Anara Luxury skincare
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Anara skincare is an award winning, new luxury brand, which bridges the gap between nature and scientifically backed formulations. The brand utilises the purity of sustainably sourced natural botanical ingredients with an elegant feel-good factor based on skincare rituals and self-care. I caught up with Arati Nar, the founder, who also brings a wealth of online business experience, including being part of the Ocado launch and one of the first to start a mobile beauty business.
‘Creating my own skincare brand has been a lifelong dream for me because whatever challenges I have gone through in life, good skin always made me empowered and confident,’ muses Arati Nar, ‘I noticed the confusion around the natural ingredient claims being made in the noisy beauty landscape and wanted to create a product that was fully transparent, effective on your skin and part of a self-ritual skincare routine.’
Arati decided to move forward with her idea as the pandemic struck yet that gave her plenty of time to do in depth research, test products for at least a year (industry testing requirements are 3 months) and to assess how natural skincare could ease her own anxiety and mind, body connection.
So after 4 years of work, Anara skincare launched with a curated range of essential products a year and a half ago: Rejuvenating Eye and Face Serum was the first product that went into formulation. ‘The brief I gave my lab was to create an eye serum that lightened, brightened the appearance of fine lines as well as helping minimise pigmentation – this was largely due to my own struggles with sensitive skin around the eye area,’ she explains, ‘I got the samples with such light textures, I started using them on the face too and after a year of testing, I realised I had hit on my brand USP to make all the products useable on face, eyes and neck.’ And so the rest of the Anara range followed, ‘there is a reason eye products on the market are so expensive it is because the ingredients used for that delicate area have to be so premium but I realised I was fed up of finding skincare brands on the market where you had to buy around 10 different products for all different skin areas and concerns and I just wanted to simplify everything for the consumer without compromising on the highest quality of ingredients.’
Anara’s concept really resonated with me as someone with super sensitive skin who felt over saturated with different products, which largely over-clogged my skin cells: particularly over winter months my skin was badly de-hydrated so I focused on trying the Cleanse and Nourish Night Balm (using Kakadu plum, papaya, avocado, grape seed oils) and the Hydrating Beauty Essence (with Rose Otto flower oil & Saffron Extract). A filmmaker friend of mine visited the fields of Bulgaria, documenting the generations of women harvest picking the roses to be distilled into rose water. However the ubiquitous use of ‘rose otto’ across Western beauty products misleading a consumer with the actual percentages of rose used as opposed to water has cheapened the efficacy of the natural product: Arati agrees, ‘most of the Rose products on the market are also filled with preservatives which I was adamant I didn’t want in my products,’ instead the Anara hydrating essence is uniquely rose otto flower oil combined with saffron extract. ‘I had a burning desire to include saffron in my formulations – most people associate it with food not skincare but it has the most wonderful, well-ageing properties. We searched all over and eventually found a small family run farm in France where we could trust and trace the original organic source. Saffron is such an expensive spice because it has to be handpicked, each flower can only produce 2-3 strands, and you can only farm it 2-3 weeks a year.’
Indeed Arati emphasises her loathe of the word ‘anti-ageing’: ‘I call it well-ageing because I think it is terrible the pressure being placed on consumers to try and defy ageing, we should celebrate our life experience.’ Arati admits to the challenges of deliberately creating products that cross-categorise, ‘I might want a product that is both for well-ageing and sensitive skin without buying multiple products.’ She works with a prominent formulation lab in Dorset and her brief is always around which of the highest quality ingredients work best together whilst minimising to the absolute least use of preservatives. ‘There is also confusion around ‘organic’ I didn’t want to limit the brand to that because there are the most beautiful, high quality ingredients out there that don’t come in an organic form.’ However, from the get-go, Arati has been wholly transparency with labels and packaging; Anara is Certified Vegan, Leaping Bunny approved as cruelty free and tested to EU standards. And packaging is all glass made and fully recyclable.
So, what are the future plans for such an exciting brand?
‘I don’t want to rush into anything – it’s all about what feels like the right opportunity and what aligns with the brand concept. I am working on a new product an ‘essential oil’ candle with no artificial fragrances or preservatives, that aligns with the ritual, wellbeing concept of the brand. I just want Anara to be built with love for planet, people and environment.’