The Usual Unusual Ingredients - An Introduction

Diamonds for dazzling lips, sapphire for a glowing face, pearls for smooth youthful skin and silk for shiny hair.

It used to escape my attention when I saw beauty products with phrases like diamond gloss, silky glow and pearl shine in the names. Firstly, this was for me the pre-beauty awakening era, an era of disinterest and ignorance. I would see the products on TV or in stores and then, I would move on without batting an eyelid. Secondly, I had thought that these were just concocted names to entice customers. If a nail polish brand promises to give you nails as shiny as diamonds, I thought it was just a figure of speech. Little did I know that it’s to be taken literally for many products these days!

Pardon my naivety, but I would much sooner associate diamonds, ruby, pearls and silk with jewellery and clothing or something that is used to slice through glass or to make parachutes. So, the idea of a run-of-the-mill face cream or a shampoo containing such ingredients which connote luxury and opulence seemed lost and rather far-fetched to me.....until quite recently when I started delving into this subject.

My curiosity was aroused when I discovered Rituals Cosmetics’ range of gemstone & mineral cosmetics called Pure Beauty (see image above). If you’ve been following my blog, you would know that I’ve become very interested in this brand and have made several purchases of its products. I have written a couple of reviews on its body care products and was going to post reviews on some of its makeup items. I’ve however decided to delay that so that I can first write about what I’ve learnt of this realm of gemstone makeup. Anyway, one thing led to another and I’ve ended up also finding out about other rather unusual ingredients that are infused into our cosmetics today.

All right, perhaps the word ‘unusual’ may seem exaggerated to some of you seasoned beauty afficionados but errr, please keep in mind that the tag line of my blog is My Beauty Awakening. It's a long road and little Miss Ignorant here is still learning something new everyday.

Lately, I’ve been paying more attention to what’s written on the product packaging, in particular, the list of ingredients (which I wish were in larger print as I’m rather sight-challenged!). Never mind the talc or propylene carbonate or the parabens. I’m talking about ingredients like sapphire, tourmaline and silk. It’s becoming more common now to see such items listed as ingredients of beauty products. Take a look at the beauty products that you have in your cupboard. You just might spot the word ‘diamond’ somewhere. I know I was stumped the first time I saw that word on the ingredients list of a shampoo in a drugstore. I had to blink and read it three times to be sure!

I confess that I’m overcome with fascination but hopefully I won’t be gripped with delusion. So it would be great if you could join me further in exploring the curious world of The Usual Unusual Ingredients. Posts coming up soon!