The first thing I do before testing a new skin care or makeup range, or when I come across an interesting brand, is to research its background, the people behind it, its story, as well as the principles of the company itself. If I’m blinking back tears whilst reading, I know there’s something more to the beautiful packaging. To me, high-quality and genuinely effective cosmetics is about more than just pure ingredients and ecological methods. It means being ethical, and showing a deeper interest in the ingredients and their producers – beautiful means for beautiful ends.
This was the case with Amala, a German luxury skin care brand, whose story brought tears to my eyes when I found the brand a few years ago. I had resigned myself to admiring the products from afar, until I got the chance to pay a visit to the natural cosmetics paradise, Content Beauty, on my trip to London.
Let me just say that the actual store was very small and its selection far smaller than that of its online store, whose layout and selection of products is one of the best in the world – it’s in the top 3, in any case.
I had two items on my shopping list, one of which was Amala, and the other a high-end foundation that I’d been waiting forever to get to try – but we’ll come back to makeup later.
I ended up taking away Amala’s Blue Lotus Purifying Toner – though not for me, but as a gift to a dear friend. I do admit to testing this euphoria-inducing mist on two nights before wrapping up the bottle, and falling head-over-heels for it. Hardly surprising, I suppose, as we’re talking about a mist toner made from divine ingredients, and wrapped in divinely beautiful packaging.
This holy water is made from orange blossom water, blue lotus water, and damask rose water. Extracts include white tea, ribwort-plantain, willow, gotu cola, ginger, vanilla, and tonka bean. The sweet-scented toner is purifying, brightening, moisturizing, and high in antioxidants.
Amala means different things in three different languages: the translation of the Sanskrit word is “most pure”, in Tibetan it means “revered mother”, while the Spanish denotes “love her”.
The company’s founder, Ute Leube, has been making her own cosmetics since the 1970’s. This passion for cosmetics finally became a breathtakingly beautiful, effective, and successful skin care range, certified by NaTrue, and produced at the Primavera factory in Germany.
Ute has dedicated her life’s work to natural ingredients, and understands what the important factors for plants and the ingredients made out of them are. Choosing the right producers for the company’s ingredients and making sure those ingredients are pure, ethical, and high-quality, is therefore very important to Ute. Amala pays a higher fixed price for its ingredients, reinvesting 5% of its profits into its network of Fair trade farmers.
I feel comfortable in saying that Amala represents genuine beauty.
“There is nothing inauthentic about nature, and our intention is to mirror this authenticity in everything we do.”
– Ute Leube, Amala
Photos Katja Kokko
Translation Katja Nikula
