When it comes to your foundation and concealer, trial and error is a step we all wish we could skip over. If you’re going to be covering your skin with something, even if it’s just a spot of concealer here and there, you want it to be with the good stuff. You want it to stay gorgeous all day long, not lead to a breakout, and hopefully - just hopefully - help your skin out in the long run. It’s not much to ask, is it?

Out of all the products in your makeup kit, it’s your foundation that you wear the most and covers the greatest surface area. Not to mention, your skin is literally your largest organ so the fact that you have such high hopes for a product that will keep you looking beautiful on the inside as well as the outside is pretty reasonable in our opinion.

Everyone has their own list, their individual collection of ‘must-haves’ and ‘absolute no-no’s’ that make for the perfect foundation or concealer. This list is usually non-negotiable and frankly, pretty long. It’s also sadly something that most of us have memorised because let’s be honest, that trial and error phase isn’t a quick one.

When it comes to finding a product that ticks every box, that’s almost as rare as spotting a wild unicorn in your backyard. And after more than two decades in the makeup industry, no one knows that better than Aleph’s own founder, Emma Peters. While working as a makeup artist, Emma experimented with a lot of different products in the desperate hope of stumbling across ‘the one’ but to no avail. Now, when you consider that Emma’s been working within the industry for 20+ years, you can imagine the number of those products starts to pile up.

So, like any entrepreneur, Emma had to fix the problem and that’s when Aleph’s journey to create the best foundation on the planet began.

Emma says, “After working in the industry for so long and never having found a foundation that I liked to wear on a daily basis, let alone a natural one that looked any good or wore well, I knew we needed to make something unique.”

“As foundation is usually worn every day, all day, not only does it need to be non-toxic and healthy to wear, we thought it was the perfect opportunity to add ingredients that will help nourish the skin over the long term as well."

For this to happen, picking the right ingredients was an incredibly important step. Just like a chef selects his ingredients with the intent of creating something truly delicious, we chose every ingredient carefully to ensure the result would be nothing short of perfection.

So, what ingredients make a great product?

If you were to delve into a jar of our Concealer/Foundation and break down its star ingredients, this is what you would discover. We think it’s also important to mention that we take the greatest care to source organic and Eco Cert / Cosmos certified ingredients wherever possible!

1. Alaria Esculenta Extract

Alaria Esculenta Extract is an algae extract, sourced from off the coast of France where the tidal pressure is immense. Because of this, the plant’s web of elastic fibres needs to have the utmost resilience. We chose to use this in our Concealer/Foundation because of its amazing ability to assist in the cellular metabolism of the skin and reduce a key protein in skin ageing. Hello, silky smooth skin!

2. CoQ10

CoQ10 (ubiquinone or coenzyme Q) acts as an antioxidant to fight free radicals and to stimulate collagen and elastin production in the skin. Which a means brighter, healthier complexion. Yes, please?

3. Organic Totarol 

This is an amazing ingredient! Extracted from recycled totara wood, the reason we love this ingredient is that these trees can grow up to 1000 years old. Yes, you heard us right - 1000. They're aided by a compound in the wood that has potent antibacterial, antimicrobial, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. We actually use this in all Aleph products to act as a natural preservative, to calm redness in the skin and to assist with acne prone skin.

4. Organic Jojoba

Organic Jojoba helps to regulate the skin’s natural oils (sebum), which means that by using this ingredient in our products your skin not only feels beautiful but it helps to balance the skin’s natural oil production. Now that’s what we call a win-win!

All in all, our ingredients work seamlessly together to create a natural, diffused and velvety finish that still looks like skin. Albeit, gorgeous skin.

Ingredients sorted, what’s next?

We like it multi-functional

Okay, we had the winning formula under control but we still had to get a few more crucial elements right. Aside from creating a natural product that looked great whilst keeping the skin healthy, Emma was eager to make this product as usable as possible. From a makeup artist perspective, there is gold in versatility.

Being able to use one product in many ways means a clutter-free makeup bag. Not only does downsizing your drawer provide a perfect opportunity to ditch any toxic cosmetics lying around but you also won’t have ten products that all do the same thing cluttering your beauty arsenal. (You’ll thank us when you no longer have products tumbling out of your bathroom cabinet avalanche-style).

So, when it comes to versatility, we like to toot our horn a little bit. We designed our Concealer/Foundation to act as a full-coverage concealer, a medium coverage foundation, and a light veil when combined with our soon to be released Aleph Primer/Serum - Making this the most versatile natural makeup around. We’re not boasting buuut if you were to google the definition of “versatility”, a picture of Aleph’s Concealer/Foundation would probably appear underneath.

Keep it green

If you’re familiar with Aleph, you’ll also know we’re pretty big on being planet friendly. A foundation or concealer that didn’t tick this box wouldn’t be a product worth having in our eyes! With that in mind, we’re very happy to say that every Aleph Concealer/Foundation arrives in a reusable, recyclable container, which is incredibly handy when it comes to getting to the bottom of the jar without wastage. No wastage equals recyclability!

Finding the sweet spot

Lastly, what good would a foundation or concealer be if it didn’t actually suit you? Hitting that sweet spot in both colour and texture was something we worked really hard to get right, to make this a product most skin tones and types would love. Of course, there are always going to be extremes that fall at either end of the spectrum but generally, we’ve got you covered (literally). When it comes to texture, it’s nourishing for dry skin, semi-matte for oily skin, and balancing for combination skin. Colour-wise, we’ve stuck to a neutral palette where the colours sit in between yellow and pink based, but the key ingredients allow for tones of the skin to come through the makeup - Meaning that the product will adjust to your skin within a few minutes.

In the end, we did our very best to tick every single box and we’re quietly confident we did just that. Ultra-wearable, versatile, nourishing and rejuvenating with conscious packaging. Tick, tick, tick!

Don’t believe us? Take our online colour consult, find your perfect colour match and try our skin-loving natural Concealer/Foundation yourself.