I recently went on holiday with my boyfriend and we travelled through Gatwick North Terminal. As many of you know, buying duty free items is significantly less than buying them on the high street, so I was eager to see what was available and if I could snag some of my favourite brands at a good price.
However, I was dismayed to go through the entire lounge at Gatwick and discover that there were NO Cruelty Free brands or items available at the airport. Throughout the entire duty free shop, there were many beauty and perfume brands, however the majority of these were high-end designer brands, all of which were not Cruelty Free. There were also no shops/brands that sell Cruelty Free items outside of the main duty free shops; there were bag shops with leather items (and I do not trust buying leather anymore after my Dog Leather post), alcohol shops, electronic shops, and book shops but no beauty or lifestyle brands to buy from. This meant that I was unable to make ANY purchases, other than food from WH Smiths.
Considering that there are many higher end, trendy brands out there that ARE Cruelty Free, such as Jeffree Star, Too Faced, Illamasqua and Sugarpill, there should be no reason why these brands cannot appear within Gatwicks duty free shops.
I think that this is appalling; Cruelty Free and vegan lifestyles are far more common than they ever use to be and yet they are not catered for or even represented at all within Gatwick Airport. There should be the option to shop at the airport for Cruelty Free/Vegan people, and to take advantage of the duty free perks of being at the airport. Representation of lifestyle choice should be available in all shopping places, as it is to some extent on the high street and Gatwick is simply not representing a large portion of the UK market, which I think is a huge oversight on their part and ultimately means they are losing money, and quite a lot I think as people do stock up at the airport…
Cruelty Free 