Podcast episode (Green Beauty Conversations EP130) in which Lorraine Dallmeier argues that formulation is accessible to everyone by tracing the long history of personal care formulation — from a 5,000-year-old Egyptian recipe through Roman and Renaissance examples to late-1800s industry origins. She highlights recurring formulation techniques (emulsification, solubilization, distillation, enfleurage, preservation), notes that many historical recipes resemble modern products, and connects this lineage to the contemporary indie beauty movement. The episode also promotes Formula Botanica's paid and free courses and encourages listeners to join the formulation community.
Chapters
Everyone can formulate their own skincare, hair care, makeup, deodorants. I've said it hundreds of times in my work running Formula Botanica, the online organic formulation school. And history proves this fact over and over again. Humans have been formulating for millennia. Making skincare is not a recent phenomenon. The global beauty industry may well be absolutely vast, but it came from somewhere and it's important to understand how it arose because our history busts many of the myths that now persist in beauty. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've heard someone say to me, don't I need to be a chemist to formulate skincare? And all of that is completely understandable when you realize that for the last century, all of the beauty giants have bombarded us with ads showing chemists in lab coats. But actually, if we go further back in history, we see that formulation has been around for a very long time. Last week here on the Green Beauty Conversations podcast, I shared an interview with Professor Jeff Jones Isadore Strayers, professor of Business History at Harvard Business School, considered by many to be the leading business school in the world and author of Beauty A History of the Global Beauty Industry. And Jeff and I explored the origins of the modern day beauty industry, which of course still heavily influences our beauty habits today. So I wanted to build on that interview and go back further to look at why history shows that everyone can formulate foreign. Dallmer, Chartered environmentalist, biologist and CEO of award winning online organic cosmetic formulation school Formula Botanica. I host the Green Beauty Conversations podcast and these are my Green Beauty opinions in which I share my takeaways from the podcast interview that we released last week and talk to you about the way that we can make the green beauty sector a better place. If you want to be the first to hear all of my latest episodes, make sure you subscribe to this podcast. It's easy to imagine formulation being invented in a modern skincare lab, but the truth is that before the emergence of today's personal care giants such as l', Oreal Unilever, Procter and Gamble, Elizabeth Arden, Helena Rubinstein, Estee Lauder Johnson and Johnson Coty Shiseido cosmetics were made on a very small scale, usually within our homes, our villages and our local communities. Similar to cooking recipes, these formulations would have been handed down, but not always written down from generation to generation. And it's absolutely fascinating when we do find beauty recipes that have been written down. Let's go back as far as we possibly can. The oldest known written formulation was discovered on a 5,000 year old ancient Egyptian scroll and was titled how to transform an old man into a youth. Every time I say these words I laugh because it just shows that our attempts to hold back the sands of time have been continuous throughout the ages. The formulation itself was analyzed by an Egyptologist in the early 2000s and found to contain mandelic acid obtained from bitter almonds. He was so savvy that he later patented this knowledge and now runs a successful skincare line based around this discovery. And it wasn't just the Egyptians who were busy formulating. The Sumerians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians were also experts at using a range of plants that we commonly use in natural formulation today in their unguents, their oils, ointments, poultices, powders and more. To give you just one example, a recipe for an ancient Egyptian body oil formula comprised sesame, castor, moringa and olive oils. All of these oils are commonly used now in formulation with some like Moringa, ironically seen as a new trending ingred. Moving on to later periods, archaeologists discovered a well preserved Roman face cream dating back to 150 of a common era. When they were excavating a site in London, it actually still had preserved fingerprints in it. And a scientific paper in the journal Nature then analyzed the cream and found that it contained animal fats and starch and the mineral tin oxide. But they didn't just stop there, they then made the cream, they replicated it and formulated it for themselves. I love this. And in doing so they found that it felt pleasant on the skin. And they were surprised to find that modern day cosmetics still use starch for the same purpose. Similarly, many modern cosmetics use tallow or plant fats. And if we move on to more recent times and look at the Renaissance or rebirth of learning in the 16th century, we start to see cosmetic preparations being used for pleasure, not just to cure skin conditions. The opening up of trade with the New World, the Americas as well as Silk road trade from the east to Venice brought more exotic ingredients to Europe to including cosmetics. And now we start to find formulations that have many similarities with modern gels, scrubs, toners, washes, oils. I've discovered scanned copies of DIY beauty books from this period and they make for fascinating reading. Now of course, they used crazy ingredients from time to time too. I found examples of lead blood, putrid donkey livers even. I even found one memorable toner that contained get this frog spawn water which I don't think anyone wants on their skin. And I should add that many of these Books come with similar wild claims to those we've seen from the modern day beauty industry. But there were so many similarities with our modern beauty formulations. Hydrosols, oils, butters, waxes, they were all there. I just want to stress the point yet again that not much has changed in all this time. The fundamental principles of formulation still stand. Emulsification, solubilization, gelling, warm, blending, whipping, distillation, enfleurage, preservation. These are all techniques still used today by chemists, by chefs, and by home formulators. And now we arrive in the modern day beauty industry that arose in the late 1800s, which I explored in more detail with Professor Jones last week. And during this period, we find that many of the great beauty pioneers of the era were also indie formulators. Many of their names live on today in the global cosmetics brands that I mentioned at the start. Elizabeth Arden, Estee Lauder, Helena Rubenstein, Madam C.J. walker. Most of them began as lone entrepreneurs, rather like many of the indie beauty brand founders today. So while we might all have been told repeatedly that formulation is exclusive to scientists, the indie beauty community has demonstrated that formulation is in fact, a skill accessible to everyone. As tens of thousands of small brands have mushroomed out of nowhere in the last decade, and as we know, many of them have been very successful and created some very innovative products. Formula Botanica teaches people how to formulate we are the leading formulation school in the world, and not only have we taught thousands of people through our formal paid training programs, but we've also taught over half a million people to formulate through our free courses and our free masterclasses. If you're listening to this podcast, then there's a good chance that you've formulated along with us at some point. And if you haven't, head on over to our website now to join in with the formulation revolution. I want you to realize that we are part of an incredible movement where the natural community has effectively forced the cosmetics industry to look for sources of inspiration and ingredients from plants that humankind has used since ancient times. And in doing so, we are shaping a new chapter in the history of cosmetics. We're helping to move the beauty industry beyond global beauty conglomerates and back to its more sustainable roots. We're showing the beauty industry that everyone can formulate. Thank you for listening to my green beauty opinions. Remember to visit the Formula botanica website@formulabotanica.com to try our free online formulation course. And if you haven't subscribed yet to the Green Beauty Conversations podcast, make sure you do so now in your favorite podcast app. Leave me a five star review if you enjoy the conversations I host and I'll be back soon with my next episode. Sam.
