Styling Your Routine with Minimalist Beauty Products

Minimalist beauty is the central philosophy underpinning Puristry products, from our styling and packaging to our ingredients and formulas. Our decisions around what we produce and how we produce it all boils down to a commitment to simplicity and stripped down beauty – no maximalist packaging, uber long ingredient lists, or complicated application techniques.

In opposition to the ‘extra is better’ culture that we see regularly, minimalist beauty focuses on working with your natural features and maximizing skin health, so that you can keep makeup application to a minimum (avoiding hour long beauty tutorials, cakey looking foundation, and potentially harmful chemical combinations on your skin). Minimalist beauty means cutting back on all of the unnecessary stuff, allowing for a super simple routine to take center stage–one that’s time saving, stress-free, ecologically responsible, and skin-loving.

Our minimalist philosophy starts with our packaging, which has a simple and clean geometric design. The product bottles we use are (literally) transparent, meaning you can see how much product you’re getting, and how much you’ve used. It’s a classic trick for conventional cosmetic brands to use super flashy packaging that disguises the fact that the product is actually quite low volume for how much you’re spending.

Instead of distracting with branding, we like to focus on the product itself: keeping things practical, stylish and understated. Most importantly, simple packaging doesn’t mean a sacrifice on quality. Our product bottles are designed to keep formulas from going rancid while preventing zero BPA or phthalates to be leaching into our pure formulas.

When it comes to our ingredient lists, we’re committed to keeping things super simple and hard-working. Why? Again, we’re interested in transparency. Using simple, whole ingredients allows Puristry wearers to understand what it is they’re applying to their skin. Typical synthetic beauty products have long lists of ingredients, many of which are impossible to pronounce let alone recognize. This leaves consumers in the position of having to trust companies that their products are ‘natural’ or ‘gentle’, without actually knowing where the ingredients source from and if they’re safe.

One example we always use is the case of ‘fragrance’ – it’s a word generally listed on conventional formula ingredient lists, and hiding within it are hundreds of chemicals that beauty companies aren’t required to disclose (because of trade laws). This goes for other ‘umbrella chemicals’ listed on conventional formulas. In other words, within a single ‘ingredient’ can be hiding several other ingredients. At Puristry, our ingredients are straightforward, and they contain exactly what they say they contain. This means no unexplainable allergic reactions or irritation, and no unexpected skin responses.

Our minimalist ingredient lists fundamentally mean that every drop has a potent and healing set of properties. We only use necessary ingredients and concentrated potencies of herbal and plant botanicals, so you can use less product for more noticable results. Our products don’t contain fillers, which are typically used to ‘bulk up’ conventional formulas to give the appearance of more product.

There are a few problems with fillers that should put them on your nix list!

They exist to make products appear to have better value, but ultimately end up diluting formulas, leaving you with less effective skincare in the long run. Inactive ingredients are often added because they can be manufactured inexpensively.

Propylene glycol is one of them, an ingredient composed of glycerin, grain alcohol and synthetic petrochemical combinations. Another to look out for is Polyethylene glycol (PEG); both of these fillers are devoid of skin nutrients, and are known to cause allergic reactions, hives, and eczema. Then there’s Petroleum, a filler used in moisturizers and balms (personally, we prefer plant-based emollients like shea butter in our Seaberry Moisturizer). Petroleum has been linked to endocrine disruption and carcinogenic risks and should be avoided if possible. It also contains pore-clogging properties that prevent your outer epidermal layer from completing its natural process of sloughing off dead skin cells, leading to increased breakouts.

Synthetic colors and dyes can also be considered fillers, and are often used to top off formulas and add the visual ‘natural’ signifiers of fruit or plant ingredients. For instance, you might find purple dye in a product that claims to contain grapes (our Vine Therapy Serum really does!), but in reality contains only trace extract amounts that have been heavily processed. These can be carcinogenic in high doses and can sometimes include aluminum, a neurotoxin that’s linked to altered cell metabolism.

What about H2O? While water is neutral when it comes to skin benefits, we’ve opted not to include plain H2O in our products, instead using aloe water and plant hydrosols (a key concept in our Flower Water Toner). Both are full of essential fatty acids and antioxidants, meaning that even the base ingredients of our products are nourishing and active in age prevention and skin cell regeneration. Every ingredient has a nutritional benefit on its own: no dilution and no ‘false’ volume in our bottles, simply the stripped down active ingredients in their purest form.

Our no filler policy and overarching minimalist mentality keeps things simple, effective, and conducive to beautiful and healthy skin – sans the bells and whistles. Keep up here for more ingredient stories and highlights!