Copyright Essence
“Ladies and Gentlemen… our husband,” wrote co-founder & CEO of S’ABLE Labs, Sabrina Dhowre Elba in an Instagram post of her husband Idris’s Calvin Klein campaign last year. Naturally, the post attracted over 16,000 comments of women drooling over him. Now, she’s packaging the communal lust for her husband into the first-ever tinted tube of Moringa Lip Salve, the award-winning product she uses every time she gives him a kiss (for us, of course). One of the shade’s names? “Sister Wife”. “There’s something powerful about beauty that brings people together,” Elba tells ESSENCE. “Sister Wife is a shade born from that energy; it’s a universal neutral that truly flatters everyone — playful, effortless, and made to celebrate the beauty we all share.” But, the warm brown nude neutral, inspired by the community and sisterhood growing within S’ABLE Labs, is not the only shade joining her first-ever tinted beauty launch. The second shade, “Jollof”, is a vivid red-orange nod to the communal West African dish. “Community has always been at the heart of S’ABLE Labs and creating a space where everyone feels seen, cared for, and included,” she says. As Somali woman with an A-beauty brand, both lip tints have references to African culture, while the ingredients behind the salves are with respect to the African communities they’re harvested in. “People forget that in beauty, people can be suffering creating these products, people can be dying,” she told ESSENCE back in June about the exploitation of African people in beauty. “All of our supply chains are responsibly-sourced and traceable, we know the farmers we source from.” From Moringa, known as the “miracle tree” for its ancient medicinal properties, to moisture-sealing castor oil and discoloration-fixing prickly pear, the Tinted Moringa Lip Salve is packed with ingredients her mother swears by and African women have been using for centuries. “I love that something as simple as a lip tint can remind us that we’re all part of something bigger, a sisterhood built on self-care, confidence, and connection.”
