The Botanicals Africology Formulates With

Africology is built on phytotherapy, the use of plant material for therapeutic effect, and formulates without parabens, propylene glycol or synthetic fragrance. That is a constraint rather than a slogan: every job those synthetics would do has to be done by a plant instead. These pages explain which plants, and why.

Indigenous South African botanicals

Three of them give the range its identity, and none of them can be sourced anywhere else in the world in the same form.

• Aloe ferox, the wild-harvested Cape succulent that is not aloe vera, used to calm and hydrate across every skin type
• Rooibos, grown only in the Cederberg, carrying aspalathin, an antioxidant found in no other known plant
• Cape snow bush, the aromatic Cape shrub used for reactive, easily reddened skin

Oils that replace lost lipids

• Marula oil, cold-pressed from kernels inside the marula fruit stone, roughly 70 to 78 per cent oleic acid and unusually resistant to going rancid

Plants that foam instead of sulphates

Sulphates clean well but strip the acid mantle, the slightly acidic film that protects the skin surface. Africology uses three saponin-rich plants instead. Each foams differently, which is why they are blended rather than used alone.

• Quillaja, the Chilean soap bark tree, the most efficient of the three and the one used in the facial cleanser
• Soapwort, mild enough that textile conservators still use it on historic tapestries
• Yucca, the saponin-rich desert plant used in the body wash

Why this is worth reading before you buy

Two practical things follow from all of it. First, an Africology cleanser will not foam like a supermarket one, and that is deliberate. Second, if your skin reacts to things, the ingredient lists here are short enough that you can actually work out what it reacted to, which is rarely true of conventional cosmetics.

Start with the facial collection, or choose by concern: sensitive and reactive, congested and acne-prone, dry and mature, or anti-ageing.