Sustainable Beauty

Binu Binu Soaps and Cannabis Perilla Candle

Inspired by the culture of Korean public baths, Toronto-based soap maker Karen Kim created Binu Binu (meaning ‘soap soap’ in Korean) as an ode to early trips to the bathhouse with her grandmother. The experience was intense and ritualistic—and in the case of the seshin, the invigorating traditional exfoliating scrub, beautifully effective. Now, products like the Shaman Charcoal Soap and Cannabis Perilla Candle are handmade using ethically-sourced botanical ingredients like pressed lavender and sandalwood oil and, in the case of the Mary Jane-inspired candle, cotton wicks and eco-soy wax. The blocklike, sculptural soaps pay homage to the scents and feelings of the bathhouses. They’ve become favorites of New York’s artists and are largely inspired by powerful Korean women, like the female shamans known as mudang that Kim references in her product notes.

Kjaer Weis Cream Glow and Im-Possible Mascara

Long before Westman Atelier, Saie Beauty, and a seemingly endless array of new clean beauty brands, Danish makeup artist Kirsten Kjaer Weis introduced her namesake line, pioneering the integration of luxury and organic beauty. The Marc Atlan-designed products balance efficacy, texture, and a natural æsthetic while respecting the skin and environment. Take the Im-Possible Mascara in its refillable cherry red tube—the effect is subtle and buildable, with certified organic conditioning beeswax, lash-reparative raspberry fruit water, and nourishing marula oil as core ingredients. The Cream Glow highlighter features hydrating sweet almond oil and light-catching, ethically-sourced mica. The results are glistening and fresh, aimed at bringing out what is already there.

Hildegaard Neroli Haute Botanical Facial Oil

Fine artist Lia Chavez’s collection of face oils launched in 2021 but was first conceived years before it became available on sites like Moda Operandi. Based in Brookhaven, New York, the longtime New Yorker began repopulating her own farm land and developing early samples from the land’s plants and herbs in 2018. Today, she works in tandem with her neighbor Isabella Rossellini, whose regenerative Mama Farm provides 98% of the ingredients in the lush, nourishing oils, many of which Chavez farms herself. One favorite Hildegaard product is the Neroli Facial Oil, which in addition to rosehip, pomegranate, and calming camellia seed oils, features over four hundred and fifty hand-picked orange blossom buds sustainably cultivated near the town of Nabeul on the Cap Bon peninsula of Tunisia. The face oil is enriching and cushion-like; intricacy and mysticism come through the meditative, ritualistic practice of application. The hand-farmed ingredients—of which there are seventy, all cold-pressed from wild-harvested plants then solar-extracted—are largely anti-inflammatory. Given the restorative nature of how the oils come into being, Hildegaard is healing in more ways than one.

Fara Homidi Refillable Essential Face Compact and Buffer Brush

Coming of age in the era of ultra-glam, hyper-Photoshopped fashion editorials, makeup artist Fara Homidi always gravitated towards a rawer look. She wanted to see the pores on a model’s skin, highlight freckles shining through, and centered her vision—however avant garde—in a look that was, at its essence, very human. Precision and an emotional visual language became signatures in her work for Phoebe Philo at Céline, The Row, Victoria Beckham, and others. Homidi’s newly launched namesake brand brings this core æsthetic to her community, offering a tightly curated line of clean, blendable products and custom tools. The Essential Compact—a buildable complexion tool that is the perfectionist’s dream—and Essential Lip Compact—lightweight, whipped in texture, combining deep pigment with a cushiony gloss—are two unique launches. Sustainability is also a focus, with metal, bioplastic, and FSC-certified wood as core materials for the packaging.

F. Miller Support Serum

Canadian skincare line F. Miller has been a favorite amongst beauty industry tastemakers since its launch in 2014. Founder Fran Miller developed the oil-based formulations—nourishing and all-natural—by hand, focusing on efficacy and soothing, sensitive skin-appropriate botanical ingredients. A recent launch is a nutrient-rich serum, made up of twenty-two botanical extracts with the goal of decongesting and calming the skin. The face serum isn’t what you might expect. It’s the first non-oil product from the cult favorite line. It also feels incredibly light on the skin. That the packaging aims at circularity and waste reduction is at the base of each product is a major bonus.

Ilia Lip Sketch Hydrating Crayons

Ilia, the clean beauty line launched in 2011, is perhaps best known for its minimal æsthetic and natural, makeup-as-skincare philosophy. It’s one of the OGs of high-end sustainable beauty, nestled alongside innovators like RMS Beauty and Kjaer Weis. The line’s recent launch, a set of twelve matte lip pencils, ventures into a more playful mentality. The lipsticks, crafted with numerous organic and enhancing ingredients including fatty rosehip oil, mimic schoolyard crayons by working as a thicker-than-average liner. They’re designed for drawing on the lips with precision, sitting in between lip liner and lipstick. They’re also built to last twelve hours—less than a schoolyard pencil but more than the standard lip product.

Vyrao Magnetic 70 Eau de Parfum

For years, Vyrao founder Yasmin Sewell balanced leading meditation and energy healing retreats alongside day jobs heading creative at Browns and Farfetch. Her fragrance line Vyrao, launched in 2021, connects both worlds, leaning into the dreamiest, most transformative elements of the former especially. The line fuses emotional uplift with master perfumery; perfumes are centered around feelings as opposed to classic scent profiles or destinations. Take Magnetic 70, a mix of vetiver, cedarwood, frankincense, and iris. The scent is transportive, with a sensual, grounded vibe. A tiny Herkimer diamond, supercharged by Sewell’s energy healer in Hawaii, sits at the bottom of the stainless steel bottle. Mostly certified organic ingredients rest on a base of one hundred percent organic sugarcane alcohol. It’s all very seductive, made more so by the beautifully designed bottle that could easily double as an artful ornament.

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