Every few weeks, somebody brings us a new skincare product.

A rep. A client. One of our estheticians who found something interesting and thinks we should try it.

And we do. We smear it on our mugs way before we’d let it go anywhere near yours.

Most of them are fine, some are honestly lovely. But very few end up on our shelves.

Over the years, Peter and I have gotten pretty good at figuring out which is which. We have a handful of questions we come back to again and again, and they’re useful whether you ever buy a skincare product from us or not.

So next time you’re standing in front of a shelf (or scrolling through a website with extremely convincing photography), here are four things worth asking:

1. Is there enough of the good stuff in there to actually matter?

An ingredient list tells you what’s in the bottle, but not how much.

A formula can contain a really promising, well-studied active ingredient, but at a much lower concentration than the amounts that produced those exciting results in the studies.

But to get the Peter seal of approval, he needs to know what’s in it, how much is in it, and why is it there?

2. Can the formula actually deliver what it’s promising?

 

Your skin is very good at keeping things out. That’s part of its job (thanks skin!)

So we pay attention not just to which ingredients are in a formula, but to the whole formulation around them. How are they being delivered? Are they compatible with the skin? Are they likely to stay mostly at the surface, or get where they’re intended to go?

Because something can make your skin feel silky five seconds after you put it on and still not be doing much beyond that.

3. What happened to the ingredients before they got into the bottle?

Here’s a dirty little secret most beauty brands won’t tell you. 

Processing can make an oil or serum more uniform, neutral-smelling, and shelf-stable, but It can also remove some of the naturally occurring compounds that your skin might actually benefit from.

That’s why you’ll see us gravitate toward minimally processed, cold-pressed oils and ingredients that are still active - because if they’re dead in the bottle, then they won’t do diddly on your skin.

4. What does it do better?

More products don’t automatically mean better skin. 

If we’re going to put something on our shelves, it needs to have a job. And it needs to do that job better than anything else we’ve tried.

We don’t need three pretty good products that do roughly the same thing. We want the one we’d actually choose.

That tends to make for a shorter routine, but a much better one.

We didn’t arrive at these questions because we sat down one afternoon and decided to develop a skincare philosophy. 

They came from over two decades of caring for our clients, trying an enormous number of products and ingredients, and paying attention to what actually earns it’s place.

Which is probably why we’re so picky about what makes it onto the shelves now.

And eventually, all that care led us to something pretty freaking incredible.

Instead of looking for the product that could pass all four tests, Peter spent years building one.

It’s called Sol Ora, and we’re releasing it later this month.

We’re making only 500 bottles in the first batch. If you want to be among the first to try what made it through our very, very high bar, join the Sol Ora list here.

 

With so much love,
Briana