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.
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Solid Cosmetics School
Practical lessons for using, storing and travelling with solid cosmetics.
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Which One? Comparison Studio
Clear comparisons for the cosmetics you use, the routines you enjoy and the gifts you give.
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Gift & Gifting Encyclopedia
300 articles about thoughtful gifts: people, occasions, traditions, beautiful presentation and words that feel like you.
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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
Distearoylethyl dimonium chloride
A conditioner can be rich in the hand and easy to rinse from the hair. Those qualities sound contradictory until you meet an esterquat: a conditioning ingredient designed to bring...
Ingredient Atlas
Broccoli seed oil
The broccoli we buy for dinner is a plant interrupted before flowering. Let it continue and its tight green buds open into yellow flowers, followed by seed pods. Those seeds...
Ingredient Atlas
Cationic guar
Inside a cluster bean’s seed is a gum that can take a surprising second career in hair care. Prepared as cationic guar, it helps a formulator work on the feel...
Ingredient Atlas
Behentrimonium chloride
A conditioner’s most valuable quality may be the moment it makes easier: working through wet hair, combing or smoothing the lengths into place. Behentrimonium chloride belongs to that practical side...
Ingredient Atlas
Avocado oil
The large stone gets most of our attention when an avocado is cut open. For its familiar cosmetic oil, look around it instead. The buttery flesh is the important starting...
Ingredient Atlas
Brassicyl valinate esylate
A conditioner can have an inner architecture as well as a pleasant texture. Brassicyl valinate esylate is particularly interesting because, with fatty alcohols, it can help create ordered layers inside...
Ingredient Atlas
Abyssinian oil
An airy spray of small pale flowers, round seed pods and an unexpectedly silky oil: Abyssinian oil begins with a crop that is easy to overlook. Its interest lies in...
Ingredient Atlas
Sodium methyl cocoyl taurate
A creamy wash can begin with a solid cleansing ingredient, and a little oil need not end the foam story. Sodium methyl cocoyl taurate is interesting at precisely this meeting...
Ingredient Atlas
Silica
A fine powder can make a rich mixture feel less slippery, help particles stay suspended or give a product more body. Silica's story is a reminder that the most useful...
Ingredient Atlas
Sodium laurylglucosides hydroxypropylsulfonate
A sugar-derived cleanser does not always remain an uncharged glucoside. This ingredient takes the idea a step further, giving a glucoside-related structure an anionic character. The reward for untangling its...
Ingredient Atlas
Water in a solid formula
You pick up a firm bar, turn it over, and find Aqua on the label. Has somebody made a mistake? Water has several possible lives inside a solid cosmetic: an...
Ingredient Atlas
Triethyl citrate
A perfume tin and a deodorant stick may share an ingredient even when they are solving very different problems. Triethyl citrate is one of those versatile names. Its story moves...
