About The Lash List

How This Started

In late 2024, our founder Sarah had a bad reaction to a lash serum she'd been using for three months. Her eyelids darkened, and her eye doctor told her the serum contained a prostaglandin analogue - something she'd never heard of and that wasn't clearly disclosed on the label. The experience left her angry, not just at the brand, but at how hard it was to find straight answers about what's actually in these products.

She started researching obsessively. She read FDA filings, dug into cosmetic ingredient databases, talked to dermatologists and ophthalmologists, and spent months mapping out the ingredient lists of every major lash serum on the market. What she found was troubling: brands routinely burying prostaglandin analogues under chemical names most consumers would never recognize, exaggerated "clinically proven" claims backed by manufacturer-funded studies with tiny sample sizes, and a regulatory blind spot that lets cosmetic products contain pharmaceutical-grade compounds without prescription oversight.

The Lash List started as a Google Doc she shared with friends. It grew into this.

What We Do

We buy every product ourselves at full retail price. No brand has ever sent us a free sample, and none ever will. Each serum in our database goes through the same structured evaluation process: a deep-dive ingredient analysis, a review of published clinical evidence, and hands-on testing by our panel over a minimum of 12 weeks.

We score every product across six weighted criteria - ingredient safety, effectiveness, value, formulation quality, user reviews, and brand transparency - and publish the methodology openly so you can check our work. Read the full methodology here.

Who We Are

Sarah Mitchell - Founder & Lead Researcher

Sarah has a background in cosmetic chemistry and spent six years in product development at two mid-size beauty brands before going independent. She's the person reading the INCI lists, cross-referencing safety databases, and writing the ingredient analysis sections of our reviews. Her prostaglandin reaction in 2024 is what started all of this.

Priya Anand - Staff Writer & Tester

Priya covers the product testing side. She manages our 12-week testing protocols, takes the macro photography, and writes the hands-on portions of each review. Before joining The Lash List, she wrote beauty and skincare content for three years as a freelancer. She has sensitive skin and light, sparse lashes - which makes her a good canary-in-the-coal-mine for irritation and also means she notices growth results quickly.

Testing Panel

Beyond our core team, we work with a rotating group of five testers with different skin types, lash types, and sensitivity levels. All testers are real people, not paid models, and none have any financial relationship with any lash serum brand. We don't publish their full names (their call, not ours), but their observations appear throughout our reviews as tester notes.

Why Ingredient Transparency Matters

The eyelash serum market sits in a regulatory gray area. Most serums are classified as cosmetics, not drugs, which means they don't need FDA approval before hitting shelves. The only FDA-approved lash growth product is Latisse, which requires a prescription. Everything else is essentially self-regulated.

This matters because several over-the-counter serums contain prostaglandin analogues - compounds that are pharmacologically active and carry documented risks including iris color change, orbital fat loss, and eyelid hyperpigmentation. Some brands disclose this clearly. Others bury it under obscure chemical names or don't mention it at all.

We believe consumers have the right to know exactly what they're putting near their eyes. That's the whole point of this site.

Get In Touch

Have a question, correction, or product suggestion? We read everything.

Email: hello@thelashlist.com

Follow our work: @thelashlist_ on Instagram

We don't accept sponsored content, paid reviews, or "brand partnership" pitches. Please don't send them.