Vol. 83 - Skincare the Tuscan Way

Picking up where we left off last week on the state of clean beauty, sharing highlights from a recent trip to Tuscany with Seed to Skin. It’s an example of a vertical brand that is owning its process from start to finish, and oh, it just happens to be running everything on the property of what several people shared with me is their “fave hotel ever.”

It’s easy to see why: Borgo Santo Pietro looks like Tuscany: The Movie. Rolling vineyards. Lavender plants popping up out of nowhere. Rows of manicured trees with just the right amount of wild landscape beneath them. An earthy-glamour-meets-English-farmhouse aesthetic. The scent of a herbal vanilla in the air. But it didn’t start out that way.

As the tale goes, Danish couple Jeanette and Claus Thottrup purchased the property 25 years ago, when deciding whether they should settle in Ibiza or Italy.

They began with a small hotel, in a village dating back to the year 1129. Eventually they started growing their own vegetables, making wine, cheese, honey, olive oil. Growing to 22 rooms. Eight years ago, they launched Seed to Skin, a skincare brand powered by regenerative farming and Jeanette’s background as a herbalist.

Every conversation I had with Jeanette and Claus revealed another venture. Cows who are done producing milk to make parmigiano reggiano retire nearby for a few years, until they wind up on the plate at the Michelin-starred restaurant on property. A yacht that sails around the Mediterranean all summer, picking up different passengers each week in Italy, France and Greece. A yearlong herbalism course. A partnership with a local professor to find professional musicians to play during dinner. A massive spa being built from the ground up.

This is a couple that knows how to LIVE. But they also know how to make sh*t happen.

You’ve likely heard the farm-to-face story before. But it is something else to see it in practice. Here’s the abbreviated version of the skincare process to give you an idea of what’s really happening in these here hills.

The roots of the brand are based on Jeanette’s background as an herbalist. “People divide the body,” she says. “But I wanted to use things that were great internally as natural medicine on the skin.” She first studied herbalism at Neal’s Yard in London after working as a fashion designer. Her interest deepened when trying to get pregnant with her now 20-year-old son, Vincent. Eventually, she started formulating products to calm the skin using calendula and hypericum (St. John’s wort), which came in handy for soothing baby rash.

Today, there are over 50 herbs grown at Borgo Santo Pietro. They go straight from the field to the Herb House, a two-story structure where ingredients like lemon balm, rosemary, lavender, echinacea, and calendula are dried, macerated, and distilled on site. The goal is to use everything that’s harvested within a year. Below, Jeanette shares more about why melissa, or lemon balm, holds a special place in her tool kit:

All of the herbs get turned into essential oils and hydrosols using steam distillation. Then, they are infused into base oils and plant waters that create the base of every Seed to Skin product. “I do believe that the beginning of efficacy for any skincare should start with the base and not what you drizzle in at the end,” she says. “To be able to grow the herbs and know the soil health and the provenance is so important.”

During the trip, our group, which included beauty legends jean godfrey june and Kelly Atterton and members of the Florence-based Seed to Skin team, watched as rosemary essential oil was made while sipping hot water infused with rosemary. Jeanette shared that it’s the most underrated herb for its ability to cool and energize the body.

Just a few steps away in the local village is the lab. Here, Jeannette collaborates with cosmetic scientist Dr. Anna Buonocore to build formulas using the bases made on site and active ingredients that cannot be sourced on property, from peptides, probiotics, manuka honey and marine ferments. Soon, these bases might take a detour to the fermentation lab, also in town, where Jeanette is experimenting with fermenting the activated oils to shrink the molecules and make them more bioavailable to the skin.

A note on the formulas: It has become so common to see the same gold standard ingredients in every single product and line: retinol, vitamin C, peptides, hyaluronic acid, you know the list. And for good reason! They’re wonderful, they’re proven, yay. But not every product has to function with the standard bearers. These are a good example of that.

Notably, Seed to Skin does not use consumer perception studies, because having 98 percent of users tell you they feel hydrated after using a moisturizer doesn’t hit the way it used to. But when production is finished, they do perform clinical tests on entire day or night routines as opposed to one finished product or ingredient. For example, to study heavy-duty moisturizers The Light Source and The Night Force, they did a 28-day study on women ages 50-65, who were also using its cleansers and toners as part of the prescribed routine. This is highly unusual, and perhaps works especially well here because the brand is largely available via spas, where such routines are put into practice and recommended as a whole.

Jeanette and Klaus have been slowly buying the buildings in the local village and refurbishing them. They opened an alimentari, or market, that sells produce from the farm and prepared foods. A pizza restaurant opened this week. A local hotel is coming. Many of the staff live there.

I kept finding myself muttering about how impressive it all was, and not just because it’s on the grounds of a stunning hotel. In fact, Jeanette shared that the hotel makes a lot of the business make sense. Everything flows through it, and now it’s fruits are reaching a much greater audience because of the skin care.

My takeaway is that it’s not just about the plants. It’s the whole system around them. The people, the practices, the community. That’s what you’re buying into. This is skincare for people who want to use something that works in harmony with your skin. And while I highly recommend going to Borgo Santo Pietro if you can, you do not have to set foot on the soil to use its spoils.

Here’s what I’m loving from the line:

Next week, I’ll share more about my Roman holiday, including scent discoveries, my two favorite shopping streets, and the most revelatory pasta dish of the trip.

Happy Weekend!

X

Jamie