By Anna Griffin, Editor in Chief
PC: Belathee Photography
As a model, beauty maven, wife to Hollywood film star, Bruce Willis, and the mother of their two daughters, Emma Heming Willis, is now blazing a trail as the newest star in the clean beauty scene with her body care line, CocoBaba. A thoughtful beauty brand that is sustainably created, vegan, chemical-free, and luxurious yet affordable, CocoBaba is a nurturing, three-step collection featuring a body scrub, moisturizing mousse and body oil. “This is a brand that I created with moms in-mind. It's consciously formulated: We're cruelty-free, vegan, and our main ingredient is organic coconut oil, which is just one of my all time favorite beauty ingredients,” Emma says. “It's a simple body care line that is effective and besides that, I feel it helps moms just to take a little bit of time out to nurture and look after themselves.”
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Emma’s maternity experience ignited her journey into the beauty industry, “I was pregnant with my first daughter, and at the time there weren't really a lot of natural products - green was just scratching the surface,” she says. “I was looking at products on the market and I wasn't 100% sure about the ingredients in them so I literally went back to the old family favorite, coconut oil, and came out stretch mark free. It was this a-ha moment and I designed a whole body care line around it.”
PC: CocoBaba
Her appreciation of coconut oil and its benefits are a lifetime in the making, “I grew up with it. My mom's family is Indian, and we use it in our cooking and on our hair and on our skin. I've been using it for so long that when the idea for this body care line came to me, it had to be coconut oil. It's just the only ingredient that I would want to use,” Emma effuses. “There's so many things that it does. It hydrates and protects your skin, minimizes fine lines and wrinkles, has antioxidants and vitamin E in it, and is also antibacterial and antimicrobial. It's such a powerful, powerful ingredient.”
PC: CocoBaba
Beyond the products’ efficacy, launching CocoBaba as a clean beauty brand was essential to Emma, “We're in 2021, and for me to be able to do a product that's cruelty-free, that's vegan, is completely necessary, and I feel that if you're going to design something from the floor up, you have to hit those benchmarks.” She continues, “I'm very conscious about how I live my life. Even when it comes to recycling and being as sustainable as I can, the brand that I'm bringing to market has to have that stamp on it as well.”
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Her daughters, Mabel and Evelyn, have also inspired CocoBaba’s eco-friendly credentials, “When I started coming up with the brand and really thinking about packaging and sustainability, I looked at my daughters. I think of this world that they're coming into, which is a little messy right now, and I think for me with my brand, it's important to have them see me be conscious and environmentally friendly,” she says. “I want them to take note of that because we all have our part. We really need to take responsibility now, for our kids and their kids. It’s a long road ahead so we really need to be extremely conscious and aware.”
PC: CocoBaba
Emma’s brand is infused with heart, from her appreciation of its star ingredient to its moniker, which incorporates the word ‘Baba’, an affectionate name used at home. “Bruce had read this book called Shantaram, which was based in India, and I have Indian roots. Baba is a term of endearment that they use there, and he started calling me Baba once he read this book. Then we had our kids and we called them Baba, and there were a whole bunch of Babas,” Emma explains. “So when I had the idea for CocoBaba, that was the name that popped into my head straight away.”
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Blessed with a strong marriage and supportive husband, Emma is appreciative of his role as a dad, saying, “There are many reasons why I fell in love with him. One of them was to see how he was with his older three daughters, and I just loved how present he was,” she says. You might not immediately think of a blockbuster movie star like Bruce Willis as a total softie and hands-on girl-dad, but Emma shares, “He just truly loves his girls, he loves spending time with them, and he loves listening to their stories. That influence of him and his presence and his aura, and he's fun.”
PC: CocoBaba
With mothers as the inspiration for CocoBaba, Emma gives her own mother the ultimate credit, “I've always had this powerful woman behind me, and just seeing what she could do as a single mom,” she says. Implementing an affiliate program into CocoBaba to enable women, especially mothers, the opportunity to make additional income she says, “My mother, back in the 80s, did something similar where she would be able to sell products and then earn a percentage. It wasn't that she was a top seller, but I'll tell you that it put food on the table.”
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“I love that she always had these side gigs that she was doing that would really help support us, and for me with this business, I am so happy that is something that we were able to bolt on to our company. I really want to work on that aspect of the business, and watch it grow and flourish so that I can help other women out there,” Emma says.
PC: CocoBaba
Having invested thought, love and kindness into the heart of CocoBaba, Emma is now redefining the beauty industry with a conscious brand that goes beyond skin deep.
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