Photo by Anna Sastre
A few of my girlfriends have been chatting over email this week about natural beauty and cleaning products. As I was adding my two cents into the mix, I realised that over the past two years, I have completely overhauled my beauty bag and cleaning cupboard into something that reflects the principle, ‘if you wouldn’t eat it, don’t put it on your skin / clean your house with it.’ And according to the Times, more and more consumers are starting to think this way.
I’ve used Ecover and Method products for a long time, but I used to buy lots of mainstream beauty products, like Chanel, Bobbi Brown and MAC. Then as I read and researched more into skincare and ingredients like parabens, SLS and the like, I realised what effect these things had on the body and specifically, the endocrine system, the system that produces hormones like estrogen, progesterone and insulin. A lot of these ingredients disrupt the endocrine system and affect the way your body produces these essential hormones. And to add insult to injury, it’s hard for the body to get rid of the ingredients and many tend to be stored in fatty tissue in various parts of the body.
I like to use Think Dirty, an iOS app to check the ingredients in homecare (soaps, detergents, etc) and beauty products to make sure I’m buying the right things for my house, myself and my family. It was through Think Dirty that I discovered that some of my Bobbi Brown products weren’t as bad as I thought!
There are a few amazing websites to get natural / organic beauty products in the UK. I really like Naturismo and Content Beauty (they have a shop in Marylebone which is super cute, you can lots of samples). I also love checking out the latest in Whole Foods and As Nature Intended as well. The staff are generally quite helpful and you can usually find quite a few bargains too! I’ve recently discovered rms beauty – an amazing natural beauty line by a make up artist called Rose-Marie Swift. The concealers and tinted moisturisers are coconut oil based and amazing for the skin. I also love her lip2cheek product, made with coconut oil and shea butter and no lead (!) (most lipsticks have lead in them as a by-product of the manufacturing process) and looks amazing on the cheeks and lips! I also love Dr Hausckha, Korres and beauty counter.
Like loads of other beauty bloggers, I love to use coconut oil or Egyptian Magic as a moisturiser for my hair, face & body. Egyptian Magic is especially brilliiant as it’s only made from olive oil, beeswax, honey, bee pollen, royal jelly and bee propolis, which are all super nourishing, healing and moisturising.
When it comes to household cleaning products, I really like Ecover, Dr Bronner’s and Dayleford Organics, although my mother tells me that vinegar, lemon and water that do the job just as well.