‘Safe Is the New Clean,’ Says Beauty Executive Sonia Summers, Introducing First Brand Shielded Beauty
“I feel like a mad scientist,” said Sonia Summers.
The beauty executive, founder and CEO of service and management company Beauty Barrage, has been busy developing her first brand: Shielded Beauty.
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Created as a result of the pandemic, the skin care brand blends actives with natural antimicrobial ingredients.
“They say that there’s a generation C now, which is coronavirus, all of us who have survived the crisis,” continued Summers. ”We’re going to have a lot of lingering feelings and behaviors from what we’re experiencing, and one of them is the way that we look at sanitation and products and what they do.”
Shielded Beauty nourishes but also protects the skin, she said. It’s an entirely new beauty category.
“I just don’t understand how our huge industry has never had anything like this before,” said Summers, who’s been immersed in beauty for nearly two decades. “You protect yourself from pollution, from blue light, from the sun, but what about airborne pathogens and bacteria?”
She’s created a patent-pending “guardian complex,” using silver, zeolites and citric acid, among other natural minerals and compounds with “antimicrobial activity,” she explained: “It’ll consistently kill [bacteria] until you wash it off, but it works well with the other ingredients that you add in it.”
She’s added essential oils, acids such as hyaluronic acid for moisture and lactic acid for brightening and to minimize pores, as well as ingredients like Indian ginseng for blue light protection and antiaging.
“Everything that we’ve done is super methodical,” said Summers.
That includes taking into account the skin microbiome — the ecosystem of bacteria on the skin’s surface — she added.
“They won’t dry you out or compromise the microbiome,” she said of the line, formulated in Connecticut.
Summers is launching with a prebiotic cleanser, moisturizer with peptides, antioxidants, vitamins and hydrators (hydrolyzed sodium hyaluronate and sodium PCA), a probiotic serum, fragrance-free mist and combo hand and body lotion. Priced between $32 and $55, the products — vegan and adhering to Credo’s “clean” list — are available for pre-order on Shieldedbeauty.com.
“Safe is the new clean,” said Summers, sharing the brand’s tag line.
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