About Wild Grace
A bit about the Wild Grace philosophy of skin and self nourishment…
My training in Vitalist herbal medicine has led me down a path of holistic rather than allopathic (simply treating symptoms) skin care. I deeply believe in assessing patterns rather than treating symptoms when it comes to skin remedies.
Just as the goal with herbal medicine is not to be taking the same herb forever, I don't believe we should need to be using corrective skin care products forever. It's my belief that our skin generally needs nourishment, just as we do, and that corrective action should only really be taken in the short term.
To that end, our products have been formulated to be nourishing, soothing, and nutritive to all skin, no matter the “type”. In addition, we do have (and are working on more formulas for) specific skin care “remedies” including masks and serums for when your skin needs extra care such as acne, eczema, barrier damage, etc. These products are meant to heal, mend, and act as potent treatments.
Why is this?
Well, just because something is “natural” does not mean it should be utilized all the time. For example, let's say your herbalist gives you Mugwort as a remedy for something that ails you. After a few months, the symptoms that were bothering you have gone away. You wouldn't continue to take the Mugwort since the idea is that your system has come back to balance with the aid of the plant medicine.
It's the same for skin. Your skin isn't deficient in a particular ingredient - these potent ingredients are meant to remind your skin of its innate health and wellness. So once your skin is in balance, you want to maintain that balance with simple, nourishing ingredients. Skin food, if you will. While many other brands out there encourage consistent corrective actions for skin, we believe in our skin's innate wisdom and inherent health, and that our job is to simply remind your body in its entirety that it knows best.
Our whole line of products, made in harmony with nature, will feed your skin's microbiome with whole plant formulas, and help maintain and protect your lipid barrier, resulting in vibrant, glowing skin no matter your age.
What do we mean exactly when we say Whole Plant and how does that support our bigger vision of People, Planet, and Plants?
Each of our products is formulated by me, Katie, a trained herbalist and certified organic skincare formulator. Wild Grace products are specifically formulated to be safe, effective, aromatically therapeutic, and made with whole plants, not standardized extracts or naturally-derived ingredients. Our products and ingredients ARE nature. Pure and simple. And our products are a huge step above “organic.”
Along the same lines, we source our ingredients as close to home as possible and as freshly grown, pressed, and distilled as possible. For the plants we work with, they're picked seasonally and in their peak, which means sometimes we don't have an ingredient for awhile because nature is nature and plants don't grow at their best on demand. This is another element that goes into what we call “Slow Beauty”. Sometimes ya have to wait and we embrace that necessary patience.
We also purchase whole herbs from the farms we work with and do the processing in-house before weaving them into our skin-loving blends. That means we do the milling and powdering so the herbs are as fresh and intact as possible when they go into our formulas.
Fresh ingredients = the most effective and potent products!
And speaking of our sourcing and the farms we work with, we whole-heartedly support regenerative agriculture and domestic herb farming. It's so important to support our local and regional farms here in the US! Not only are we supporting a living wage for folks doing important work with the plants, but we're also supporting a holistic and soil-centered way of tending to the Earth which is at the heart of why I created Wild Grace way back when.
Finally, what makes us different from other natural and organic skincare lines? There's a myth that natural skincare is not as effective or potent as conventional skincare. This myth has led many natural lines to develop products that have naturally derived ingredients that, yes technically fit into what you can get away with calling “natural”, but doesn't really have much to do with nature. They're filled with distilled water, complexes, necessary stabilizers and emulsifiers, preservation systems, and standardized extracts.
This is not to disparage these brands or say these products are “bad for you”. To me, these products are trying to be the natural version of the conventional skincare that we all agree can be destructive to our bodies and the planet. And that's ok!
But we believe there's a better way that's truly reflective of Nature's vital force.
From the start, I set out to create highly effective products that could be used by practitioners in their treatment rooms, but be ok with the products looking, feeling, and working differently than conventional products.
You won't ever find a Vitamin C serum in our line, we don't use hyaluronic acid or naturally-derived squalane, and we definitely don't use standardized extracts of plants. We make the most of what each bottle/jar contains. All 100% of the contents go to plants. So instead, we use whole plant ingredients high in those compounds.
When we do use a preservative or emulsifier, such as in Sanctum Cleansing Milk, we a) use the smallest amount possible to create a shelf stable and safe product and b) use the most natural version of that ingredient that is also beneficial to the skin.
Why?
Because I strongly believe that when you take an active constituent away from all the other compounds in a plant, you lose the synergy of all the compounds in that plant. You lose the spirit, the essence, the personality of the plant.
In Wild Grace skincare, the spirit of each plant is intact and you can sense it when you use our products. One of my herbal medicine mentors says, “Use whole plants for whole people” and that's an intention I've taken to heart and infused into each bottle and jar of plant medicine we make.