Nature Knows Best: The True Power of Natural and Organic Skincare
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Natural skincare has a marketing problem. Most of it is sold by telling you to be frightened of what is in everything else.
I have never wanted to sell that way, partly because I do not think it is true, and partly because the actual case for making things this way is stronger than the scary version. So here is what I genuinely believe about natural and organic skincare after years of formulating it, including the parts that do not flatter me.
Natural does not mean gentle
I want to say this first because so few natural brands will.
Plants are not automatically kind to skin. Some of the most reactive substances in cosmetics are entirely natural. Essential oils are a good example. The fragrance allergens that European law requires brands to declare on a label, things like linalool, limonene, geraniol and citronellol, are largely constituents of essential oils. My own products declare them, because they are in there.
So if anyone tells you a product cannot irritate you because it is natural, they are either not being straight with you or they have not looked into it properly. What natural formulation does give you is a much shorter list of variables. When a product has nine ingredients rather than forty, and you react to it, you have a realistic chance of working out which one did it. That is the honest advantage, and it is a real one.
Why I do not do "free from" marketing
You will not see me building a product page around what I have left out.
Partly this is because it is poor practice. UK and EU cosmetic claims guidance is quite clear that marketing should not denigrate ingredients that are legally permitted and assessed as safe, and a lot of the fear language circulating online does exactly that. It also tends to be scientifically thin. Ingredients get restricted, reformulated and reassessed all the time, and where regulators have found genuine cause for concern they have acted, which is why several preservatives that were once common are no longer permitted at all.
The other reason is simpler. "Free from" tells you nothing about whether a product is any good. I would rather tell you what is in the pot and why I chose it.
What raw, unrefined and cold-pressed actually changes
This is the part that genuinely matters, and it is usually reduced to a buzzword.
Most commercial oils and butters are refined, which typically means some combination of heat, bleaching clays, deodorising and solvent extraction. The result is a consistent, pale, almost odourless oil with a long shelf life, and there are perfectly good reasons manufacturers do it.
What refining also removes is the fraction of the oil that is not fat. Polyphenols, tocopherols, carotenoids and the unsaponifiable portion all sit in that fraction, and they are a large part of why these oils were valued in the first place. Cold-pressed and unrefined oils keep more of it. They are also more variable batch to batch, they smell of themselves, and they do not last as long. I accept all of that as a trade.
It is why unrefined shea in the Ultra Rich Balm smells faintly nutty rather than of nothing, and why the colour of a batch shifts slightly through the year. That variation is the ingredient behaving like a plant product rather than a commodity.
Almost nothing I make contains water
This is the single biggest formulation decision in the range and hardly anyone asks about it.
Water is what makes a lotion feel light and spread easily. It is also what microorganisms need to grow. The moment you add water to a cosmetic, you need a broad-spectrum preservative system, and you need it to work reliably for the entire time the pot sits open in a warm bathroom. That is not optional and it is not something to be squeamish about. An underpreserved water-based product is genuinely unsafe.
My range is almost entirely anhydrous. Balms, butters, bars and oils, made from fats rather than water. No water means no microbial growth to preserve against, which means the ingredient list can stay short without cutting any corners on safety.
The Cleansing Oil works on the same principle. Oil dissolves oil, so it lifts sunscreen, makeup and the day off your face without the surfactants that leave skin feeling tight afterwards.
There are two exceptions, and I will name them. The Facial Toner contains aloe and rose water, and the Hydrate & Calm Balm is built around a high percentage of aloe vera leaf juice. Both are properly preserved, both went through safety assessment, and I would not sell them any other way.
The ingredients I keep going back to
Not a comprehensive list. Just the ones that earn their place in formula after formula.
Shea butter. High in unsaponifiables, which is the part refining strips out. Softens and cushions, and it is the backbone of most of the balm range.
Jojoba. Technically a liquid wax rather than an oil, and structurally close to your skin's own sebum, which is why it absorbs the way it does rather than sitting on the surface.
Aloe vera. Cooling and hydrating, and the reason the Hydrate & Calm Balm feels different to every other balm I make. My daughter calls it her magic cream, which is not a clinical endorsement but it is my favourite one.
Rosehip seed oil. Rich in linoleic and linolenic acid, and one of the reasons the Intensive Night Balm works better overnight than in the morning.
Beeswax. Forms a breathable occlusive layer that slows water loss from the skin surface. Old, simple, and very hard to improve on.
Cocoa butter. Solid at room temperature, melts at body temperature, and gives a balm its structure without needing anything synthetic to hold it together.
Neem and peppermint. Both in the Foot Balm, which is the product people tend to be most sceptical about and then reorder fastest.
Supporting your barrier rather than overhauling it
Your skin barrier is the outermost layer, made of flattened cells held together by a lipid matrix of ceramides, cholesterol and fatty acids. When it is intact it holds water in and keeps irritants out. When it is disrupted, you get the familiar pattern of tightness, redness, stinging when you apply things, and skin that reacts to products it used to tolerate.
The instinct at that point is usually to add more actives. Almost always the better move is to strip the routine back to the smallest number of things that do not sting, and give it a few weeks.
The Barrier Repair Balm was formulated for exactly that stretch. It is deliberately simple and deliberately low on essential oils, because a barrier that is already struggling does not need more to cope with. It took Best Buy in the Green Parent Awards 2026, which I was quietly thrilled about.
What people worked out long before we had labs
Rose water was being distilled in Persia over a thousand years ago. Olive oil was used on skin across the Mediterranean for centuries before anyone could explain what a fatty acid was. Sweet almond oil, shea butter and honey all turn up independently across cultures that had no contact with each other.
That is not proof of anything on its own. Plenty of historical remedies were useless and a few were dangerous. But when the same handful of ingredients keeps being selected by people separated by thousands of miles, over hundreds of years, with nothing to go on but whether it worked, that is a lot of accumulated trial and error. Modern analysis has since explained the mechanisms behind most of them, which is the interesting part.
Where I would start
If your skin is fine and you want somewhere to begin, the Cleansing Oil is the least disruptive swap you can make, because cleansing is where most routines do their damage.
If your skin is currently unhappy, start with the Barrier Repair Balm and add nothing else for a fortnight.
And if you are not sure, message me. I would rather talk you into the cheaper thing that suits you than the expensive one that does not.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is natural skincare better for sensitive skin?
Not automatically. Natural ingredients can be irritating and some of the most common cosmetic allergens are plant-derived. What tends to help sensitive skin is a short ingredient list, no added fragrance beyond what is declared, and a simple routine, and natural formulation happens to make that easier to achieve.
What does cold-pressed mean, and does it matter?
It means the oil was pressed mechanically without added heat or solvents. It matters because refining removes polyphenols, tocopherols and other minor components that sit alongside the fats. The trade-off is a shorter shelf life and more variation between batches.
Why do so many of your products have no water in them?
Anhydrous products cannot support microbial growth, so they do not need a broad-spectrum preservative system. That keeps the ingredient list short without compromising safety. Anything I make that does contain water is properly preserved and safety assessed.
Are your products certified organic?
No, and I would rather explain why than imply otherwise. Certification is expensive and the cost would come out of either ingredient quality or your pocket. I use organic and unrefined ingredients wherever I can source them, and I will tell you exactly what is in anything you ask about.
Do essential oils cause reactions?
They can. That is why fragrance allergens have to be declared on labels, and why several of mine are listed on the packaging. If you know you react to fragrance, choose the lower essential oil options in the range and patch test first.
How long do natural balms last?
Anhydrous balms are generally stable for a long time, though the oils will eventually oxidise. Keep them out of direct sunlight and away from heat, use clean hands or a spatula, and they will keep well. If a balm ever smells sharp or like old crayons, that is oxidation and it is time to replace it.
Every formula I make gets a full safety assessment before it goes anywhere near the shop, and I am happy to talk through any ingredient in the range. You can see everything here.