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 guide
Gift & Gifting Encyclopedia
300 articles about thoughtful gifts: people, occasions, traditions, beautiful presentation and words that feel like you.
Read the guide
Body Cleansing Explained
Does your skin feel tight after the towel? Are you choosing a bar, or wondering where to put it when it’s wet? Start with the part of the shower you’d like to make easier.
Read the guideArticles: 1444
Ingredient Atlas
Lemon eucalyptus essential oil
A lemon scent in a tree with pale, peeling bark: this eucalyptus has an identity worth looking up.
Ingredient Atlas
Dimethyl isosorbide
An ingredient can be useful because it helps another ingredient find its place. Dimethyl isosorbide is that kind of helper: a clear liquid associated with sugar chemistry, selected for its...
Ingredient Atlas
Denatured alcohol in a solid formula
SD Alcohol 40-B looks like a formula code because it is one. The revealing part is that 40 does not mean forty percent in your cosmetic. Decoding the name opens...
Ingredient Atlas
Lavandin Grosso oil
Those beautifully regular waves of purple in a field may be lavandin rather than the lavender you first imagined. Grosso is one of its named cultivars: a vigorous hybrid with...
Ingredient Atlas
Dehydroacetic acid
A good cosmetic has a life beyond the moment it leaves the workshop. It will be opened, touched, stored and used again. Dehydroacetic acid belongs to the ingredients that help...
Ingredient Atlas
Virginia cedarwood oil
The smell of a freshly sharpened wooden pencil can be a surprisingly good doorway into perfumery. Virginia cedarwood has that dry, woody association. Its botanical twist is just as memorable:...
Ingredient Atlas
Coconut fatty acids
A coconut can become an oil, a collection of fatty acids or the starting point for a washing ingredient. Follow the middle chapter: the material called Coconut Acid.
Ingredient Atlas
Cade wood oil
Some fragrances suggest petals or freshly cut fruit. Cade can suggest the other end of a day outdoors: dry wood, smoke and a trace of a distant fire. Its story...
Ingredient Atlas
Caprylyl glycol
Some ingredients do their best work at the meeting point between different parts of a formula. Caprylyl glycol is one of them. Its story is about getting materials to spread...
Ingredient Atlas
Common juniper wood oil
Juniper is often introduced through its blue-black “berries”, but a cosmetic label can take us somewhere else entirely: the woody parts. Common juniper wood oil invites a closer look at...
Ingredient Atlas
Calcium gluconate
Calcium on a beauty label can make the mind jump to nutrition. Calcium gluconate offers a more useful cosmetic lesson: a mineral-related ingredient can be a small part of a...
Ingredient Atlas
Jasmine flower extract
A jasmine flower looks almost weightless. Turning a harvest of those flowers into a fragrance material is anything but effortless. Follow the blossom from its climbing stems through collection and...
