Garnier knows it has never been more crucial to proudly show our unwavering support for the LGBTQIA+ community. That’s why we have partnered with Heritage of Pride to intensify our allyship and to send a powerful message on one of our best-selling products.
To step up these efforts, we collaborated with LGBTQIA+ graphic designer and art director Antoine Giessner, who created the first limited-edition Pride bottle of SkinActive Micellar Cleansing Water. Antoine says the unique rendition of the rainbow flag represents a “greater cause for human rights, equality, tolerance, and awareness – during Pride Month but, also, all year long.”
Boldly emblazoned across the front of this special edition micellar water is a poignant mantra we can all live by: “Remove your makeup, not your Pride.” As a commemoration of the hard-earned gains and a promise for an all-inclusive future, the Pride bottle’s deep symbolism finds its roots in the early struggles of the contemporary gay rights movement.
The rainbow flag was first designed by activist, artist and drag queen Gilbert Baker in the late 1970s after San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk* encouraged him to create a unifying image for the growing movement to stop discrimination against gays and lesbians. Originally bearing eight colors in 1978, the scarcity of pink and turquoise fabrics compelled Baker in 1979 to settle for the iconic six colors we know today: violet, blue, green, yellow, orange and red. It is said that he wanted the multicolored flag to stand for the “rainbow of humanity […] in the spirit of diversity [and] universality.”
Each color stands for what makes us all human:
Red = Life
Orange = Healing
Yellow = Sunlight
Green = Nature
Blue = Serenity
Violet = Spirit
To recognize the intersectionality of the LGBTQIA+ community and in the spirit of more recent versions of the rainbow flag, Antoine added four more colors to the micellar water design. The pink and light blue stripes are based on Monica Helms’s Trans flag, which debuted in 1999, and symbolize the transgender community. The brown and black stripes represent the racial diversity of the community and its allyship with the fight against racial injustice and violence.
Now much more than a flag, the rainbow is a beacon that stands for acceptance, liberation, and community. Over the more than four decades since Gilbert Baker sewed the first rainbow flag, an impressive collection of new Pride flags has appeared across the world.
But one thing will never change: whether you see the rainbow emblem on a building, a T-shirt or a bottle of micellar water, it will forever be a sign that says loud and proud, “All are welcome.”
*Harvey Milk was the first openly gay man to be elected to office in California. Along with then-mayor of San Francisco George Moscone, both Milk and Moscone were assassinated at City Hall on November 27, 1978.
