Hi everyone, so I’ve felt extra passionate these last few weeks about the discussions going on in the skincare and beauty industry and I am starting to see a lot more issues that are coming up so I wanted to talk about “where we went wrong” and looking past these loose seams. 

One of the main goals of ESSNTLS Lab is being completely transparent and educating our followers. So I felt I need to be real and honest with you all about some issues in the industry and educate essntls followers so we can start to recognize false claims in skincare, beauty, and overall health and wellness. 

For some reason I recently had a flood of posts come through my feed of people talking about skincare and all these new skincare brands with all the same claims of having the best products because they're clean, natural, and simple. But it all really made me feel frustrated and emotional because we are providing false perceptions of what type of skincare and beauty products we need to be using along with health and wellness actions which is what ultimately fueled ESSNTLS Lab to get up and running this last year. 

But I also felt I needed to share this for not only our ESSNTLS followers but also for my colleagues and myself who have put in an incredible amount of time and money into education, research, and working behind the scenes in the industry who truly understand the science of skincare and beauty. 

So let’s start with the first absurd thing I heard recently... a health and wellness influencer began talking about skincare and said that our skin absorbs EVERYTHING..first thought was this is very dramatic, second thing that came to mind was that the first thing you learn in anatomy and physiology is that our skin is our biggest defense mechanism which means our skin is not supposed to absorb the majority of what we come across. Our skin has five different sublayers just in the top main layer, so when it comes to skincare it is important to have products that have been carefully formulated to make sure we are “absorbing” as much of the nutrients as possible. And then the next thing was about keeping skincare on the natural wholistic side. Natural isn’t always great for you either...you are actually more likely to have a reaction to it and all formulators and researchers know that natural skincare is not going to reach your skincare goals. This idea of holistic and natural all sounds great but it’s not effective. Hence why we don’t use natural remedies to treat diseases or when we are very sick.  

The other bizarre thing I caught a skincare company last week was trying to claim to be a brand about “science, nature, and spirit coexist” and this company had three products in which all have the same exact ingredient list on the website as the lip gloss, I’m guessing no one wants to use a lip gloss formula for your entire face.. How can you trust a brand that is not even giving you the right information let alone a good formula. This is a very difficult thing for ESSNTLS Lab to deal with because science and efficacy and having that small business connection is the drive behind our brand and this ultimately discredits.  

The last general issue I’ll bring up tonight is the celebrity power with these horrible products that we all believe are great because we trust the people we admire. Fenty Beauty’s first foundation line had a formula which I had used for color matching when I made foundations and you could see the color change as it dried and you could see the formula separating which causes your skin to break out more easily. Kylie Skincare...if you don’t know well now you know, the walnut face scrub..I’ve written this in other blogs about exfoliation, these harsh exfoliators cause microtears. I know the packaging is super cute but avoid at all costs.    

But I want to make sure I’m not being misunderstood. I love the way bloggers and influencers work and get to share their experiences about the products they use and how they feel, but the issue arises when false scientific facts are being shared and it starts to discredit chemists and scientists who have researched and studied for years learning all the in and outs of the biochemical interactions of the skin and the skin itself. 

The background behind ESSNTLS initially started with wanting a brand where you didn’t need a million and one products to get your best skin but just a simple set of clean products. And then as I began to work behind the scenes as a formulation chemist for almost every type of cosmetic and personal care product you can think of and this was the first time ... and there really is a rhyme and reason to everything that we do and as we get those locked into place, we will get to keep sharing with you more about ESSNTLS Lab.