This is the second year that Organic Beauty week is running, but this time around it has a bit of a mission: Campaign for Clarity. The thinking behind it is very simple: "it is time for products that are labelled 'organic' to really be organic". The Soil association will be campaigning for brands to be open and honest about the organic content of their products. I personally feel like this particular conversation is long overdue. While what we use on our bodies is a personal choice, it shouldn't be so difficult to figure out how organic a product is if this is what someone is looking for. Marketing has become especially clever at capitalising on people's desires without giving much of substance in return. What is worse, is that people are potentially put off by the fact that they are paying a higher price for something that isn't actually that different from the products that they are trying to leave behind.
To launch this year's Beauty Week, Soil association held a blogger event at Whole Foods (there was also a public event with Hemsley sisters a little later on the same day). It was a fairly small gathering with a few Soil association certified brands being showcased by founders or brand representitives: pai, therapi honey skincare, skn-rg, natracare, spiezia, Neal's yard, skin & tonic, bamford.
As I absolutely hate being late, I often end up being unfashionably early to these sort of things, I sort of turned up before everything was set up, and not all the brand representitives were there yet, so there was no real order to the way I circled the room.
Natracare maybe familiar to most people as feminine hygiene products. It was interesting to find out that their makeup removal wipes came about because they listened to their customers. They have baby wipes in the range, and they kept receiving emails from ladies mentioning that they use them for makeup removal, so they created something that would be more suitable for makeup removal.
Spiezia, it turns out, has been around for 15 years (as I mentioned in my Soil Association post, they were the first brand to get their whole line certified organic). They still haven't outsourced their production, and that was by choice. They do consider themselves to be a spa brand, and the products are designed to delight the scences. Face oils and face scrub smell ridiculously delicious, but let's face it everything on the stand was absolutely lovely. There will be some interesting things happening in the near future so do keep an eye out.
Neal's Yard were showing off their new beauty book, which does look gorgeous, especially if you enjoy a bit of DIY. They also recently brought out a hand sanitizer, I had a play with that, and will definitely pick some up for travel.
I always thought of Bamford as a luxury baby range, but it turns out they have an amazing variety of spa inspired body products and even skincare. Actually it would be more accurate to describe them as a spa brand, they have some amazing looking Bamford haybarn day spa destinations.
Skn-rg are fairly new on the block. When they started originally they were called B2B skincare, and natural rather than organic. Drawing on the fact that the husband and wife duo were bee keepers, they also grew a lot of their ingredients. When they rebranded they decided to go organic, unfortunately that meant that they could no longer use the ingredients grown on their own land which isn't certified, and is also surrounded by farmland, making it almost impossible to secure from cross contamination.
Skin and Tonic has a vision that is really close to my heart, less is more. Their products have 7 or less ingredients and are also designed to be multipurpose. For example you can use their Brit beauty oil in the straightforward way to moisturise, boost your face cream with it for extra hydration, or as an aromatherapy treat by rubbing a few drops between your palms, cupping your hands and taking a deep breath. They have some very exciting additions to their range: a new face mask and a face oil that has no essential oils.
Therapi honey skincare is bringing you the goodness of, you guessed it, honey, plus plant extracts, oils and butters. Five percent of profits goes to bee conservation (so you could say that bees are a five 5% share holder in this company).
Pai also had a small selection of products on show, including my favourite rosehip oil ever. The latest addition to their range are the masks that first were introduced in the limited edition gift boxes. To give you a heads up, I will be reviewing one of them during the Organic Beauty Week (it's clearly hard for me to keep a secret).
Hemsley sisters, Jasmine and Melissa, popped buy and we had a chat about green beauty in general. It was lovely to compare notes on brands and importance of being clear of what goes into our makeup and skincare.
On Soil association's website there is a list of a few beauty events and promotions. For the duration of the beauty week, 14-21 September, I will be bringing you reviews of soil association certified beauty products. Until the end of Today you can still join to support Campaign for clarity with thunderclap. To start a conversation on social media use #OrganicBeauty, #OrganicSeptember or #Campaign4Clarity.
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