I bought my first NARS Orgasm blush the fall of my sophomore year of college, and for six years after that it was the one product I never let myself run out of. I recommended it to roommates, to my sister, to strangers in Sephora who asked what I was wearing. It took me until last year to actually sit down and check whether the brand I’d been defending for six years was cruelty free. It wasn’t. If you’ve typed is NARS cruelty free into Google hoping for a different answer than the one I got, I’m sorry, but I’m going to walk you through exactly what I found and why I still think most of the advice out there on this gets it wrong.
The Quick Answer: Is NARS Cruelty Free?
No. I spent about a week going through this, expecting to find some technicality that would let me keep buying in good conscience, and I didn’t find one. NARS sells in mainland China, where animal testing can still be required for imported cosmetics. It isn’t certified by PETA or Leaping Bunny. Its parent company, Shiseido, isn’t cruelty free either.
I remember exactly where I was when I confirmed it, sitting on my bathroom floor with my phone propped against the tub, three different browser tabs open, half hoping one of them would contradict the other two. None of them did.
What NARS Actually Says About Animal Testing
So I did what I always do when a brand’s ethics get questioned, I went straight to the source instead of trusting a database. NARS keeps its policy short. On its own customer service page, the brand states it does not test on animals or ask others to test on its behalf, except where required by law. I read that sentence probably five times before it clicked why it mattered.
That last clause is doing a lot of quiet work. “Except where required by law” is the exact phrase cruelty free databases flag as a red flag, not a reassurance. It means NARS will allow testing when a government demands it as a condition of selling there, which is a very different promise than never testing at all. I’ve read enough of these policies now to know that genuinely cruelty free brands write theirs with no exceptions, full stop, and NARS didn’t.
Why Selling in China Changed Everything
This is the part that actually made me angry, more than the policy language itself. NARS announced in the summer of 2017 that it would start selling in mainland China. I was still buying that blush every few months back then and had no idea it happened. At the time, China required imported general cosmetics to undergo animal testing before they could hit store shelves, no exceptions for the brand’s own preferences. Once NARS opted into that market, its products became subject to those tests, full stop.
China has relaxed some of its animal testing rules since then, and brands that manufacture locally or meet certain safety documentation requirements can now sometimes skip it. I went looking for proof that NARS had done that paperwork. I couldn’t find it, and neither could any of the cruelty free organizations I checked. Until a brand shows its work, I don’t give it the benefit of the doubt anymore, and that’s exactly the contrarian part of my take here: I think too many cruelty free guides let brands claim “in transition” status for years without ever demanding the documentation. NARS has had since 2017 to fix this.
NARS and Shiseido: The Parent Company Problem
NARS has been owned by Shiseido since 2000, and Shiseido is not a cruelty free company either. Japan doesn’t ban cosmetics animal testing the way the EU or UK does, and Shiseido’s own policy mirrors NARS almost word for word: no testing unless a law somewhere requires it. Once I saw that pattern, I couldn’t unsee it.
I ran into the same story researching another brand a few weeks later. Lancôme has the exact same setup, tied to L’Oréal instead of Shiseido, but the shape of the problem is identical. A parent company with global manufacturing and a foothold in China almost always means that “except where required by law” clause gets used. At this point I don’t think the parent company is a footnote. I think it’s the whole story, and most cruelty free content treats it like an afterthought.
Is NARS Certified Cruelty Free?
No. NARS holds no certification from Leaping Bunny or PETA’s Beauty Without Bunnies program, and PETA’s own cruelty free database lists NARS Cosmetics among brands that test on animals. I’d seen NARS on an “approved” list years earlier, back before 2017, and for a while I assumed that old memory was still accurate. It wasn’t, and that gap between what I remembered and what’s actually true is exactly how a brand gets away with this for years.
Certification isn’t just a formality either. Leaping Bunny and PETA both require brands to sign a legally binding pledge and submit supply chain documentation. A brand that genuinely stopped testing can usually get certified within a year or two. NARS has had nine years since the China decision and hasn’t pursued it once. That silence told me more than any policy statement did.
Is NARS Vegan and Cruelty Free?
Not consistently, and I confused these two labels myself for longer than I want to admit. Vegan means a product’s formula skips animal-derived ingredients like beeswax, carmine, or lanolin. Cruelty free means the brand doesn’t fund or allow animal testing during development. NARS has a handful of products marked vegan on the ingredient side, and for a while I genuinely thought that meant something about the company’s ethics overall. It doesn’t. Since the brand as a whole still tests, nothing it sells clears the cruelty free bar, vegan formula or not.
I watched this exact confusion play out in a friend’s group chat a few months later, when someone shared a screenshot of a “vegan formula” label like it settled the question. Clinique runs into the same mix-up, where a vegan badge gets mistaken for an ethical testing guarantee. They’re not the same promise, and I don’t think that confusion is always accidental on the brand’s part.
What About Specific Products I Actually Used?
People ask me this constantly, and I get it because I asked it myself first: is the Radiant Creamy Concealer cruelty free even if the brand overall isn’t? I wore that concealer under my eyes almost daily for two years, and here’s my honest, slightly deflating verdict on it while we’re at it, it started creasing into my fine lines by hour four no matter how I set it, which never once matched the flawless-all-day reputation it has online.
But the performance question and the ethics question are separate, and cruelty free status isn’t assigned product by product anyway. It’s a brand-wide policy about how the company operates, not an ingredient checklist for one SKU. So no matter how good or disappointing a single concealer’s wear time is, if NARS as a company still allows animal testing anywhere in its supply chain, every product under that name carries the same status. That includes the concealer I wore for two years, the blush I wore for six, the foundation, and the lipstick people ask me about most.
Cruelty Free NARS Dupes Worth Trying
I gave my last NARS blush away to a coworker instead of throwing it out, which felt like the honest move rather than a wasteful one, and started rebuilding my routine from brands I could actually verify. e.l.f. Cosmetics and Physicians Formula both hold current cruelty free certifications and have built genuinely good concealer and blush lines. I’ll be honest, the first e.l.f. concealer I tried didn’t blend quite as seamlessly as the NARS one did straight out of the tube, it took an extra thirty seconds of patting with a damp sponge to get there. It got there, though, and it didn’t crease on me by hour four the way the Radiant Creamy Concealer did.
For something closer to NARS’s editorial, high-pigment finish, I’ve had better luck with smaller indie brands than with legacy names, since they haven’t taken on the Chinese distribution deals that got NARS into this position in the first place. I still check a brand’s current status before buying anything now, since cruelty free policies shift with ownership changes and new markets. A brand that’s clean today can change that with one distribution deal, the same way NARS did in 2017.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is NARS cruelty free in the US, UK, or Canada?
The country you’re shopping from doesn’t change the answer, and I get this question a lot from readers outside the US assuming their market might be different. NARS’s cruelty free status comes from where the company sells and tests overall, not where you personally buy the product. Whether you’re in the US, UK, or Canada, you’re buying from the same global company with the same China sales and Shiseido ownership, so the answer stays no everywhere.
Is NARS certified cruelty free by PETA?
No. PETA’s own database lists NARS Cosmetics under brands that test on animals, not its cruelty free list. NARS has never held a PETA Beauty Without Bunnies certification, which surprised me since I’d assumed a brand this size would have pursued it at some point.
Is NARS makeup vegan and cruelty free?
No to both, though it’s not quite that simple, and I made this exact mistake myself. Some individual NARS products are formulated without animal-derived ingredients, which is what vegan refers to. That’s separate from cruelty free, which is about testing practices, and NARS doesn’t clear that bar regardless of a product’s ingredient list.
Are products like the Radiant Creamy Concealer or Light Reflecting Foundation cruelty free even if the brand isn’t?
No. Cruelty free status applies to the whole brand’s testing policy, not one product’s formula. Every NARS product, including the concealer I personally wore for two years, the foundation, and the lipsticks people ask me about most, carries the same brand-wide status.
Is NARS gluten free?
That’s a separate question from cruelty free status and isn’t something NARS guarantees across its whole line. Some products may not list gluten-containing ingredients, but formulations change and cross-contamination during manufacturing is possible. If gluten is a medical concern for you, contact NARS customer service directly about a specific product before buying rather than assuming based on the ingredient label alone.
The Bottom Line
NARS isn’t cruelty free, and after going through this myself, I don’t think the fix is as simple as most cruelty free content makes it sound. The China sales decision in 2017, the lack of Leaping Bunny or PETA certification, and a parent company in Shiseido that hasn’t gone cruelty free either all point the same direction. But I’m not going to tell you to feel guilty about the blush already sitting on your shelf. I gave mine away instead of trashing it, and I think that’s the more honest response than pretending six years of loyalty just evaporates because of one policy clause.
If you’re rebuilding your own routine around brands that actually back up their claims, Lancôme’s cruelty free breakdown and Clinique’s status are good next reads, since I found both while researching this one and they follow nearly the same playbook as NARS. Once you start noticing the pattern, it gets a lot easier to spot.