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When I created ETHYST®, the Cleanest Skincare on the Planet™, it wasn’t to compete with clean beauty, it was to expose how dirty “clean beauty” had become.
And not the good kind. lol
The kind of dirty that leaves your skin in chaos and your body consuming endocrine disruptors galore.
At the time, I was watching the wellness and beauty industries start to feel eerily like politics and tech — more marketing hype than meaning. “Clean” was everywhere, but no one could define it. It had turned into a brand word, not a value.
Let’s be real, “clean” stopped meaning anything the second it became a hashtag.
The irony? The same corporations selling ‘clean’ were quietly packing formulas with hormone disruptors, PEGs, and ethoxylated ingredients that still affect your endocrine system and skin microbiome, all while promising purity.
The math never math-ed. You can’t mix toxins with faux transparency and still call it clean.
Trust me, I’ve seen what passes for “clean” in corporate labs and it’s about as pure as a politician’s promise.
It was greenwashing with better lighting.
What started as a movement built on integrity turned into a marketing strategy with a paid UGC influencer discount code. Ugh, and don’t even get me started on UGC. Actually, do…
Everything you’re seeing on the internet is inauthentic. Paid ads pretending to be real, “user-generated” reviews scripted by AI, trust on a subscription model.
It’s like Severance, our real selves clock out while our online avatars buy products that we’ve been convinced are “mysterious and important”. And if you haven’t watched Severance, get on that. UGC is something I refuse to take part in, just like I won’t take part in any of the other common, deceptive skincare marketing practices, even though UGC would make us a lot of money… Ok article coming on that. Stay tuned.
Anyway, it reminded me of what I see happening with AI now, the so-called “revolutionaries” copying the same broken systems they were supposed to replace. The beauty industry did it first: it took something sacred (our skin, our health, our trust) and ran it through the corporate copy machine that’s been broken for decades.
The same ‘bored’ room logic that’s steering AI toward ads and social features once told us parabens were “fine in small doses” and that synthetic fragrance… that’s “luxury.”
My God, weak vision runs so deep.
When I looked at the ingredient lists and manufacturing processes behind most “clean” products, I realized there was almost no regulation, just very good PR.
“Clean” was being defined by the same companies that polluted it.
If you were small, ethical, or transparent, you couldn’t compete… not because your products weren’t good, but because the industry didn’t want you redefining the baseline. They’d rather trademark the illusion than embrace the truth.
Because God forbid someone tells the truth when the lie’s still trending.
Plus, illusion of choice and lack of solutions sells more products, and it’s much cheaper to fill bottles with toxic filler than it is to develop formulas with premium ingredients. Trust me, I’m very aware.
And that’s how I knew: to make something truly clean, I couldn’t play their game. I had to disrupt the system and then rebuild it from the inside out.
Real Results Don’t Need Hype
When your product actually works, you don’t need to rely on hype. You don’t need to create “fear of missing out” when people can literally see the difference on their skin… and long term.
All you need to do is wait.
Truth ages well. Hype doesn’t.
That’s what ETHYST® became: a rebellion against the idea that you have to choose between “clean” and results.
You don’t.
What good is “clean” if it’s still toxic to your body and it doesn’t work?
The Champagne Standard™ and our ingredient lists aren’t dressed up for marketing. They’re built for biology. They’re built for the long game, not the quick buck before everyone finds out it doesn’t actually work.
Every formula respects your skin’s microbiome, hormonal balance, and long-term health. Every formula works. For the long haul. And that’s how we’re winning.
ETHYST® isn’t just skincare. It’s a metaphor.
It’s about clarity and integrity… in skin, in thought, in business.
It’s about rejecting manipulation, whether it comes in the form of a label, an algorithm, or a political movement.
It’s about clean consciousness as much as clean skin.
We live in a time where clarity itself is rebellious. And that’s what ETHYST® stands for. Clean not as a claim, but as an overall consciousness.
Most industries are being built with weak vision. We’re seeing it in AI, and we saw it in clean beauty too. Both promised progress and so far have just delivered marketing. Both were sold as revolutions and executed as cookie cutter, corporate revenue streams.
So, I decided to build something better.
ETHYST® is what happens when someone finally says, “No, let’s actually do what we said we were going to do.”
Because at the end of the day, beauty shouldn’t be a lie we buy into, it should help us to be more honest about who we are. And if the industry isn’t being honest themselves, how can the consumer?
Clean shouldn’t be a trend. It should be a return to truth — maybe that’s the real revolution… not inventing new lies and refusing to keep selling the old ones — but apparently, that’s still considered radical. No worries though, ETHYST® is here to stay and we’re still working on it.
ETHYST® set a new global benchmark for safety — avoiding over 3,200 questionable or harmful ingredients across EU, U.S., and clean beauty lists. That’s 100× cleaner than the U.S. legal minimum.
