Everyone wants to give off a flawless natural look — even if it means not going au natural — and Toronto’s Melanie Cruickshank wants to help you do that with DaLish Cosmetics. Her animal-friendly brand started out as a kitchen-sink experiment and has since grown into a product that’s sold across North America. Yesterday, Cruickshank kicked off a DaLish pop-up shop at the Jessica Jensen studio in the Burroughes Building to test the waters for a potential standalone location.
“DaLish is a word I’ve been using forever,” she says. “It’s the word I use for everything fabulous.”
While the product has grown over the past couple years, Cruickshank doesn’t stray far from where she started. “I still mix everything in my kitchen when it comes to trying out new formulations. Once I get the formulation nailed down, I then work with a bigger plant to mass produce.”
Cruickshank studied the trade under Jan Benham at Aromatherapy. After learning how to do the cosmetic formulations herself, she was then able to develop all the DaLish products.
Bees wax, shea butter, vitamin E and grapefruit seed extract are some of the main ingredients that you’ll find in DaLish products. “It’s just really good things that you can find, and I only use food grade or better,” she says. The products are currently all-natural and will soon become vegan.
DaLish products are mostly sold online, but can also be found in stores like Blossom, Lush and Lavish and more. Shopping will remain primarily online, but come the new year, DaLish will hopefully have a space to call its own. “We are going to do appointments Monday through Friday and maybe be open Saturdays to the public. It’s really going to be a space for our interns, the media, photographers and for people to come and see everything at once,” she says.
This is the first DaLish pop-up shop. It’s open from 11:00 a.m to 7:00 p.m until Sunday, July 17.