Liz McCarthy, founder of eco-luxe website abeautifulworld.co.uk, unveils the best new natural beauty brands to change your life.
I have always been interested in natural beauty and natural beauty products, but growing up in the UK the sector was all a bit “crusty and dusty”. However in the Noughties I worked in advertising and was lucky enough to spend a lot of time in LA and NYC where I spotted a new sort of natural beauty emerging.
Now called eco-luxe, but at the time revolutionary, these products looked just as good, and performed just as well, as their synthetic counterparts, but were made with clean, organic, and natural ingredients, by small passionate producers, usually driven by principles of sustainability.
These pioneers included brands such as Indie Lee, Josh Rosebrook and Yarok; beautiful, highly effective, benefit led, skin and haircare, with ethical ingredients and gorgeous packaging. They were true disruptors, and at the time impossible to find in the UK.
So, in 2013 I launched abeautifulworld.co.uk with a mission to bring these brands to the UK and Europe.
Since then the organic and natural beauty market has been in phenomenal growth with organic and natural beauty sales set to reach £34bn globally by 2019.
My mission now is not only to nurture the brands we have already launched, but also to travel the world – America yes but no longer just the coasts, Asia, Australia, and increasingly the Nordics – so as to discover the next wave of Eco-Luxe brands, their creators and their stories, and persuade them to come to the UK.
Here are just a few of the brands that are really driving this new and exciting category:
INDIE LEE
Indie Lee is one of my natural beauty heroes, her story is inspirational, and her eponymous brand was one of the first that we brought onto abeautifulworld.co.uk
Indie worked in the entertainment industry, but was diagnosed with a brain tumor that she was told was ‘environmentally derived’. When she asked how this could have happened her doctor told her that ‘it’s as important what you put on your skin as in your body”.
Indie beat cancer and following her successful operation to remove the tumor she awoke with a mission to educate people about the dangers of toxins in beauty products, and set out to create a highly luxurious range, which worked just as well as her old ‘chemical’ products, but with clean, natural ingredients.
The range is beautifully formulated, combining organic and natural ingredients, with cutting edge science know-how to create products such as Indie Lee Squalane Oil. Squalane naturally occurs in the skin, but diminishes with age and causes visible signs of ageing. The Indie Lee squalane oil uses squalane from olives, which has been proven to most closely match human squalene, so it absorbs easily and effectively into the skin helping to improve skin tone and texture. Indie Lee has been expanding recently with fantastic new products such as the i-waken eye serum and just launched this week the Indie Lee Stem Cell serum.
Josh Rosebrook
Josh Rosebrook truly is a beauty pioneer and innovator. Based out of LA his collection uses pure, wild-crafted, organic and natural ingredients to create a range of skin and haircare that has received cult status and many celebrity fans. His approach is about creating long term skin health, not just shot term results.
Stars from the range include products such as his Josh Rosebrook Vital Balm Cream, a day cream that fuses Indian Senna Seed extract with herbal actives to retain moisture, locking in hydration and slowing skin decline. His famous Josh Rosebrook Hydrating Accelerator is a vitamin infused aloe water which uses botanical extracts, essential oils and antioxidants to hydrate, nourish and heal the skin.
Josh is always looking to the future and this year will be releasing a Hydration Boost Concentrate. This is an oil free, fragrance free hydration treatment that delivers a high concentration of botanical hyaluronic acid, moisture attracting humectants and phytonutrient actives for deep hydration and lasting skin health.
YULI
YULI is one of the latest brands to join abeautifulworld.co.uk. They represent the very cutting edge of organic and natural beauty. YULI is so concerned about the purity and efficacy of their ingredients that they own their own farms. This means that the range is seasonal, with products produced only when the ingredients are harvested. A true farm to face brand, this range uses advanced technology and biochemistry to create a collection of cleansers, elixirs and serums that iare uncompromising in high quality, high performance and high end skincare.
The lastest from YULI is an anti-ageing serum used in plastic surgery clinics in LA, called Ambrosia. It harnesses cutting edge hyaluronic acid technologies to maximise hydration coupled with EFG (Epidermal Growth Factors), which rebuild the skin. I’ve been using this for eight months now, and the results have been phenomenal.
The Body Deli
Hidden in the depth of the Californian desert near where the legendary Coachella festival is held is the Body Deli. These ‘cosmetic chefs’ utilise local raw superfoods to create a stunning range of skin, body and haircare.
Their hero product is the Body Deli Crème de la Rose Cream, which is only ever made in small batches by hand, with each pot taking over 24 hours to create. The hand blending delivers a silky smooth texture and contains natural beauty power houses such as Bulgarian rose, CoQ10 and Vitamin A to stimulate skin regeneration, coupled with Goja Berry for it’s amino acids and Vitamin C to help reduce the signs of ageing. It’s just gorgeous, and because of the principles applied, it is literally good enough to eat.
Yarok
Yarok is the brainchild of New York celebrity stylist Mordechai Alvow. He spent his youth as a stylist in Hollywood, but the chemicals in the haircare products caused his hands to seize up. This launched him on mission to create a high end, salon quality range of haircare that would harness the power of organic and natural ingredients.
His organic beauty kitchen in New York now produces a brilliant range of haircare from intensive hydrating and repairing masks such as Yarok Feed Your Moisture Masque, to the Yarok Feed Your Volume Shampoo and styling products such as the Yarok Feed Your Roots mousse. Used in salons across the US and on catwalks through New York fashion week this is salon quality organic and natural haircare.