sopíFielle skin cleanser began long before its actual creation, more than 40 years ago, when I was introduced to the notion that soap exists in nature readily made.
During one of my childhood’s forest explorations with my grandmother and sister, we stopped by a creek to have lunch and to rest. My grandmother picked a few pinkish-white flowers off the side of the creek, placed one onto my palm, added a bit of water and instructed me to rub my hands together. To my surprise, the flower magically lathered into a luxurious white foam as beautiful as the flower itself.
The pinkish-white flower was Saponaria officinalis, one of the plants known for its saponin abundance.
Saponaria officinalis flowers are almost impossible to find. Hence I chose to extract saponins from Sapindus mukorossi fruit in my atelier so I could formulate sopíFielle cleanser with the same cleansing properties that Saponaria officials flowers would provide. Known to be one of the most abundant and gentlest sources of saponin that exists naturally, Sapindus mukorossi fruit is also a sustainable resource.
The major constituents of Sapindus are saponins, sugars, and mucilage. Saponins are naturally occurring compounds with cleansing and foaming properties. They dissolve quickly in water and lather into a beautiful foam. Its sugars and mucilage content are responsible for its moisture retaining properties, making it an ideal skin cleanser. They are also great chelating agents that bind to impurities to eliminate them from the surface of the skin.
To complement the fruit saponins, I added brown seaweed inner leaf not only for its cleansing properties, but also for the gel-like texture that allows the cleanser to glide on the skin, limiting the friction exerted on the skin surface. Hand-harvested from its wild natural habitat, the seaweed is extracted via a meticulous mechanical process to maintain its integrity.
Brown seaweed inner leaf is a complex source of polysaccharides, carotenoids, amino acids, enzymes, minerals, and vitamins. P
I completed the formula with my proprietary blend of fatty acids and bioactive compounds derived from mushrooms, mulberry leaves, calendula and chamomile flowers. The result?