Beauty Articles

REPEATS, the Nordic Gummy Brand Built on Repetition Text by Natalia Muntean “The name REPEATS comes from a simple belief: real progress doesn’t come from what we do once in a while, but from the small things we repeat consistently over time. We wanted to build a brand around that idea and make health easier to turn into an everyday habit,” says Vanessa Lindblad, co-founder of REPEATS, a new brand of gummies at the intersection of beauty and health. The philosophy behind the brand is that, ultimately, it should make it easier for people to acquire good habits and maintain them. With an emphasis on consumer experience, the founders of REPEATS, André Kvamme and Vanessa Lindblad, are trying to bridge the gap between traditional supplements and a new generation of wellness offerings. “Our ambition is to combine high-quality, carefully considered formulations with products that are easy to understand, enjoyable to take and designed to fit naturally into everyday life,” thinks Lindblad. REPEATS launches on September 3 as a dedicated gummy brand, with the ambition to take a clear position at the intersection of health, beauty and lifestyle. “We are seeing a clear shift, with the gummy segment growing faster than the supplements category as a whole,” says Kvamme, CEO and co-founder. “There are already many great supplements on the market, but in Europe, the gummy format has yet to achieve the same established position or level of credibility as traditional formats. That is the position we are building REPEATS to take, with carefully developed formulations, high-quality and products that make it easier to create healthy routines that last over time.” REPEATS launched with seven different formulas: Her Daily, Skin, Hair, Immune, Night, Pregnant and D3/K2, that are very much just the beginning, the founders assure us. The number seven is also at the core of the brand, being rooted in manifestation. Lindblad shares that they wanted to start with a range that really represented what REPEATS is about and covered different needs and moments in everyday life. “We didn’t want to launch with everything at once,” she says. “We wanted a first collection that felt considered, relevant and easy to understand. That said, these seven are very much the beginning. People won’t have to wait too long before the REPEATS family starts growing.” André Kvamme and Vanessa Lindblad Each formula carries its own Nordic berry: arctic raspberry, cloudberry, gooseberry, and so on. “Taste is of course an important part of it,” Lindblad says. “If something tastes genuinely good, it becomes easier to look forward to taking it every day, and making well-being easier to turn into a consistent routine is a big part of our mission. But the Nordic berries also represent something bigger for us. We are very proud of our Nordic roots and the way we approach health and wellbeing here: quality first, thoughtful choices and no unnecessary compromises. There is already a strong perception of the Nordics internationally when it comes to quality, health and design, and as we build REPEATS beyond the Nordic region, that is something we want to carry with us rather than move away from.” That same logic shapes the ingredients. Astaxanthin, which appears in both the Skin and Immune formulas, is a natural version from AstaReal®, backed by more than 38 years of research and used in over 85 human clinical studies, including in skin and immune health, it was also named Ingredient of the Year – Beauty from Within at the NutraIngredients Asia Awards in 2023. “We don’t want to include something simply because it’s trending,” Lindblad says. “We want ingredients with real science and quality behind them. For us, that combination of extensive research, documented quality and a long track record makes it a very exciting ingredient and a natural fit for REPEATS.” The choice of gummies over pills follows the same principle. “The format is closely connected to the idea behind REPEATS: if something is easier and more enjoyable to take, it is also easier to make it part of your daily routine,” Lindblad says. “More than three in ten people struggle with swallowing pills, so gummies can remove a very practical barrier. At the same time, we never wanted to choose gummies at the expense of quality. Our principle throughout development has been that if we can’t create a gummy that is at least as good as the capsule or tablet alternative, we won’t make it. Taste and experience can help create the habit, but the formulation and active ingredients always come first.” Asked which gap in the wellness and vitamin market REPEATS is hoping to close, Lindblad points to the space between two extremes. “We saw an opportunity between traditional supplements, which can often feel quite clinical and functional, and a new generation of wellness products that put much more emphasis on the consumer experience. We don’t think people should have to choose between the two.” “Right now, the focus is on establishing REPEATS in Sweden and building a strong foundation around our first seven products,” Lindblad says. Ultimately, the goal is for REPEATS to extend beyond just the products, but to become a community and a movement that makes “health feel simpler, more accessible and more inspiring.”

In the Garden Where It All Began – Visiting Yves Rocher’s Roots in La Gacilly text Sandra Myhrberg Sitting on a hillside between La Gacilly and Cournon, the La Grée des Landes Eco-Hôtel & Spa opened its doors in 2013 as Brittany’s first fully ecological hotel. I had the chance to experience its offerings while tracing Yves Rocher’s roots in La Gacilly, an area directly tied to the brand’s founder, where a young Yves Rocher once wandered, picking the wild plants and flowers that would later shape his life’s work. The hotel’s twenty-nine rooms are floored and panelled in oak from sustainably managed forests. The restaurant, Les Jardins Sauvages, grows its own organic, locavore produce. And I must mention the spa that runs entirely on Yves Rocher’s plant-based rituals. I also visited Yves Rocher’s birthplace, where, in the 1950s, a teenage Yves Rocher, following a healer’s recipe for a hemostatic ointment made from lesser Celandine, hand-mixed his very first batches of cream after losing his father. That ointment, made and sold from his own home, was the seed of everything that followed. Yves Rocher founded his company in 1959 on an idea that ran against the grain of its time: that plant biology and dermatology could be brought together to create skincare that actually worked. To deepen the science, he partnered with dermatologists. He founded CERCO, the Centre d’Études et de Recherches Cosmétiques, laying the groundwork for what the brand now calls dermobotany, skin physiology and plant knowledge treated as a single discipline. In the town of La Gacilly, there is also the Maison Yves Rocher, the brand’s immersive museum. Its five rooms walk visitors through the company’s story, sense by sense. images courtesy Yves Rocher Into the Living Laboratory That founding conviction is easiest to see at Yves Rocher’s pilot centre in agroecology, just outside La Gacilly, a working botanical garden that doubles as a research station. The site serves three purposes, its resident agronomist and botanist, Cécile L’Haridon, explained as we walked the plots. The first is production: growing the brand’s own plants organically, then processing them into the active ingredients that give its formulas their effect. The botanical garden itself is almost a manifesto, a visible, walkable version of the belief that plants belong in the cosmetics business, not just in its marketing. The second is innovation. ‘We try to imagine what tomorrow’s plants inside our cosmetics will be’, L’Haridon said, not just which new actives to develop, but which plants will even be possible to grow as the climate shifts. Nothing here is irrigated. Crops are chosen for drought resistance from the outset, and water is given only in narrow windows, just before blooming, in small amounts, if a heatwave threatens the flower itself. The third goal is harder to name in English. L’Haridon called it ‘influence’, but it’s closer to community: partnerships with local farmers, naturalists, and academic researchers, built on shared observation and shared science. Agroecology, she said, is too complex to figure out alone. photography Sandra Myhrberg Between the rows of plants destined for cosmetics, other crops such as phacelia and buckwheat are deliberately sown as living soil cover, plants that will never end up in a bottle. They pull different nutrients from the ground and then return them, building fertile, water-retentive soil that lets the ‘real’ crops survive a dry summer. Hedgerows thick with oak are managed the same way as corridors that let biodiversity move through the farm and give beneficial insects somewhere to nest, insects that then protect flowering crops like marigold and cornflower from disease. Two colleagues were at work in one plot, marking test rows with orange stakes and recording plant behaviour that will later become the statistical case for exactly how much a cover crop helps the cash crop growing beside it. ‘When we work on a new plant’, L’Haridon said, ‘we want a strong active with strong benefits for skin, and we want the plant to be able to manage present ecological pressures. Commitment and efficacy – these are our two goals’. A Walk Through the Garden The garden holds surprises even for a genus as familiar as chamomile. Yves Rocher grows both German and Roman chamomile side by side – visibly different plants – and the German variety, prized as a strong soothing agent, is what goes into skincare and makeup. From a single flower, L’Haridon’s team extracts three distinct botanical actives depending on the method: oil, supercritical CO2, or a botanical water, each pulling out different compounds. ‘It’s so rich’, she said. ‘A never-ending story’. photography Sandra Myhrberg Nearby grows the ice plant, Mesembryanthemum crystallinum, its leaves studded with water-filled vesicles. It can survive drought, salt, and blistering sun by shifting its metabolism, synthesising energy at night and adjusting output as conditions change. ‘If you can live in the desert, you are the future plant’, L’Haridon said. It’s the base of the brand’s anti-ageing Lift range. Its close relative, edulis, does something different: its water- and osmolyte-rich leaves make it a powerful moisturiser, the base of the Hydra range, which claims to hold skin hydration for 100 hours. The team even developed a specific cultivation method, which L’Haridon called a ‘technical itinerary’, to increase leaf surface area and boost the concentration of active compounds inside it. Cornflower shows how differently the same plant can be treated depending on its end use. Machine-harvested, the stem and leaves come with it; picked by hand, it’s flowers only, and it takes four hours of hand-picking to gather a single kilo, destined for the brand’s Pur Bleu cleansing range. Marigold follows a similar logic: sown after a season of soil-building cover crops specifically to concentrate its potency, with the surrounding hedgerows and plant covers studied for their direct effect on how powerful the resulting active turns out to be. Ask L’Haridon for a favourite, though, and she doesn’t reach for any of the showier plants. ‘Have you heard of phacelia?’ Modest-looking and little known outside the industry, it’s

CPHFW SS27: Inside the Mind of Legendary Hair Stylist Eugene Souleiman at Collina Strada text Christine Deckert For Collina Strada’s Copenhagen Fashion Week show, Eugene Souleiman treated hair less as styling and more as material. Working withKEVIN.MURPHY, he wove in tinsel, shine and repurposed fabrics, creating looks that felt celestial, unruly and entirely deliberate. One of the most influential hairdressers working today, Souleiman’s runway work spans Prada, Alexander McQueen, Maison Margiela, Yohji Yamamoto, Celine and Chanel, alongside long-term collaborations with Madonna, Lady Gaga and, most recently, Charli XCX for British Vogue. It is a fitting collision of worlds: Collina Strada’s playful surrealism meets Souleiman’s instinct for imperfection, individuality and a quiet resistance to rules. Backstage, Odalisque spoke with him about beauty beyond perfection, creative accidents, social media, and why curiosity still matters: Christine Deckert: How did you translate Collina Strada’s visual language into hair for this particular collection? Eugene Souleiman: The first thing was understanding Hillary’s world rather than thinking about a hairstyle. There is always this tension in Collina Strada between fantasy and reality, beauty and something slightly strange, nature and technology. I wanted the hair to have that same contradiction. We treated the hair almost as another textile. We brought in tinsel, shine and pieces of fabric from previous collections, so there was this idea of transformation and giving existing materials another life. It became something quite celestial and chaotic, but still very deliberate. The hair had to feel as though it could only belong to this collection. CD: How do you create a runway hairstyle that feels conceptually strong, yet still allows each model’s individuality to remain visible? ES: I think the mistake is believing that a strong concept means making everyone identical. For me, the concept should be strong enough to survive interpretation. I look at the person in front of me, their face, their natural texture, their proportions, their attitude, and then work out how that individual fits into the world we are creating. You establish the language of the show, but each model becomes a different character within that language. That is much more interesting to me than twenty versions of exactly the same hairstyle. images courtesy Collina Strada photography Vic Lentaigne makeup Zenia Jaeger skincare Monastery hair Eugene Souleiman fashion Joel Traptow CD: This is your first time working at Copenhagen Fashion Week. Do you see a distinct creative attitude here compared with Paris, Milan, London, or New York? ES: Yes, there is a lightness and freedom here that I really enjoy. Copenhagen feels very comfortable with individuality. There is creativity and experimentation, but it doesn’t feel burdened by having to prove itself. Every fashion city has its own rhythm. Paris has extraordinary refinement, Milan has glamour, London has always had this rebellious energy, and New York has a kind of immediacy. Copenhagen feels playful and progressive. There is also a very natural conversation here around sustainability and responsibility, rather than it feeling like something that has been added afterwards. It feels open, and creatively, that is quite liberating. CD: After decades of shaping some of fashion’s most memorable runway images, what still excites or surprises you when developing a new hair concept backstage? ES: The unpredictability. You can arrive with a very clear idea, but fashion is collaborative, and things change when everything comes together. You see the clothes on the person rather than on a rail; you meet the models; you see the space, the light, the movement, and suddenly you notice something you hadn’t considered. Some of the best ideas come from those moments. An accident, a material behaving differently than you expected, somebody’s natural hair doing something beautiful. I think curiosity is what keeps the work exciting. The moment you believe you already know exactly what you’re going to do, you probably stop discovering anything new. CD: How has your understanding of beauty changed throughout your career, and what feels beautiful to you now? ES: I’m much more interested in character than perfection. When you’re younger, I think there can be a temptation to control everything, to make something technically perfect. Over time you realise that the imperfections are often what make somebody memorable. When you’re younger, I think there can be a temptation to control everything, to make something technically perfect. Over time you realise that the imperfections are often what make somebody memorable. Now I’m interested in finding what is already individual about somebody and amplifying that rather than correcting it. There is something incredibly beautiful about allowing people, and hair, to have their own personality. CD: With fashion increasingly shaped by social media and instant imagery, has the way you design hair for a runway show changed? ES: The speed has certainly changed. An image can be everywhere before the show has even finished, and naturally you are conscious that the hair will be seen from every possible angle, very close up and often completely out of the context of the show. But I don’t think you can start by designing something for Instagram. You have to begin with an idea.  A strong runway image should work in movement, from across the room, backstage, in a photograph and in detail. If you start chasing the image rather than the idea, I think the work can become quite superficial. The technology has changed enormously, but the creative question is still the same: does it say something? CD: What part of yourself do you think appears in your work, even when you are creating someone else’s vision? ES: Probably curiosity, and a certain resistance to rules. I’ve always been interested in taking things apart and putting them back together differently. Sometimes that means questioning what is considered beautiful; sometimes it is using a product or material in a way it was never intended to be used; and sometimes it is knowing when to leave something alone. Ultimately, you are there to serve somebody else’s vision, but you can only interpret that vision through your own instincts and

Byredo’s Future Memories Captures the Moment Before It Slips Away Written by Jahwanna Berglund image courtesy Byredo With its intriguing new fragrance, Byredo turns vanilla into a meditation on presence, intimacy and the traces we leave behind.With its intriguing new fragrance, Byredo turns vanilla into a meditation on presence, intimacy and the traces we leave behind. Some memories arrive as complete pictures. Others return only as fragments: light moving across skin, the outline of a landscape, or the lingering scent of someone who has just left the room. It is this elusive space between experience and recollection that Byredo explores with Future Memories, its new Eau de Parfum. Composed by perfumer Quentin Bisch, Future Memories is less concerned with nostalgia than with the present moment. It draws our attention to the fleeting instant before life settles into memory. Its premise is quietly philosophical: what we choose today will shape what we carry with us tomorrow. At the centre of the fragrance is vanilla, although not in its most familiar form. Rather than leaning into enveloping sweetness or uncomplicated comfort, Bisch examines the ingredient with precision. Here, vanilla feels luminous and restrained. It is recognisable, but viewed from an unexpected angle. The fragrance opens with the crisp verdancy of galbanum essence and a tart blackcurrant accord. Aldehydes introduce a cool, polished clarity, creating an initial impression that feels almost mineral. It is a vivid beginning, a flash of awareness that calls the senses firmly into the present. As the composition develops, its pace begins to soften. Orris butter and labdanum lend texture and controlled depth, while orange blossom brings a delicate radiance. A white vanilla accord appears at the heart, offering the first suggestion of warmth without disturbing the fragrance’s elegant restraint. In the base, vanilla liquor accord meets Madagascar vanilla CO₂, Ambrofix and musks. The result is not an overtly gourmand trail, but a subtle glow on the skin. Its sweetness is tempered and diffused, leaving behind something more atmospheric. It recalls a feeling that remains long after its details have begun to blur. “Future Memories is about the scent you wear today becoming the memory others keep of you,” Bisch explains. The fragrance’s structure mirrors that idea beautifully. There is the initial brightness of an experience, followed by its gradual settling and, finally, the trace that endures. It considers perfume not simply as an accessory, but as an intimate form of authorship. Scent becomes a way of quietly shaping how a moment, or a person, may one day be remembered. This contemplation continues in the accompanying campaign, photographed by French photographer and director Arnaud Lajeunie in and around Cape Town, South Africa. Rather than following a conventional narrative, Lajeunie captures sensations: shifting light, suspended gestures and landscapes glimpsed through the haze of recollection. At its centre are Marina Ontanaya and Louis Baines, a married couple in real life. Their natural intimacy gives the imagery an emotional immediacy as they move through shared rituals and spontaneous moments without an obvious destination. The journey itself becomes the story. Studies of flowers, poised somewhere between bloom and decay, extend this meditation on impermanence. They preserve beauty at the very moment it begins to change, reflecting the fragile nature of memory itself. Future Memories Eau de Parfum is available in 50ml and 100ml bottles from Byredo stores, byredo.com and selected international retailers.

Lenoites’ Laila Högfeldt on Clean Beauty, Confidence and What’s Next for the Brand Laila Högfeldt has a simple test for whether a beauty product is any good. “You use it,” she says. Not saved for a special occasion, but reached for every morning. Since founding Lenoites in Borås in 2021, that conviction has taken the brand from direct-to-consumer sales to shelf space with some of Scandinavia’s biggest retailers, with formulas that can take years and over ten rounds of samples to get right.  Natalia Muntean: You started as an influencer before founding Lenoites in 2021. What gap in the market did you feel wasn’t being addressed?Laila Högfeldt: I noticed I’d split my products into two piles. The beautiful, high-performing ones were expensive, so I saved them for special occasions — they’d sit on my shelf barely touched. Then there was everything I actually reached for every day, which was cheaper, uninspiring to use, and didn’t really deliver. It struck me how backwards that was. Why should the products you use most be the ones that bring you the least joy? Lenoites exist to close that gap, something that performs, feels special, and still earns its place in your everyday routine. NM: What does “age-independent” beauty mean in practice when you’re developing a product?LH: It means we formulate for the concern, not the age on the label. Take a powder designed not to settle into fine lines, blurring the skin and enhancing your features: mature skin benefits from that most, but a 25-year-old isn’t worse off — if anything their makeup looks better for it, because the product lays down more evenly and smoothly than most. The need is what guides us, not a birth year. So much of beauty is marketed as “anti-age” or “for young skin,” and that framing quietly tells people what they’re allowed to buy. We’d rather just make something that works, and let you decide if it’s for you. NM: The Silky Blurring Powder Bronzer uses a baking process rather than pressed powder. Why was that technique important enough to build a product around?LH: Because you can feel the difference the second it touches your skin. Baking gives you a powder that behaves like a cream — it’s lighter, silkier, and melts into the skin instead of sitting on top of it. You get that soft-focus, blurred finish and a natural warmth, never the flat, powdery look pressed formulas can leave. It also means it flatters skin rather than settling into texture or lines. It’s a slower, more expensive way to make a bronzer, but the payoff is right there on your face. We think the result earns it. NM: The setting spray came out of “close dialogue” with your community. What does that dialogue actually look like in practice?LH: Honestly, our community is in the room far earlier than people assume. The setting spray started because so many customers asked us to make one — so instead of just doing it, we asked them what they were missing. Two things came back again and again. Either a spray held their makeup all day but left their skin dry, broke them out, and felt awful by evening. Or they’d chosen a “kinder” formula that was gentle on the skin but didn’t actually keep the makeup in place. They were being forced to pick. On top of that, alcohol-free and fragrance-free really mattered to them. So we built one that does both — it holds all day and is genuinely good for your skin, with no alcohol and no fragrance. That’s the gap we closed. When the same request keeps appearing, that’s not noise — that’s a brief. NM: Both products lean on “clean” formulas. How do you decide where to compromise, if you do, between clean formulation and performance?LH: Performance is non-negotiable — full stop. Clean is the goal, but a clean product that doesn’t perform isn’t clean, it’s just useless. So we start with what actually works, then push to make it as thoughtfully formulated as possible. And I mean push — a single product can take years to develop, with samples going back and forth more than ten times. We don’t settle until it’s exactly right. When a cleaner option performs just as well, it wins every time — but it has to earn its place first. NM: Do you see physical retail as the next phase of growth or will Lenoites primarily remain direct-to-consumer?LH: We’re already both, and that’s deliberate. You’ll find us in Kicks, Åhléns, Lyko and Matas, to name just a few, alongside our own direct channel. Selling direct lets us stay genuinely close to our customers — it’s where we learn the most. Retail gives them something online never can: the chance to touch it, feel the texture, test the shade, or simply pick it up on the spot. You need the intimacy of one and the tangibility of the other to build something that lasts — so it was never really an either/or for us. NM: FSC-certified, recyclable packaging is a stated commitment. Where has that been hardest to deliver without pushing up cost or changing the product experience?LH: When I started, I wanted packaging with no plastic at all — that was the dream. But retail taught me it’s not that simple. Some stores need a window in the packaging so the customer can see the product, otherwise you lose your place on the shelf. So we’ve had to meet both our customers and our retailers halfway on certain products. The hard part is refusing to let those compromises pile up. It would be easy to end up with packaging that’s either sustainable but feels cheap, or premium but wasteful, and we won’t accept either. It often means longer development and higher cost on our side. But I’d rather fight for every detail than pretend the trade-offs don’t exist. NM: Lenoites’ messaging ties beauty closely to self-confidence and well-being rather than just appearance. Is that solely a