fill your life with joy
the science behind natural skincare
A s demand for natural beauty solutions continues to rise, beauty companies are investing more into research, which means we're benefiting from ever smarter, more effective natural beauty solutions. But not all natural products are created equal, and just as we've educated ourselves about which ingredients are best to avoid in synthetic products, we're wise to catch up with the latest knowledge about how natural products are made, and what is going into them. Trilogy in-house beauty expert Corinne Morley advises, “Scrutinise natural skincare products the same way you would synthetic products. There are good-quality, highperformance products and there are those of lesser quality which aren’t as effective.”
So if you’re new to the natural beauty world – and shelves of brands that have emerged amid its meteoric rise to mainstream popularity – how does the average punter tell the mediocre from the miraculous?
“Read the active ingredients and research their functions,” advises Linden Leaves founder Brigit Blair. “Determine what it is you want your skincare to do, then purchase from a reputable company with realistic claims and a genuine interest in healthy, effective ingredients.”
For instance, she says, Linden Leaves has worked closely with its suppliers’ research and development teams. By zero-ing in on specialised knowledge, the brand has created high-performance products from reassuringly edible-sounding ingredients – think organic white tea and goji seeds. The aim? “Longer-lasting balance and health of the skin,” says Blair. For instance, between white tea’s antioxidant properties (which fight skin cell-damaging free radicals), goji berries’ amino acids (which stimulate the production of growth hormones) and meadowfoam’s waxy, barrier-forming properties (which lock moisture into the skin), Linden Leaves has created a dense cocktail of nourishment in the form of a new hero product: its Regenerating Night Cream, $50 .
As intensive testing carried out by high-end companies proves, the best natural beauty offerings adhere to every cosmetic production stereotype: precise, clean and clinical.
Based in Germany, Dr.Hauschka’s procedures are the epitome of exactitude. “To prove the efficacy of products, we perform suitable instrumental tests and consumer studies,” says Dr Constanze Stiefel, who operates as part of the brand’s pharmaceutic-scientific department. Corneometry, for instance, is a process that measures levels of hydration in the skin: a pen-like instrument monitors any change in the skin’s electrical conductibility – when the skin’s hydration level changes, the device’s electrical charge dips or rises accordingly. The method has been used as a means of measurement in fields from cosmetics to space exploration, and can detect the slightest change in moisture.
The team at Trilogy took a cogent approach with their recently released Age-Proof range. Its CoQ10 Booster Oil, $48.90, promises to revitalise skin at a cellular level, boosting collagen and elastin production while protecting against free radical damage. To measure its ability pre-release, a trial group of women applied the formula to one side of their face, and a placebo product to the other side twice daily for six weeks. An expert clinician operated a 3D Primos camera – which uses stereovision to accurately determine exact skin texture, down to the last micro bump – to pick up changes in texture. The result was an average of a 27 per cent improvement in six weeks.
In vitro testing is another form of analysis, used by many beauty brands including Antipodes. The method measures how efficiently products stimulate skin cells to do all the things you’d expect from a well-behaved complexion: think collagen production aplenty and ample antioxidant activity. Fibroblast cells (the ones mainly responsible for the skin’s look and feel) are exposed to miniscule amounts of the formulation, before clinical trials are conducted on humans.