Cleanse with oil. Mist while damp. Press in a few drops of serum. Seal it with the whip. Eighteen ingredients between the four of them, and every one you could find in a kitchen, a garden, or a paddock.
Cleansing with oil sounds backwards until you try it. Oil dissolves what water can't touch — sunscreen, makeup, the film a day in the wind leaves behind. Everything lifts at once, and nothing strips.
Squalane and jojoba do the carrying, both light and both close to what skin already makes. Castor oil does the lifting; it's thicker and more thorough, which is why it has been in cleansing balms for a century. Tea tree and lavender keep it fresh.
Skin afterwards feels clean but not bare. If a cleanser has ever left your face tight enough to notice, this is the opposite of that.
Start dry. Warm a small amount between your palms, then massage into a dry face for a slow thirty seconds — this is the part that does the work, so don't rush it. Add warm water to loosen, then rinse. Pat with a towel but stop short of dry.
Squalane oil, jojoba oil, castor oil, tea tree & lavender
Rose hydrosol is what remains when roses are steam-distilled — the water that carried the scent, rather than the oil extracted from it. Softer than rose oil, and considerably more useful on a face.
Aloe settles things. Witch hazel tightens very slightly. Glycerin is the quiet one: a humectant, which means it draws water toward the surface and holds it there, so the serum that follows has something to work into rather than sitting on dry skin.
Use it as the middle step. It isn't doing much on its own, and it isn't meant to.
After cleansing, while your face is still damp. Two or three mists at arm's length, eyes closed. Don't wipe it in — let it settle a moment, then go straight to the serum while the skin is still damp. Also good at three in the afternoon on a dry day.
Rose hydrosol, aloe vera, witch hazel, vegetable glycerin
Sea buckthorn seed oil is deep orange, which is the first thing you notice and the reason the bottle looks the way it does. That colour comes from carotenoids, and a little goes a long way — three or four drops for a whole face.
Jojoba carries it and thins it out. Vitamin E keeps the blend stable, which matters in a formula this short: with nothing synthetic holding it together, the oils have to be chosen well.
The scent is geranium first, then lavender, with frankincense underneath — resinous, slightly smoky, the note that stops it smelling like a garden.
Three or four drops into a palm. Warm them, then press into damp skin — press, don't rub. Work outward from the centre of the face and take it down the neck. Nights are better than mornings: sea buckthorn can leave the faintest warmth of colour on very fair skin for a few minutes, which is charming in the evening and inconvenient before work.
Jojoba oil, sea buckthorn seed oil, vitamin E, geranium, lavender & frankincense essential oils
Tallow is the oldest thing in skincare and the least fashionable, which is most of why it works. Its fatty acid profile sits close to what human skin already makes, so it absorbs rather than sitting on top — the difference between a balm that sinks in and one you can still feel an hour later.
Ours starts as suet from Australian pasture-raised cattle, rendered low and slow over several hours, then filtered until it's pale and almost odourless. Then it's whipped with jojoba to lighten it, castor oil for slip, and just enough beeswax to hold the whip and seal the whole thing in. Essential oils last, and lightly.
It's the final step. Everything before it adds water or oil to the skin; this is what keeps it there overnight.
Last, on skin still damp from the serum. Take a rice grain for the face — genuinely that much, it goes further than it looks — and warm it between your fingertips until it turns to oil. Press it in rather than rubbing. More for hands, elbows, and anywhere the weather has got to.
Grass-fed tallow, jojoba oil, castor oil, beeswax, essential oils
Contains tallow and beeswax, so it is neither vegan nor vegetarian.
TLLWSKIN is sold online through Spa Philosophy, with delivery anywhere in Australia.