EP58. Raw Beauty Revealed

Green Beauty Conversations by Formula Botanica

Google raw beauty for a definition and you'll find it described as "stark and powerfully impressive" and the possessing qualities that fire up the senses. This is about raw beauty describing physical appearance. Raw beauty is also used to talk about outer radiance derived from inner wellness and often linked to a wholesome diet rich in raw, natural foods. So where does raw beauty skincare fit in?

Raw beauty skincare can be bundled up with on-trend beauty descriptors such as clean beauty, green beauty and even blue beauty. It is a subset of these natural beauty categories but takes a unique approach to formulation which starts at the beginning of a product's lifecycle with the sourcing of ingredients.

Our podcast guest in this episode. Nadine Artemis, founder of Living Libations, has spent the past 25 years making raw beauty her life's mission. To Nadine, raw beauty is more than about the practicalities of handling natural ingredients and issues such as their temperature or the manufacturing processes involved. Those are just the first, but far from only aspects she considers when sourcing natural skincare ingredients.

For Nadine and Living Libations, raw beauty harks back to the ancients' understanding of the life essences of plants. Living Libation's philosophy is about using raw natural ingredients in synergy with our body by drawing on the innate power of natural carrier oils and essential oils. Nadine calls her line 'pure renegade'; two decades ago when Nadine pioneered the idea of minimally-processed ingredients in skincare as a way to boost our natural radiance, her ideas bucked the trend - and still do in a world now abuzz with talk of pure, natural and organic beauty.

In this podcast interview with Nadine, Formula Botanica CEO and host Lorraine Dallmeier drills into the nuances of raw beauty and its role in a cosmetics industry driven by expectations of high-performance skincare. This episode certainly dispels the myths about raw beauty cosmetics as DIY skincare. Raw beauty is an exciting, complex journey into the benefits of botanicals and perhaps also a philosophy for natural skincare.

In this episode on raw beauty, you will:

• Find out the differences between raw beauty and natural, pure, clean and green beauty.
• Discover why raw beauty is as much a philosophy of how we interact with the natural world as a beauty niche.
• Learn that using raw beauty is about creating a symbiotic relation between what goes on the skin and what is going on in the skin; in the skin biome, for example.
• Hear how the potency of plants was known to the ancients and that current-day raw beauty philosophy harks back to the theories of Essentialism and Vitalism which proposed that botanical, organic matter has unique, innate, vibrant qualities.
• Learn why raw beauty is far more than simply about the temperature, handling, processing and manufacture of natural ingredients.

Key take-aways include:

• How raw beauty goes to another level in using pure ingredients. For instance, raw beauty formulations will include botanical oils that are not only cold-pressed and sustainably sourced, but also not rendered 'joyless' through processes such as bleaching, winterising (a form of refining) and de-odourising.
• How raw beauty is formulated to work with what the mainstream cosmetic industry might see as limitations - such as the shorter shelf life of its products. It sees the benefit in ingredients that are fresher and more nutritious for the skin and rejects those that are processed and refined to artificially extend their shelf life or iron out variations in their scent, feel and properties.
• Understanding that raw beauty as a business relies on the formulator-founder developing a sixth sense for ingredients like essential oil and carrier oils. They also need to build strong, long-lasting relations with ethical supplies of quality ingredients to ensure they can source the ingredients at their most pristine.