INTERVIEW
PC: What is your position on sustainable, biodegradable synthetic ingredients? LD: We don’t use synthetics at all. Not because we vilify them, not because we’re scared of them, but because our students don’t want to work with them. And that’s not my position either, that we’re trying to convince them otherwise. We’re an organic formulation school, that’s what we stick with. However, we do obviously put the sustainability message in there, we talk to them about certain oils they shouldn’t be using etc. And I’m trying to beef that up at the moment as well. So, I personally don’t have an issue with synthetics, but we don’t work with them.
PC: How do you pitch the courses for global students? That must be a challenge in itself. LD: It is and it isn’t, it’s interesting actually. When I first started with Formula Botanica I thought what we were doing was incredibly niche. But actually, what’s turned out to be the truth is that everyone wants this, because people want to empower themselves with the skills of formulation, particularly women. And you can cook for yourself, you can make your own clothes, you can grow your own food. There is nothing stopping us from making our own cosmetics as well. Now I do like to push the buttons of some people in the industry a little bit because obviously they don’t like hearing people say that. But I think it’s worthwhile delving back into the history of the cosmetics industry as lot of the big brands were started by the original indie beauty entrepreneurs.
And I think that fact is often
overlooked Estee Lauder, Elizabeth Arden, Eugène Schueller, you know these people didn’t start with big corporates, they started mixing things in their kitchens. It is overlooked slightly because the message has been put out for the last 100 years that you do have to be a scientist to do this. And yet people are going back to the grass roots and saying actually I want to learn how to formulate and I can do that safely and I can do that stably and I can make something which is sustainable and lovely to use as well.
PC: Do you find ingredient suppliers in the industry are helping people do that now by allowing people to buy in smaller quantities and making chassis of natural and organic formulations. LD: Yes and no, it is changing.
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“It’s worthwhile delving back into the history of the cosmetics industry, as a lot of the big brands were started by the original indie beauty entrepreneurs.”
We work with a lot of ingredient suppliers as you can imagine, but a lot of them are the ones of repackage ingredients from the larger ingredient suppliers and sell them online in smaller minimum order quantities. But there are hundreds and hundreds of shops outline that sell these ingredients. So, there is a real trend towards ingredient suppliers offering ingredients for indie formulators and natural formulators. I will say the biggest suppliers have got better over the years, but I used to go to in-cosmetics and go onto their stands and go “Hello, I’m Lorraine and this is what we do.” And they would metaphorically chase me off with a broomstick. Now, things are a little bit
different and they’re coming to us because hundreds of our students are going to them all the time and they’re hearing about Formula Botanica and then they think “Well who are these people?”. And they come to us and say “Actually, could we maybe do something with you. Could we do a podcast, could we speak to your students?” We always have to have that common-sense conversation about supplying in small minimal order quantities and shipping worldwide. And I’d say that some of these suppliers can but the vast majority of them aren’t quite in that position yet. I have had some very terse conversations with people over the years where they’ve
said they don’t want to work with indie formulators because they view them as too small. Again, we’ve got to remember about tomorrow’s big hit. Our most successful graduates
BYBI Beauty studied with us in 2016-2017. They have just raised over 8 and a half million dollars in investment funding, they’re being rolled out in 1800 Targets (USA). They’re stocked in Boots and Sephora worldwide, and they’ve gone from mixing things in their kitchen to being a global brand.
PC: And the amazing thing is how quickly that journey can happen now? LD: Absolutely, if you’ve got the brand right and you’ve got the formulations right, you just cut through the noise straightaway. And I think the ingredients suppliers need to be aware of the fact that if they invest in the small brands of today, they may well have a massive client on their hands for the next few decades.
PC: Are you are finding that the quality of organic ingredients is improving? LD: Yes, particularly the functional ones. So obviously essential oils, butters, waxes - all of those types of ingredients, hydrosols, they’ve been around for decades. However, the functional ingredients have not, when they’ve been naturally
derived. And even in the last 5 years I’ve seen a massive increase in the number of natural emulsifiers, surfactants and solubilisers. There’s been a real boom and we’ve got a way to go still. I mean we still need more natural silicone alternatives and natural cationic surfactants and things like that, but the industry is starting to realise that’s what people want. And it’s been really interesting watching the innovation come from the industry. That’s exciting because they’re realising that there’s a market for it.
PC: What would you say are the most important areas for a student to grasp, if they’re a complete novice at the beginning of a course, that makes someone a good formulator. LD: A few things, first of all maths, you’ve got to be able to do maths. Some people do struggle with that. Secondly, research. We’re not going to spoon feed our students, we couldn’t possibly tell them about every single ingredient in the industry, that’s not possible. I’d have to employ a team of a 1,000, every day. So, you have to learn how to go out and research and that doesn’t mean just typing things into Google. That means looking at what some of the ingredient platforms are putting out there. It means looking at PubMed, it means looking through Google Scholar, it means getting some reputable textbooks. And it means understanding exactly what your ingredients can and can’t do. We very much try to avoid pseudo-science in anything we do, but of course there is very little information from a scientific perspective available on some
May 2021 PERSONAL CARE
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