“When I suggest the idea of a ‘beauty biosphere’, I am thinking about how suppliers, brands, and consumers alike seem to be more open to ingredients
sourced from everything that is and is on Earth—from plants, animals, microorganisms, inorganic matter, and even fossil-derived materials. The body care category is a smart and subtle place to start if you want to see this industry’s leading-edge ingredient technologies and understand current trends.”
Author’s Note:
The body care category is a smart and subtle place to start if you want to see this industry’s leading-edge ingredient technologies and understand current trends. This category overlaps with personal care and hygiene, with skincare, makeup and complexion products, with contouring treatments, grooming, and more. And both suppliers and brands clearly recognize the potential that body care has to showcase the benefits, efficacy, performance, and experience that deliver on the very promise of cosmetics.
Tending Toward Biotech, Bio-based, and Biodegradable
It feels cliché to say so, but ingredient technologies today bring together the best of nature and science. Researchers are hard at work to develop bio-based and biodegradable alternatives to conventional ingredients and to develop new molecules that elevate product efficacy; and consumers are ready for the results.
Biotech versions of rheology modifiers, film formers, emollients, humectants, and surfactants—with applications in body care—are showing up in the marketplace more often now. This year at in-cosmetics global (Amsterdam, Netherlands, April 8-10), the Swiss specialty chemical company Clariant will show a new emulsifier called Pickmulse; Denmark-based biofabrication company Cellugy will be exhibiting with its new EcoFLEXY ingredient line; and you just might meet up with the team from BOLT, a publicly traded US-based biomaterials company, who will be walking the show floor at in-cosmetics global this year too.
Replacing Silicone Elastomers in Cosmetics
Dan Widmaier, BOLT Threads CEO, tells me that the company is “championing a biodegradable, bio-based alternative to the $3B+ per year silicone elastomer market [because] customers are seeking cost effective alternatives that perform as well as or better than silicone elastomers without the environmental trade-offs.”
BOLT, founded in 2009, most recently made headlines in beauty industry media for signing a deal with Goddess Maintenance Co. (GMCo). The brand, set to launch in April, has committed to purchase $4 million of BOLT’s b-silkTM ingredients annually. “GMCo’s founders, Lauren Vesler and Manda Mason, along with Denise Russell and Edward Connaghan, have a history of building industry-shifting brands like The W Nail Bar, Olaplex, and K18. GMCo isn’t just formulating with b-silk, they’re integrating it into a full head-to-toe beauty range validating the versatility and efficacy of the material across the beauty segments,” explains Widmaier. I’ll note here too that b-silkTM ingredients are already on the shelf in mascara from Haus Labs by Lady Gaga and sun care from Freaks of Nature.
Still, we know that regulatory mandates are often the strongest motivating factor behind beauty makers’ adoption of new ingredients; significant demand from brand partners and/or consumer groups can be helpful too. As Widmaier see it, “new ingredient adoption requires alignment across the entire ecosystem—formulators, brands, and consumers. Formulators need functional solutions—not just novel ingredients—to solve real problems in their open projects….Brands need to find key ingredients that have proven efficacy, supply chain reliability, and cost efficacy. And ultimately, consumers are the final decision-makers. They expect clean beauty that works. It has to feel luxurious and be efficacious without harsh chemistries.”
Competition can also be a sign that the time for change is upon us. Ahead of the 2024 edition of in-cosmetics global, legacy cosmetic industry supplier Givaudan launched Silk-iCare™, an ingredient created with fermentation-based biotech that the company describes as “a pure biomimetic silk with remarkable film-forming properties.”
Rheology Modifiers Get Better with Biofabrication
The EcoFLEXY line from Cellugy is another example of bio-based, biodegradable ingredients with ready applications in body care.
Just about one year ago, the company raised €4.9 million in seed funding to scale up EcoFLEXY production. And in February of this year (2025), EcoFLEXY Rheo—a high-performance rheology modifier comprised of dry cellulose—arrived in the consumer marketplace thanks to the skincare brand Bioli and the launch of its Moisturizing and Protecting Day Cream.
Bioli chose to formulate with this novel rheology modifier because it “provides that essential high-quality texture and a silky-smooth feel that doesn’t grain up on the skin,” according to Aldo Seguel, the brand’s Chief Science Officer, who was quoted in a press release about the day cream. In his statement, Seguel also noted that EcoFLEXY “delivers all this while ensuring our products remain biodegradable and environmentally friendly.”
Beside EcoFLEXY Rheo, the company’s line of ingredients includes EcoFLEXY Sun, a fine-mist SPF booster, and EcoFLEXY Color for pigment dispersion and stability.
When I caught up with Isabel Alvarez-Martos, CEO & Co-Founder of Cellugy, recently, she told me that “biofabricated cellulose, like our flagship product EcoFLEXY, offers several key advantages for skincare formulations. First and foremost, it addresses the industry’s critical need for high-performing, biodegradable alternatives to synthetic thickeners and stabilizers.”
And Isabel Alvarez-Martos is well aware that “petrochemicals…are instrumental in delivering the high-performance products consumers crave, providing desirable qualities like smooth textures, long-lasting wear, and effective application. Ingredients such as acrylic acid copolymers, polyethylene glycol, polyurethane, and silicone oils are,” she says, “ubiquitous in formulations, from luxurious foundations to enduring lipsticks. This reliance on petrochemicals is deeply ingrained in the industry’s current formulation practices.”
She calls this a “complex dilemma” for our industry and acknowledges that “finding sustainable alternatives that match the performance of synthetic ingredients is complex and costly” and that “reformulating beloved products without compromising consumer satisfaction requires substantial investment in research and development.”
Her vision and understanding clearly inform the Cellugy approach to beauty and body care ingredient innovation. “We are harnessing the power of biology to create ingredients that not only meet but often exceed industry performance standards. This combination of superior performance and unwavering commitment to sustainability is what makes biofabricated cellulose, and EcoFLEXY in particular, such a compelling alternative for next-generation skincare,” says Alvarez-Martos.
Eco-Chic Emulsifier Sourcing
A new emulsifier from Switzerland-based specialty chemical company Clariant promises to improve consumers’ “tactile experience” of a product, which in turn, has been shown “to stimulate wellbeing and reward areas in the brain,” according to a media release circulated this past October. It’s an illustration of how seemingly simple and subtle beauty science can have an effect on the brain-skin axis.
Pickmulse is first and foremost a surfactant-free ingredient option that will stabilize oil-in-water Pickering emulsions more easily. Isabelle Lacasse, Head of Global Marketing, Product Line Management, and Formulation, says that “Pickmulse offers a multifaceted and innovative approach to cosmetics that we’ve designed to significantly accelerate new formula development and improve consumer satisfaction.”
In April 2024, Clariant completed the acquisition of Lucas Meyer Cosmetics. And it’s that company’s patented quinoa starch technology that led to this new emulsifying agent. The quinoa grain needed to produce Pickmulse comes from organic farms in Bolivia.
And the ingredient can also be used in the encapsulation of “lipophilic molecules under hot-processed conditions” because quinoa starch has remarkable swelling power and water binding characteristics.
[This coverage of the Clariant Pickmulse ingredient first appeared in the October 31, 2024 issue of the Beauty Insights newsletter.]
Trending Toward a Beauty Biosphere
Arguably, the shift to biotech, bio-based, and biodegradable ingredients is more about innovation, regulations, and sustainability than it is a trend. But what I am hearing now from ingredient makers and product manufacturers, as well as noticing among finished goods brands, suggests a sort of transitional step on our journey between the conventional ingredients and production processes we’ve grown accustomed to and the circular economy that we aspire to.
When I suggest the idea of a ‘beauty biosphere’, I am thinking about how suppliers, brands, and consumers alike seem to be more open to ingredients sourced from everything that is and is on Earth—from plants, animals, microorganisms, inorganic matter, and even fossil-derived materials. From what I observe, we are less extreme and moving toward a more moderate sensibility.
Body care brands like Bánór Skincare from Ireland (which you can find at Hall: 16 Stand No: D12-E15 at Cosmoprof Worldwide Bologna this March 20-22) formulates with sheep’s milk and with lanolin, both of which fell out of favor for a while when vegan beauty really took hold.
And snail mucin is slowly but surely making its way around the world and into more product formats. Lumadea Cosmetici (Hall: 21 Stand No: M5 at Cosmoprof) has a face and body oil spray called Essential Bava Pura Spray Effetto Radiosità that includes “pure COSMOS certified snail slime.”
The ocean and all of the life and molecules within it are now a common source of body care ingredients too. French brand NividiSkin (Hall: 16 Stand No: D8-E9 at Cosmoprof) makes balms for the body, for the face, and for the face and body. Their balm, according to the product page, is made with “a high concentration of Essenc’Age®, [a] regenerating and soothing active ingredient extracted from organic wild algae harvested and extracted on the Island of Ouessant [off the coast of France in the Celtic Sea].”
I am going to admit here that my thoughts and evidence about this is a concept are very much a work-in-progress. But it’s something I’m curious to learn more about. Anyhow, there is more to discover about that concept as well as many others by looking at body care. For instance, wellness and longevity will be informing body care and beauty care for some time to come.
Fragrance, aromatherapy, and neurocosmetics have been a big part of this trend as it emerged in recent years. And we’re now seeing more sophisticated ingredient technologies and more clinical data from each of those categories. Last spring, Robertet in partnership with Aethera Biotech launched a fragrance-based skincare ingredient called AQ3Rose CROP®-G. The biotech ingredient is made from a fraction of Rosa chinensis and is notable for its polysaccharides and phytocollagen.
Late last year, my Global Perspectives column here is EURO COSMETICS Magazine was [CO1] all about the collision of beauty supplements and the creative ways ingredient makers and consumer brands are positioning topical vitamins. An example not mentioned in that article is the AquaVITA line of ingredients from Sharon Personal Care, which uses vitamin B3 as an antimicrobial and an active with skin brightening, barrier protection, hydrating, and antioxidant benefits.
Deanna Utroske
As a regular contributor to this publication, Deanna writes the Global Perspectives column, covering cosmetic and personal care product formulation trends, emerging ingredient science, and ingredient marketing trends impacting the future of beauty around the world.
