Our Ingredients

We are passionate about intelligent skincare and wellbeing and that's why we focus on clean, organic ingredients.  That means no dirty secrets!

 

Our organic skincare is luxurious, effectual and indulgent, jam packed full of skin nurturing vitamins and anti-oxidants  without any synthetic fragrances or colours or other chemical witchery.  

We find it rather ironic that Mother Nature gave us an abundance of super-ingredients to use, and through recent decades we have found ourselves  in a race to find 'better' and cheaper chemical alternatives.  

We use only the highest quality and  most potent natural ingredients - organic unrefined shea butter, (fairtrade) organic beeswax (fairtrade), British honey,  the queen of flowers, our organic rose otto oil which takes 60 rose heads to make 1 drop of oil!


The ingredients we use have to earn their place in our formulations - quite simply we don't stuff our products full of bulking agents and fillers and other nasties.  

We could add artificial silicones to add 'glideability' to our products, we could add artificial fragrances that never fade rather than our lovely flower oils. 

We could use our potent oils at  1%  with the remaining 99% using a cheaper bulking filler and smother our labels with our green hero ingredient.  (We don't).  

Here's what we don't use…

No SLS/SLES

Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS) and Sodium Laureth Sulfate (SLES) and its variants are essentially detergents that are found in a huge proportion of bath and shampoo products on your bathroom shelf.  

What makes SLS/SLES so appealing to most of us is their ability to form bubbles -  they are the principal ingredient in bubble baths and shower gels for that exact reason, and who doesn't love sinking into a bath full of bubbles! 

But there is a catch; they are known skin irritants, drying out the skin and causing irritation.  They do not affect everyone to the same degree, some individuals will have no problems at all and others will find their skin becomes irritated; you will need to decide what works with your skin.  

There are more skin friendly alternatives on the market, based on coconut and sugar chemistry.  Our suggestion would be to plump for one our organic cleansing bars or a luxurious bath oil!

It is also worth pointing out that there are other questions raised over the use of SLS/SLES - everything from concerns over them being contaminated by carcinogenic pollutants, and being damaging to the liver, lungs and immune system.

There are also a lot of counter arguments to these. What we do know is that SLS and SLES can both irritate skin - not all but some.  Ultimately there is lots of further discussion out there, and it is up to you to make up your own mind about what  you are happy to put on to your own skin. 

No Parabens

We do not use parabens in any of our products, as their safety - or not is still hotly debated.    The use of preservatives is always a tricky subject, often vilified in the press and confusing consumers. 

Our key objective with using a preservative is to give our customers  products that are safe; a cream product containing water has to contain a preservative system to be safe, otherwise it would have a shelf  life of just days and would need to be kept refrigerated. 

And there's lots to be said for fresh beauty recipes and formulations, cream, avocado, honey are all fabulous ingredients you can use to whip up some skin loving treats - but they should really be used straight away.  

For most people the dangers of using a product contaminated with nasties far outweighs any risk from preservatives. 

Studies have raised questions about how they build up within the body over time and how they may be linked to hormone disruption and cancer;  but equally much of the mainstream industry would argue that their use is safe and non-irritating.

Some common examples of parabens are:  Butylparaben, Methylparaben, Propylparaben, Isopropylparaben, and Sodium Butylparaben. 

No Mineral Oil

Mineral oil, or  'paraffinum liquidum' is a by-product of the petroleum industry, literally a by-product of distilling crude oil.  It is purified and is widely used in skincare, primarily because it is cheap.   It is used very commonly in skincare, especially in baby oil products, lip balms and products that need to  'slip' and 'glide' on the skin. 

Frankly we think there are much better alternatives to use, natural organic oils that are packed with essential fatty acids and antioxidants, that support our skin and improve its condition.  You will recognise mineral oil on the ingredients list as Mineral Oil, Paraffin, Liquid Petroleum.

No Silicones

Silicones are used in the skincare industry to give a luxurious, silky feeling to products when applied to the skin, blurring over fine lines and ageing skin. 

Ironically this is usually via a synthetic silicone product which acts like cling film over the skin, blocking pores, and trapping in impurities and bacteria 

Silicones are also a mainstay in most of our haircare products, shampoos, conditioners and serums. 

These silicones are also non-biodegradable with concerns about how they are building up in the environment over time. 

We think these are unnecessary, there are so many fabulous natural plant oils that give strong benefits to the skin and which still provide a luxurious, silky feeling to the skin. 

Our favourite Radiance Facial Essence with Rose & Marula is a case in point. 

You will recognise these on your labels as Dimethicone, Cyclopentasiloxane, or Dimethicone Copolyol.

To give you a balanced view of the world, we should point out that it is not a case of natural is good and chemical is bad. 

There are absolutely some  chemicals that you would not want in your skincare - but there are also products found in nature that are poisonous - think snake venom or poison ivy. 

The ingredients we use are those that we think give luxurious, effectual and indulgent skincare.

Preservatives

A word on preservatives.  A lot of our  products contain no preservatives at all - my award winning Facial Oils, Bath and Body oils etc. 

For other products, some kind of preservative is a necessity and currently although there are natural preservatives that exist, there are none that are deemed to be sufficiently effective on their own to comply with UK legislation.  (And all of our goodies have the requisite safety assessments in place!)  

With these products, we maintain as high a ratio of organic ingredients as we can, eg in our Radiance cream with Rose & Frankincense.