Articles and guides
Practical advice, ingredients and stories about solid cosmetics.
In-depth guides
Choose a topic and find practical answers.
Ingredient Atlas
Ingredient origins, textures and practical answers about cosmetic labels.
Read the guide
Solid Cosmetics School
Practical lessons for using, storing and travelling with solid cosmetics.
Read the guide
Which One? Comparison Studio
Clear comparisons for the cosmetics you use, the routines you enjoy and the gifts you give.
Read the guideArticles: 776
Ingredient Atlas
Red-root gromwell extract
Small white flowers above the ground, deep purple-red colour below it: gromwell keeps its most striking feature out of sight. Its roots have a history in dyeing as well as...
Ingredient Atlas
Hydrolyzed milk protein
Milk has a quieter cosmetic story than the creamy image on a carton suggests. Separate its proteins, shorten their long chains, and you have a prepared care ingredient that can...
Ingredient Atlas
Betaine
A sugar beet can have a second career after the sugar-making process. One of its useful companions is betaine: a crystalline ingredient whose story is about water, comfort and giving...
Ingredient Atlas
Allantoin
Comfrey may introduce you to allantoin, but the ingredient arriving at a cosmetics workshop is a white crystalline powder. Its story connects a familiar plant with a surprisingly delicate question:...
Ingredient Atlas
Squalane
Squalane has one of beauty's smallest spelling differences with one of its most useful stories. Squalane and squalene are related, but the final vowel points towards a change in the...
Ingredient Atlas
Tapioca starch
Tapioca begins underground, but its most useful cosmetic story is not about a root-shaped ingredient. It is about separating tiny starch granules from the rest of that root, then using...
Ingredient Atlas
Jojoba esters
Jojoba already challenges the ordinary meaning of oil: its liquid is rich in wax esters. Jojoba Esters takes that starting material in another direction, from creamy pastes to hard waxes...
Ingredient Atlas
Corn starch
A corn kernel contains more than one useful material. Wet milling can separate its starch, germ, fibre and protein into different streams. Corn starch's cosmetic story begins with that sorting:...
Ingredient Atlas
Dimethicone
A swipe can feel silky without a drop of silk in the formula. Dimethicone is one reason: a fluid material built from repeating units, available in different thicknesses, that helps...
Ingredient Atlas
Arrowroot powder
Arrowroot keeps its useful store underground. Beneath the green leaves are fleshy rhizomes—horizontal stems that look rather like roots. Following that hidden part of the plant makes an everyday powder...
Ingredient Atlas
C12–15 alkyl benzoate
A solid perfume can keep its neat shape in a tin and still slip across the skin. That apparent contradiction is a good way into C12–15 Alkyl Benzoate: a liquid...
Ingredient Atlas
Meadowfoam seed oil
A field of creamy white flowers can look like a layer of sea foam resting on land. Meadowfoam earns its name before a single seed is pressed. The oil’s story...
