K-beauty geekery...
...including chats with Marc Elrick from Byoma and Dr Christine Hall, plus how to be truly sustainable in beauty — and my favourite K-beauty product to date.
When I talked about sharing interesting snippets from beauty industry people that I spend time with, founder Marc Elrick was one of the people I had in mind.
I always enjoy talking to him and listening to what he has to say and while I don’t know if I’d walk over hot coals to get to him, I did schlep from Brixton to Shoreditch in the freezing cold and pissing rain to see him last Thursday. And it was worth it. You might not know his name but you’ll undoubtedly know his brands - he’s the man behind self tan brands, Isle of Paradise and Tan Luxe but also behind Byoma, a brand he launched less than four years ago that has just taken off globally in a way I don’t think anyone could have imagined.
(Full disclosure, I’ve done consultancy work for Byoma in the past, and I worked with them pre-launch but, as with anything and everything I write about here, if I thought it wasn’t any good, I’d say so — or more likely just not mention it at all.)
So I got to catch up with Marc, but also with Stewart Long, who is the founder of a company called cuTest which does independent testing of cosmetics products. I’ve known Stewart for ages - he’s a former president of the Society for Cosmetic Scientists who I worked with for a while and he’s also one of the people who, back in January 2021 when I was researching a feature about oral collagen supplementation, made me change my mind about it after I quizzed him and he was really honest “I was sceptical but we’ve done tests on two different collagen products - one of them worked, one of them didn’t.”
Stewart was there because, as well as running cuTest, he’s also working with Byoma. He’s helped them set up their testing labs at their head office in Glasgow and is also helping them spread the word about quite how much research Byoma does on their end products.
(I was going to cover a bit about product testing and the difference between best practice and what actually happens but I started writing and it became SUCH an essay that I’ll save that for another time.)
Anyway we chatted a LOT about Korea (K-beauty is going nowhere, just last week I talked to Dr Christine Hall — if you don’t know her, she’s one of the brilliant aesthetic doctors at The Taktouk Clinic and being of English and South Korean descent, and incredibly knowledgeable, has become my go-to for all things K-beauty — about spicules for a feature for the Telegraph, which I’ll link here when it’s published. I also want to write a newsletter about the darker side of K-beauty that Christine and I have discussed in the past.)
Byoma produce a lot of their products in Korea. I’ve always been really interested in what factors mean a country ends up being such a hot bed of beauty innovation and when I spoke to Christine for this piece for the Times she explained that it was multi-factorial.
“Beauty is inbuilt in Korean tradition and culture,” she told me, “presenting the best version of yourself is how you show respect. And because beauty is so much part of the culture there, there’s a lot of competition.”
Then there’s the fact that the South Korean government has a number of incentives to foster innovation from tax credits for R&D (research and development) to subsidies and support programmes — which might explain why, as Marc told me, the cosmetic manufacturers in Korea tend to have ten times as many scientifically qualified people on staff than an equivalent-sized facility in America would.
You can see why so much newness in beauty comes out of there.
Marc talked about how different the work culture is over there as well.
“Really long hours — and very hierarchical. You absolutely can’t leave until your boss has left, and they can’t leave until their boss has left etc etc.”
But we also discussed how different the skincare focus is in Korea — when I spoke to Christine she told me it was “all about maintaining and nourishing your skin barrier in the pursuit of flawless, dewy, poreless skin,, and that, until recently, actives like vitamin C and retinol [which can cause skin to be dry, tight or flaky] weren’t used a lot in Korea.” That means it’s the perfect place for production of a lot of Byoma’s barrier-focused products but for actives, such as salicylic, they’ll go elsewhere.
What they’re really brilliant at, Marc told me, is textures. I know we’re meant to worry about “beauty miles” in the same way that we’re meant to worry about “food miles” but I kind of love the idea of cherry picking expertise from the parts of the world that do it best.
(And, if you’re also worried about your beauty carbon footprint, it’s worth knowing that when I researched a feature about exactly that, a Harvard researcher who specialised in business sustainability told me the single most important thing you can do if you are worried about sustainability in beauty is use every product that you buy to the last drop.)
I’m fascinated to see the impact that K-beauty continues to have on beauty in the West and how that works with our passion for actives which seems to be at odds with their skin barrier preservation approach. I’m also interested to see quite how far their beauty standards will influence ours — Marc told me that it’s an incredibly male-dominated work environment over there but that before every business meeting every male exec will have their makeup professionally done. Not sure I can see the likes of Alan Sugar buying into that one…
On the topic of K-beauty and products that I’ve finished to the last drop…
Erborian Centella Cleansing Oil, £22, lookfantastic.com
I adore this — I adore the smell, which smells weirdly like walking into Abercrombie & Fitch — which I realise might put people off but trust me, it’s lovely — other people call it herbal, piney. I adore the fact that it gets rid of everything, including waterproof mascara, I slather it on liberally, massage it in and then use a hot flannel to wipe everything off. If you double cleanse it’s the perfect first cleanse.
(BTW, I’m experimenting with using affiliate links and I’ll talk more about the decision-making process behind this another time. But rest assured this won’t change anything. I will never recommend a product that I don’t honestly think is worth it.)
More next week. Would love to know your thoughts. What do you want to see in BeautyGeekery? What burning beauty questions do you need answered? Also, if you’re enjoying BeautyGeekery and know someone else who might like it too, please spread the word.
How good is THIS! Two of my all time favorites ❤️❤️
Great piece, so excited you’re on here now.