Sabbatical Beauty's Adeline Koh is launching a new skincare collection that makes self care a political act.

Updated
on Apr 21, 2023, 5:00 a.m. ET
While Adeline Koh was on academic sabbatical to write a book about how some people of color around the world adopt forms of whiteness, she ended up starting a skincare line instead.
Koh first became interested in skin care after she arrived in the United States from Singapore for graduate school, landing in the middle of a harsh winter at the University of Michigan. Her skin was used to a tropical climate, and she struggled for years. On her sabbatical in 2016, she starting making her own Korean-style skincare products, and Sabbatical Beauty was born.
A year later, Koh left her tenured professorship to run Sabbatical full-time from Philadelphia. But from its very beginning, the small business has been infused with Kohs same politics, dedicated to combating white supremacy and patriarchy while uplifting other progressive organizations. To Koh, theres little separation between those causes and how we understand self-care and beauty.
Koh spoke with The Inquirer about building a small business defined by social justice, and Sabbaticals newest skincare collection, Beauty Is Political, for which 10% of proceeds support Red Wine & Blue, an organization working to get suburban women involved with grassroots causes.
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This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
How did you go from being an English and race & gender studies professor to running a skincare line?
I was kind of under the impression that once I had tenure, I could actually speak up and [call] attention to important social and political problems and how I felt that we could solve them through my research.
Once I had tenure, I realized, actually, I could not do that. I got severe blowback from doing all those things. And so, [I felt] like, this is not a comfortable space for me to be in any longer. I went into academia because I wanted to understand the worlds social problems in order to help make them better. I didnt feel that academia actually created a space for me to be able to do [that].
So when I pivoted into skin care, one thing that made me feel a lot better about my work was seeing the difference in peoples skin and seeing how happy they were when their skin transformed. That to me was a lot more fulfilling than what I was doing [in] academia really seeing the change in people and seeing their self-confidence and their happiness in who they were come back.
Sabbatical Beauty has always been clear about its politics. Youve collaborated with other progressive organizations before, you were once kicked off Facebook for your political advertising, and your brand ambassadors are activists. Why make this a foundational piece of a business?
I knew that I didnt want to make just another beauty company. When I started my line, it was really important to me to understand the political implications of beauty and the kind of products that I was putting out.
I left academia because I felt silenced. In my business, I do not want to silence myself or continue to silence myself. Because, then what is the point? I should have stayed in academia [in that case]. I already had tenure, so it was a much more regular, stable job. I could have probably done [it] the rest of my life with very little trouble if I just wanted to be quiet.
But I didnt want to be quiet. I wanted to create a space where I felt like I was doing the work that I [believed] was really important, and that spoke to my conscience.
Yes, I really care that my products work and make you feel good about yourself. Thats really important to me, but its also really important to me that I draw attention to important issues that need to be talked about, need to be discussed in order for us to come to a more just and equitable society.
Do you think it has helped or hurt your business?
When I started in 2016, I had a lot of people telling me that beauty has no business in politics. What did I know about politics anyway? I was just a skincare person. I remember one [beauty] blogger writing a whole screed against me and saying that skin care is not political. Skin care is science. And I was laughing when I first read that because I have a whole bibliography to show her how science is also very deeply political and politicized.
Things really changed in 2020 because of George Floyd. People were demanding that companies actually become accountable, [and] be very clear about what political positions they were for. I suddenly saw people really appreciating what I was doing.
It didnt mean that the blowback went away. But Ive also gotten a lot of very devoted customers from it. I often get people telling me that they came for the politics and they stayed because the products are so good.
Your new collection is called Beauty Is Political. What does that phrase mean to you, and how does the collection embody that?
Beauty is not a vacuum. Beauty is not separated from the rest of society. It has deep social, cultural, political implications. Why is it that we hold up some people as more beautiful than others? And how is this implicated into the fabric of everything else and how we live?
[The] Beauty Is Political ritual consists of three products. Its a Collective Healing aloe cleanser, the Solidarity Roots licorice mask, and it is a Radical Joy saffron serum.
I want this [collection] to provide a space [for] thinking about yourself and taking care of yourself and realizing that taking care of yourself isnt a frivolous act. I want you to take that time for yourself to do your skincare routine and think of it as a political act.
So even though it seems very mundane, showing yourself that you love yourself by doing these things is a really, really powerful act.
Sabbatical Beauty is hosting a

Friday, April 21, 2023 at 2:00 pm

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