Whenever I feel anxious, my therapy self-care routine almost always revolves around beauty, a calming experience. skin care routinea mood-enhancing makeup app, etc. Ironic, because it’s often the beauty industry that causes my angst (if beauty standards weren’t so unrealistic, I might not need to put on bright makeup).Red lipstick feel safer). This paradox is one of the reasons Stephanie Lee created Self made, a company that focuses equally on the physical and mental aspects of beauty.
Their mission is to reject harmful and outdated beauty norms and instead foster a sense of worth through wellness-minded self-exploration. Ultimately, he says, beauty is about “how we feel, rather than how we look, when we nurture and trust our relationship with ourselves.”
Selfmade launched in 2020 with three multifunctional skin and personal care products: a seruma scruband a oil. Each one represents one of the key pillars of the brand: attachment, resilience and intimacy. “These are basics of understanding self-esteem that I learned in therapy during my own mental health crisis,” says Lee.
Shop the Selfmade collection of products below:
This skin-soothing serum
Selfmade Secure Attachment Comfort Serum
If you’re dealing with dryness, irritation, inflammation, or breakouts as a result of stress, reach for this soothing serum packed with anti-inflammatory Aloe Vera and Cucumber extracts. And don’t just take my word for it: this is Selfmade’s best-selling product and Lee’s personal favorite.
This two-in-one scrub
Selfmade True Grit Resilience Scalp & Body Scrub
This all-over scrub (srsly, you can use it on body, face, and scalp) isn’t just a delicious shower time of self-care. The formula is packed with ingredients your skin will love, including antioxidant-rich vitamin C, antimicrobial tea tree oil, and hydrating glycerin.
This multipurpose oil
Self Made Self Disclosure Intimacy Serum
This body and intimacy oil hybrid is my holy grail because it doesn’t leave my skin sticky or sticky after I massage it in. The magic? A blend of lightweight oils (including safflower oil and sunflower oil) plus nourishing vitamin E. I use it legitimately everywhere.
This ultra-hydrating cream
Self Made Corrective Experience Comfort Cream
“Glassy, tacky skin” = how Lee described what my skin would look and feel like after applying this rich cream (this is completely accurate, by the way). Made with moisturizers like hyaluronic acid and glycerin, this bb makes skin feel softer and smoother as soon as you put it on.
“I never had a relationship with mental health until I started in the beauty industry after working in the White House with Michelle Obama,” says Lee. When dealing with his own mental health struggles in 2016, he realized that “the way we talk about ourselves, the way we show ourselves in this world, is how we associate our worth with how much we earn, what title we have.” . , how well the skin suits us.” It was then that started therapy to gain the tools and resources to improve her own emotional well-beingthis is how Selfmade was born.
Lee has called his line the “first emotionally intelligent personal care brand.”
Selfmade doesn’t just tell us to put on a full coverage foundation or smear our faces in a retinol cream to feel better about ourselves. Lee’s mission was create a line that truly had the power to understand and ultimately improve people’s mental health. “We should be using our skin as data points for what’s inside,” she explains. “Instead of saying, ‘I’m so gross, I have a pimple,’ which is how society has conditioned us to think, rephrase that to ‘I have a pimple, let me take care of my skin because it’s the largest organ in my body and I takes care. Maybe this pimple means I need to slow down and manage my stress better.”
The bottom line: We should all be asking ourselves how mental health and emotional well-being affect skin and body function, and not just focus on the outward appearance of our skin.
Everything in Selfmade’s high-quality line is clean and sustainably produced and designed to encourage healing moments of self-care out of the complicated world of aesthetic ideals. “Beauty can be a ritual tool to calm our bodies and practice loving ourselves,” explains Lee. “The time we spend putting something on our faces or touching our skin are valuable opportunities for self-exploration.”