What If Clean Beauty Is Exactly What We Need Right Now?

There’s something quietly satisfying about the moments when we pare things back. When we stop overthinking and just ask: what do I really need? Maybe it’s one great pair of jeans instead of five. It’s choosing the good olive oil instead of grabbing whatever’s on sale. Or maybe, it’s realising that our skin doesn’t need a 12-step routine to be healthy, happy, and glowing. Find out more in What If Clean Beauty Is Exactly What We Need Right Now?

We’re surrounded by advice, layers upon layers of products, trends, and confusing skincare steps. Every week, there’s a new ingredient to chase, a new warning to heed. And while it might not always be harmful on the surface, but if we don’t really know what our skin actually needs, how can we expect it to thrive? We follow routines we don’t fully understand, mix ingredients that don’t belong together, and then wonder why our skin seems more stressed, not better.

So, what if we pressed pause for a moment? What if instead of adding more, we took a breath and asked ourselves what really makes a difference? Maybe it’s time to choose something truly clean, skincare made with natural ingredients, free from hidden chemicals, and safe enough to trust without second-guessing. Something that strips away the noise and brings us back to what actually works.

That’s where The Clean Beauty Club comes in. Founded by Emma and Aminah, two long-time friends who met at Glasgow School of Art over 20 years ago, this UK-based brand began with a familiar kind of frustration. The kind you feel after trying product after product, reading label after label, and still not finding anything that feels right.

Back then, they were running a bath and body business but found themselves more inspired by the skincare they were making quietly, just for their own skin, blends that felt simpler, safer, and somehow more honest. These were the formulas that made sense to them, rooted in intention and care rather than trends or marketing claims, and they knew they had to share them.

That same spirit of intention shaped everything that followed. From the beginning, they knew they didn’t want preservatives, fillers, or stabilisers in their skincare. If an ingredient didn’t serve the skin directly, it didn’t belong.

They committed to using no water in their formulations, which meant no need for preservatives at all. Every product they create is entirely oil-based and filled only with natural, purposeful components that actively benefit the skin.

They’ve always chosen the best-case scenario, formulating each product with the highest percentage of active, transformational ingredients. Nothing watered down, nothing added just to pad a formula or stretch the shelf life.

That’s been the standard since day one, and it hasn’t changed. For them, clean beauty isn’t a label, it’s a commitment to integrity, simplicity, and creating products your skin will actually love.

That’s why The Clean Beauty Club isn’t built on buzzwords. It’s built on integrity. Every jar, bottle, and drop is made to be effective, fresh, and truly clean. Because skin deserves more than marketing, it deserves honesty.

You won’t find endless steps or aggressive actives here. What you will find is a collection of products that are thoughtful, hard-working, and grounded in real skin needs. And yes, they smell amazing too.

Let’s start with Wonder Balm. This is the core of it all. Think of it like your skincare Swiss army knife: it melts away makeup, SPF, and the grime of the day, but it also soothes irritation, softens skin, and heals. People have used it on eczema, sunburn, even kitchen burns.

And unlike other balms that sting your eyes or leave a residue, this one just feels… right. No sting, no dryness, no tight feeling. Just clean, soft skin. You could literally stop there and your skin would thank you.

But if you want to go further, they’ve built the rest of the routine around it, step by step.

Enter the serums. In the morning, it’s time for the Glow Serum, lovingly nicknamed “Botox in a Bottle.” It blends botanical oils and active ingredients that smooth out fine lines, even skin tone, and fight stress-related dullness. You can wear it on its own or mix it into your foundation for a dewy finish that says, “I drink water and mind my business.”

At night, there’s Beauty Sleep Serum. This is your fairy godmother in a bottle. Rich, nourishing, and deeply calming, it gets to work while you sleep, because that’s when your skin is in repair mode anyway. Wake up with skin that feels like you actually rested, even if you were up past midnight watching reality TV (no judgment).

Want to go even deeper? Add a few drops of the Wonder Drops – Firming. It contain algae actives that boost collagen production by up to 19% in just 24 hours. If your skin is feeling tired or less plump than it used to, this is your go-to.

Wonder Drops – Clear Skin are packed with antibacterial and anti-inflammatory powers. Think breakouts, irritation, flare-ups. This little bottle can help calm it all down, fast.

The Mist comes next. A light, 100% natural orange flower water mist that adds hydration without any of the unnecessary fluff. It’s what they call the “moisture sandwich”, a technique where you lock in hydration between layers of oil. Just a few sprays and you’re ready for the next step.

And then there’s Wonder Mask. Most clay masks dry you out and leave you red-faced. Not this one. Made with French Green Clay, it draws out impurities while still being gentle enough for sensitive skin. Massage it in as you wash it off, and you’ll get a light exfoliation too. Your face will look like it’s just come back from a walk in the woods.

The full routine isn’t about complexity. It’s about rhythm. Cleanse, mist, treat, nourish. That’s it. And if all you do is cleanse with Wonder Balm? That’s still enough.

Because what Emma and Aminah want you to know is this: skincare shouldn’t feel like a science experiment. It should feel good. It should fit into your life. And it should help your skin feel more like you.

This is what Emma told us:-

Cent. What does the term clean beauty really mean? We hear it tossed about a lot, but I’m not sure the consumer really understands.

Emma. Generically, the term clean beauty can mean anything—whatever people want it to mean. But for us personally, the reason we call our products clean beauty is simply because they are. They are entirely free of any preservatives, emulsifiers, or stabilizers. There’s nothing in them that’s a filler, and every single component is there to actively benefit your skin. Every ingredient is, in essence, clean, natural, and purposeful. That’s why we decided to call ourselves The Clean Beauty Club.

We had a different name for our company in the past, but we realized it was really important that, with so much information out there, if there was something truly natural, people should know that straight away. 

We’re seeing the emergence of this so much in food and drinks right now – people are hugely concerned about UPF, and they are so much more interested in knowing what’s in the products we put in and on our bodies. Looking at a packet or an advert for a product often doesn’t tell us the truth about what’s inside – so we decided to sing it loud for all to hear!

Do you still need to use preservatives in oil? So what do you use? And if not, how long will products actually last?

No, we don’t use any preservatives whatsoever because we don’t use water in our products. All of our products are entirely oil-based, and oil-based products don’t need preservatives, which means they have a natural shelf life of a year. We keep our products really fresh, and nothing you can buy from The Clean Beauty Club will have sat on a shelf for months or years on end, as you might find with other products. That’s just the way we’ve designed our range to keep it as natural as possible.

Why did you decide to take this journey with skincare? It’s already a saturated market. So, where did your passion come from, and what were your first steps?

We actually had a bath and body company for years before we launched Wonder Balm. We saw a gap in the market because, many years ago, we had a gift shop and struggled to find interesting and exciting soaps, candles, and bath and body products. There are thousands of them on the market now, but at the time, there really wasn’t anything like that. So, we started making our own products.

As we did that more and more, we realised these weren’t actually the products we wanted or needed. In fact, we had our own little collection of skincare that we made just for ourselves. After running the bath and body company for a few years, we thought, “Why are we selling something we’re not hugely, enormously passionate about?” Meanwhile, we loved the skincare products we made for ourselves and knew they weren’t available anywhere else. So, we tested them with a small audience, and the response was absolutely incredible.

The reason we’re still in business and continue to make these products is because our customers tell us—and we know for ourselves—that we wouldn’t want to use anything else. The products are so incredible that we wouldn’t want to be without them. That passion and excitement keep us going.

What are the products you felt were missing from your own regimes that you most wanted in the collection?

For us, it all started with Wonder Balm. We wanted something that truly did more than one thing—something that performed a function, like cleansing skin or removing makeup, but also went beyond that. We wanted it to really change skin, nourish it, and be a one-stop shop.

At the time, there weren’t many balm cleansers available, and the ones we tried either stung your eyes while removing makeup or were gentle on the skin but didn’t cleanse effectively. We wanted something that could do everything for us personally.

That’s how Wonder Balm came to be. Then, when people started asking for more products, we developed what was originally called Evening Serum, now renamed Beauty Sleep in a Bottle. It’s a rich, nourishing overnight serum that, as very young parents, made us look a lot less tired. From there, every product we’ve made has answered a call from our own skin.

As we age, we’ve added products to boost collagen production, for example. When we felt our skin wasn’t well-hydrated, we introduced The Mist to use between Wonder Balm and The Serum. Everything has been created in response to what our skin needed.

What are you most proud of that you’ve achieved with the brand?

The thing we’re most proud of is that, in every product, we’ve always gone with the absolute best-case scenario—the best formulation we could possibly create with the highest percentage of active, transformational ingredients. We’ve always kept it that way.

Quite honestly, we could tone down many of our formulations, make them cheaper to produce, and easier to manufacture. But we know they would lose a certain amount of their magic, and we’re just not prepared to let that happen. We’re proud that, at no point, have we ever decided to decrease the power of our products.

What do we all need to do most to look after our skin? We ask because we’re all drowning in the amount we’re supposed to be doing. Surely this is really bad for our skin?

Yes, we completely agree. We tell people all the time that if they do nothing else, just use Wonder Balm. The reason for this is that we’re up against so much with our skin—makeup, SPF, pollutants, bacteria, and germs. The one thing we have to do is properly cleanse.

The brilliant thing about Wonder Balm is that it cleanses without stripping the skin. You genuinely don’t need to use any other product after it if you don’t want to. If we were on a desert island, the one thing we’d need would be Wonder Balm, and our skin would still be incredible because of it.

Once upon a time, it may have been true that we didn’t need to do much to our skin, but the world is different now. Makeup, pollutants, and other factors mean that the best thing we can do, morning and evening, is reset our skin. Remove anything that could cause damage, unclog it, and bring it back to its natural, nourished state. That’s more than enough.

At a time when beauty routines are often overloaded and underwhelming, The Clean Beauty Club gives us something rare: permission to do less. But better. This is skincare that meets you where you are. No pressure. No perfection. Just thoughtful formulas designed to bring skin back to balance, and help you feel more at home in your own skin.

So whether you’re a balm-only kind of person or ready to build your own “moisture sandwich,” this might just be the moment to start fresh, with something truly clean, and deeply kind. Come see what that feels like.

To read more and explore The Clean Beauty Club, visit Here

If you enjoy reading What If Clean Beauty Is Exactly What We Need Right Now? Why not try Youthful, Glowing Skin; The Best-Kept Secret in Hollywood

.Cent Magazine London, Be Inspired; Get Involved

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