Organic Beauty & Wellbeing Week is Here!

For a number of years now, I’ve really embraced the organic and natural beauty trend. As a teen, I was obsessed with theremustbeabetteryway.com and discovering fascinating ingredients like algae and rosehip oil that evaded the limited high street beauty stores. I remember having acne at University and thinking how unfair it was: all around me, people were drinking Jaegerbombs and sleeping in their make up and there was I with my muslin cloth and organic cleanser!

I’ll always rather go into a random hippy shop that’s full of Weleda and Lavera than a Superdrug with their same old supplies. It feels more personal. And I must be onto something because these sorts of shops have exploded all over the place!

Then when I started blogging for The Truth About Beauty and began Modeltypeface, my passion exploded even more. I found Therapi and Herb Farmacy and The Beauty Kitchen, Inlight Organics and Aromatherapy Associates – the list goes on. What they share is passion. I find organic beauty carries with it a wider responsibility for the future of the land that the ingredients are grown on and for the people that work it: there will often be a charity initiative woven into the company.

This  week’s Organic Beauty & Wellbeing Week (7th – 13th May) is something of a celebration. The UK organic beauty market is worth more than ever at £2.2 BILLION! We want a story with our beauty products, an experience and a bit of joy in the packaging (which we want to contain as little plastic as possible, by the way). There’s still a way to go for many in finding that balance between homespun and covetable (personally it’s the homespun element I embrace), and proving the efficacy of certain ingredients.

Most of all, it’s about being transparent. There is so much argument out there about what products are effective and how much of the beauty industry is built on lies, consumers can understandably lose trust. Plenty of products can be labelled ‘natural’ because they have an extract of aloe vera in them: that doesn’t mean that they are organic or contain no synthetic ingredients, too. In fact, as there is no regulation around this area, a product can have 1% organic ingredients and call themselves ‘organic’. Isn’t that mad! That’s why the theme this year is:

“What I’m Made Of.”

If you see the Soil Association Logo, you know that the product reaches strict criteria analysed by an independent body. It’s like a little marker of trust, something to anchor yourself to if you’re lost in a sea of mislabelling.

Last year’s Organic Beauty & Wellbeing Week with Lou Dartford doing my make up

I’ll actually be chairing a panel chat on Sunday – WAAAH! – and I’ll let you know the details as soon as they’re confirmed.

If you want to find out more, head here to learn more of #whatimmadeof

Rebecca x