This All-Natural Skin-Care Line Comes in the Most Striking Glass Apothecary Bottles Yet
Last year, Kindred Black—the online boutique known for its dreamy edit of home goods, sustainable fashion, and natural beauty—quietly introduced its first house-label apothecary product: an organic rosewater toner.
It was a good place to start, given rosewater’s anti-inflammatory benefits for the skin and its aphrodisiac reputation. But this was no ordinary face tonic. Bottled in a weighty blown-glass vessel, the tiny cork stopper sealed in white wax, it sat heavy in the hand like a crystal ball. I imagined one on Frida Kahlo’s dressing table or maybe Eileen Gray’s. It seemed like an object not of this world—and in a way, it wasn’t. The rosewater came from a faraway group of Persian farmers who turned over their opium-trade poppy fields to rose production. And the packaging was as old-world as you can get, courtesy of a Mexican maker working in small-batch recycled glass.
“People want everything that goes on their body to be super-pure and natural and healthy, but then a lot of times it’s stuck in these plastic bottles,” says Jennifer Francis, who cofounded the site with Alice Wells in 2015. That disconnect between the goods inside and the unsavories outside led the women on a year-long quest to further their plastic-free mission. Now with the launch of Kindred Black’s expanded apothecary range, they’re bringing that sustainability ethos—and sublimely understated chic—to your medicine cabinet.
The 10-piece collection revolves around three core products. The original rosewater is one. The second is organic jojoba, a rich golden oil that closely mirrors the skin’s lipid composition, making it ideal for the body and hair. “It’s from a family-run farm outside of Tucson, Arizona, in the Sonoran desert,” says Wells, describing their hunt for like-minded suppliers. “They are super-focused on keeping everything they do as sustainable as possible, so we really wanted to work with them.” And for the face: prickly pear seed oil, an antioxidant powerhouse—doubly precious for its labor-intensive yield—sourced from Moroccan women’s collectives.
Meet the New Apothecary Line That Will Transform Your Beauty Routine into a Wellness Fantasy
It’s a simple foundation to a skin-care routine, in part “because I don’t like scent and Alice does,” Francis says with a laugh. That’s where the Bulgarian rose otto oil, laced with balsam fir, comes into play: as an add-if-you-wish option for the jojoba. Another hand-blown bottle holds farm-distilled, food-grade peppermint oil, which Wells recommends dabbing onto the temples (to ease a headache) or the tongue (for a digestion aid). Mixed into the body oil, it even acts like a refreshing post-workout cool-down, Francis adds.
There are other ancillary jewels, too. The traditional herbal essential oil called Zdravetz—“health” in Bulgarian—is purportedly good for hyperpigmentation, anti-aging, and prematrimony fortitude: “They used to say a bridegroom should sleep in a field of zdravetz the night before his wedding,” Francis says. The organic CBD oil comes from a small farm in Tennessee, co-run by a woman who used the nonpsychoactive cannabinoid to help her avoid the pain (and painkillers) that followed a car accident. (Use it orally or as a blemish treatment, advises Wells.) Immortelle oil—named for the flower that remains brilliant yellow even after it has expired—is another standout, designed to magnify the youth-preserving power of the prickly pear face oil. And last, in little cork-topped pots, are a solid jasmine perfume and a creosote salve, featuring the desert shrub prized in the Southwest as an all-purpose healing ointment.
The Kindred Black founders know that the audience for such a handsome, fragile collection is inherently limited. “It’s not for everyone, especially if you want to travel with it or take it to the gym,” says Francis, drawing on the larger ramifications of beauty’s global imprint. “For us, the world is where it is because things have gotten too convenient. That’s just going to have to change.”
It’s a lesson anyone who has given up plastic straws or paper coffee cups understands. Plus, there’s an upside to the extra attentiveness that the glass vessels require. “I’m a little allergic to the word self-care, but that is a big thing,” Francis says. Wells agrees, describing the ritual of it all. “Think of having this precious small bottle, almost like a potion, wherever you’re getting ready in the morning. It just makes that experience,” she says. The jars may be unbranded, but the message is clear: Slow down a minute.
