Lorraine Dallmeyer, CEO of Formula Botanica, argues the beauty industry invented the myth that only chemists can formulate skincare to keep consumers dependent. Romans and Egyptians made their own formulas. Her students prove ordinary people can learn to formulate and run brands.
Happy New Year. It's great to be back for more episodes of Green Beauty Conversations. This week's episode is slightly different though. Normally I would share an interview with you or I would provide one of my green beauty opinions. The short takeaways I record about the previous week's episode. But this week, as we start the new year, I'd like to do something a little bit different and quite a lot more controversial. I'd like to look back briefly at 2021 and then talk to you about our message at formula botanica for 2022. And in doing so, I'd like to uncover why the beauty industry has been lying to you and how everyone props up this gigantic lie. Hi, it's Lorraine Dallmeyer, 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 and in which I share my thoughts on the beauty industry. So let's get started and set the tone for the year as we mean to go on. The beauty industry has been lying to you for over a century. They have told you time and time again in thousands of tiny ways that you need to be a chemist to formulate your own skincare and hair care, that making your own lotions and cleansers and conditioners requires a PhD in science, that you can't make legitimate and safe formulations until you're wearing a white coat and you're stood in a lab. And you know where it all started with the first mainstream beauty pioneers back in the 1930s and 40s who came up with the very clever concept of wearing white lab coats in their marketing photos. And then that filtered through to the beauty counters of our department stores where brands made their sales staff wear lab coats. And then that filtered through to the adverts that we started seeing with scientists blending together complex synthetic chemicals to create your beauty products. We've been brainwashed. The truth is that formulation as a skill has been around for millennia. Archaeologists have even found 2000 year old face creams from ancient Roman times that are really not that hugely different in chemical composition to the ones you'd buy today. The ancient Egyptians used to carry around little blending palettes to make their own makeup. I have DIY beauty books dating back to the 1500s where people were using ingredients that we still now use in our formulations. People used to be able to formulate for themselves, but as a society, we don't do this anymore. And why is that? After all, it's not hard to formulate Your own skincare. It's really easy. But the beauty industry has fed us this lie over and over and we've fallen for it. We've had thousands of students go through our courses without any previous experience. They had no formulation experience before enrolling with Formula Botanica. They didn't have a lab and they have no background in chemistry. And all you need to do is look at them by scrolling through our graduate gallery on our website. They're running amazing, incredible natural skincare and hair care brands. And it's not just our graduates. Let's not forget that most of the big beauty players also started as DIY indie formulators at home. You only need to delve into the history books to see that I'm right. The truth is that everyone can formulate and formulation is fun, easy and empowering. If the beauty industry makes you believe that you are not capable of doing something that is really as simple as cookery, then you won't even try it for yourself. And you'll keep falling for their advertising. You'll keep buying their products. It would be the equivalent of having to buy ready made meals or eating out all the time out of fear that you can't cook for yourself because it's not safe. You won't then surround yourself with herbs and flowers and roots and seeds and buds and barks and petals and leaves and stems. You won't make your own serums or lotions or toners or conditioners or masks or scrubs, and you won't then reclaim a skill that everyone can learn. Here at Formula Botanica, we started talking about the fact that everyone can formulate in 2021. It became a big part of our message and we put out one short video on social media in which we discussed the fact that you don't need to be a chemist to formulate. Now, suffice to say, this video was very well received in our community. Our students, our graduates, our followers. They've all heard this nonsense before. From their customers, from their family members, in fact, from anyone who feels inclined to share their opinion opinions. Our followers felt like they'd suddenly been given a voice. But what we hadn't expected at Formula Botanica was that the beauty industry was also closely paying attention. After all, we reach over a million people a month, so you can imagine my surprise when we started to get feedback. The mainstream beauty industry really didn't like what we were saying and they wanted us to tone down the message in response to just one video. Just one video. And this is amazing. This is so good. Because the only reason we're getting this feedback is because people are taking note of what we're saying. And that made me realize our disruption is widespread and we are on the cusp of global influence. As we push forward, our mission to teach the world to formulate formulation isn't a skill that's specific to a white lab coated chemist. Everyone can formulate. You can formulate, I can formulate. Yes. A chemist can formulate. All of us can formulate together. This is a skill we are reclaiming. And I know that we've already made formulations so common and so widespread that we're all part of a bigger movement now. And it's a movement that the beauty industry is watching with a degree of unease. They can see it coming. They're not enjoying what they're seeing. But by the time our message spreads to every corner of the planet, it'll be too late for them to do anything about it. After all, why should we listen to a mainstream beauty industry that's been telling us for over 100 years that we are not good enough, we're not clean enough, we're not attractive enough, that we need to fundamentally change our appearance to be accepted, and that the only way we can do all of that is by buying their products? This is societal brainwashing at a level we've not even fully begun to appreciate. We are reclaiming a skill that all of us can learn. So not only can everyone formulate, I believe that everyone should formulate. Seeing how formulation has changed the lives of so many of our students, we know it's empowering, it does change lives, and everyone should be able to feel what it's like to make their own skincare for themselves with their own hands. So that's my challenge to you for this week. Next time you see a beauty product for sale, just picture yourself making it at home for yourself. That's how we reclaim some of that power one day at a time. That's how we change the stranglehold that the mainstream beauty industry has had on us for over a century. That's how we empower ourselves and become formulators. Everyone can formulate, and so can you. 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 Conversation podcast, please make sure you do so 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.
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