Your Skin is Your Canvas

What happens to Vlada Haggerty's career if her lips are chapped or irritated? How can she work without a canvas?

You may not be a lip artist, but you have a lot in common with Vlada:

• Your delicate skin needs protection.
• You know that wipes have harmful ingredients.
• And you know that cotton does more smearing than cleansing.

And like Vlada, you'd prefer to use something that DOESN'T harm the planet. We knew there were people out there like you, so we worked with Vlada to create Vlada's Mitty Pout—the gentlest, most efficient makeup remover any of us had ever seen.

How to Use Vlada's Mitty Pout

Think of it like a magic washcloth: Slip Vlada's Mitty Pout into two fingers. Apply any cleanser. Massage gently around lips. If necessary, turn to the clean side and repeat. Even long-wearing color is gone!

Machine or hand wash and tumble or air dry. Avoid bleaching. No fabric softener (it changes the lovely texture).

What's so great about Vlada's Mitty Pout?

The main thing is the Korean fabric. It may look like normal plush, but it's much, much better (and more expensive) than other fabrics.

Compare it with any other fabric makeup remover, and after a few months, ours still looks brand new. The others will be...yucky. 

We compared the fabrics under a microscope to see why ours is better. Here's what we found—our fabric's fibers are smaller, smoother, and more consistent, like tiny cylinders. The others? When magnified, they look like gnarled tree branches.

Over time, those "tree branches" get tangled and matted with grime. Stains build up and the texture gets harsh. Meanwhile, our fabric's smooth cylinders wash clean and stay soft.

Our fabric is not just higher quality—it's also thinner. This means it doesn't hog liquid—you can get more done with less of your skincare product. It also turns the Pout into a skincare tool, as opposed to a fuzzy lump.

Vlada's Mitty Pout grabs color without tugging skin, and the Mitty Detailer™ tip is great for targeted touch-ups. After use, toss in the laundry or wash by hand. The fabric lasts for years and years.

The Story Behind the Product

We created the Mitty Pout with Vlada in mind. But at first, we didn't tell her! You see, we're not a multinational beauty brand. We're a small group of entrepreneurs convinced there had to be a better way to care for skin than wipes, cotton balls, or rough terrycloth. Vlada has ALWAYS been our favorite makeup artist, but we didn't know that she cared about the planet!

Eventually, we got up the nerve to see if she'd collaborate on our new idea for a lip cleanser. Her management warned us she was probably too busy to look at our idea. Imagine how thrilled we she said she liked the idea!

It turns out that Vlada's grandfather was a beekeeper (have you SEEN her amazing bee-inspired designs?) and she understood that cheap cotton and face wipes were huge threats to the environment. The pesticides used on cotton are a huge problem for pollinating insects, so we eventually decided that Vlada's Mitty Pout would benefit the Pollinator Partnership, one of the world's leading organizations for protecting bees and other pollinators.

The Package

The package is a keepsake folder featuring original artwork by Vlada created specifically for this collaboration. The material is a tree-free, recycled paper product that resists moisture (because it's so pretty, people tend to hold onto it). When woking on the concept for the photo, Vlada talked about how the fabric was "soft as velvet." This inspiration led her to cover her lips in velvet and place resin "droplets" on her face for the final image.

Later, she decided to create another signature work for the collaboration—the word "Pout" and the droplets in amazing detail on her lips. Watch her remove that artwork in the video below.

The Video

To create the intro video, we invited Vlada and some of our favorite people to our founder's house (pre-COVID). Amazing makeup assistants, stand-in models, still photographers, and video pros worked on a mostly volunteer basis to create the fun short clip that would spread the word about our invention. Vlada prepped her lips for about 1.5 hours in our garage while watching "Friends" on an iPad as the video crew raced to get things set up before the afternoon sun made the living room a sauna!

Fun fact—the stand-in model and the still photographer are world-famous violinists whose "day jobs" include top spots in the Los Angeles Philharmonic! 

We had a complaint that we edited the video, implying we were being dishonest with our product claims. It's true we edited the video, but we didn't do it to be dishonest! It was supposed to be a fun and short thing, so we removed about a second or two because it made the timing better. We weren't going for a documentary here, just a fun and breezy product summary! To see informal, uncut of videos where Vlada uses the Pout in real time, check out this one or this one or this one.

Charitable Contributions

A portion of the proceeds from the sale of Vlada's Mitty Pout are donated to the Pollinator Partnership, an organization dedicated to protecting pollinators and their habitats. More information on why we chose this charity and how products like wipes and cotton balls harm our planet can be found here.

Big Impact, Small Footprint

Take My Face Off makes a big impact on beauty by keeping our carbon footprint small. Almost all of our manufacturing and shipping takes place in the Western US, so we can keep things small, efficient, and "green."

We're constantly working to reduce our waste and packaging while increasing our products' effectiveness. Past innovations include innovative sewing and pattern-making methods that reduce error and waste, making it possible to create our products in the USA at a cost our customers can afford.

Recently, we turned a manual shop press into a fabric cutting machine. Before we created the new method, we used the same cutting techniques as the rest of the sewn products companies out there. We had no control over how the contractors disposed of offcuts and the pattern pieces had to be trucked or shipped to us. Now, we do it in-house (no fuel needed) and our new press is totally muscle-powered—no electricity at all!