Worthy of the buzz
There’s a lot of competition in the skincare sphere — but every once in a while, a brand will come along, effortlessly cut through the clutter, and turn itself into a buzzy, modern cult classic that stays front and center in your bathroom cabinet. Usually, these brands have a trailblazing founder or two at the helm and a vision rooted in approaching beauty with a fresh lens. Read on to discover four game-changing skincare brands that exemplify this notion.
Tata Harper
Hailed the “Queen of Green,” Colombia-born Tata Harper is a trailblazer in the field of “farm-to-face” skincare, with 100 percent nature-derived formulas hand-batched on her Vermont farm by a team of beauty engineers to ensure freshness. While the natural beauty arena is filled with choices, the Tata difference is found in the high concentration of bioactive botanicals that work hard to yield results. There are also more ingredients than in a standard natural beauty brand (think 40+ per product), making the products fantastic multitaskers. It also means there is some pretty complex chemistry to execute — which is exactly why the brand prides itself on having some of the States’ best batch masters and chemists ensuring the engineering equations work… well, beautifully.
Supergoop!
Supergoop! pioneered something that seemed pretty impossible 15 years ago — it made wearing sunscreen on the daily, not just for beach days, the norm. It all started when founder Holly Thaggard distributed sunscreen across Texan schools to encourage kids to wear sunscreen. The brand caught on and became beloved of editors, celebrities, and pretty much everyone else thanks to a non-gloopy or sticky formulation. While there’s been a bounty of sunscreen-centric beauty brands that have cropped up since, Supergoop! has remained one of the strongest players — due in part to their advanced and extensive offering, including an iteration of hybrid sunscreen for almost every use, and to their reef-friendly, cruelty-free formulations that focus on clean ingredients.
Drunk Elephant
Drunk Elephant was born out of an elimination philosophy. On the search for balanced, clear skin, founder Tiffany Masterson eliminated common skincare ingredients that she believed were the culprits, and named them the “Suspicious 6™” — essential oils, drying alcohols, silicones, chemical sunscreens, fragrances and dyes, and SLS. Finding products that didn't have at least one of the six was a challenge, so she decided to create her own line — behold, Drunk Elephant. Clean formulations aside, the female-owned beauty brand is also beloved for its playful packaging and its give-back philosophy.
MALIN+GOETZ
Founded by Stateside friends Matthew Malin and Andrew Goetz, MALIN+GOETZ has been hailed as a modern-day apothecary. Indeed, many of its products are rooted in a single traditional apothecary ingredient — cue the likes of eucalyptus, bergamot, or peppermint — that’s known and trusted for its time-honored healing properties. These natural sources are then paired with advanced skincare technologies that work to enhance the benefits of the hero ingredient, resulting in their winning fusion of nature and science. The label is a fan favorite for sensitive skin types — the products smell amazing but without the side effect of irritation — and is also loved for its modern approach to packaging (genderless and sustainable). It’s locally made in their home base of NYC to reduce the carbon footprint, too.
