slow production, the company positions itself as a more ethical alternative within the fragrance industry.
In 2014, Le Labo was acquired by Estée Lauder. Since then, its global growth has depended on the conglomerate’s retail power and distribution networks. While the brand presents itself as cruelty-free and vegan-friendly, these claims sit uneasily within Estée Lauder’s broader operations. The parent company continues to sell in markets where animal testing remains a regulatory requirement, and profits from Le Labo contribute to that system.
The more critical link is political. Estée Lauder’s chairman, Ronald Lauder, is president of the Jewish National Fund, an organization that owns 13 percent of Israeli land and is deeply tied to settlement expansion and military-aligned infrastructure. Le Labo’s image of restraint and purity cannot be separated from the parent company’s structural and political entanglements.
Estée Lauder is rated High Impact because it concentrates cultural and financial power at a global scale while channelling wealth into one of the most entrenched institutions of Israeli apartheid. With Ronald Lauder at the helm of the Jewish National Fund, the company is directly bound to the mechanisms of land confiscation, settlement growth, and military-aligned infrastructure in Palestine.
The impact is structural: dozens of distinct brands—from mass-market staples like Clinique and Rimmel to luxury houses like La Mer and Tom Ford Beauty—all funnel revenue into the same corporate centre. Every purchase strengthens a conglomerate that not only profits from extractive and exploitative supply chains but also invests in political projects sustaining dispossession.
Where other beauty firms may be complicit through regulatory concessions such as animal testing in China, Estée Lauder stands out because its leadership transforms consumer spending into political capital for an apartheid regime. That combination of market dominance and direct political entanglement makes it one of the most urgent boycott targets in the sector.
Dupes for Santal 33: Maison Louis Marie no.4