Fresh Faced Emma Lewisham
Denizen – Summer, 2021
As a leader in sustainable skincare, Emma Lewisham is on a mission to change the international beauty industry from the inside out.
From Richard Pearse’s flight of fancy to Sir Edmund Hillary’s summit — New Zealanders hold an impressive number of world-first titles, and now our nation can add some beautiful new achievements to the list. In September, Emma Lewisham announced it was the world’s first carbon-positive beauty brand under Toitū Envirocare’s climate positive certification and released the first 100 percent circular designed product range, garnering the skincare brand a personal endorsement from the beloved environmentalist Dr. Jane Goodall.
Like many global leaders, Emma Lewisham has steered the course for positive change. “I would absolutely love to play a big part in changing the beauty industry and the current way that it operates,” says the brand’s eponymous Co-founder. “That would be a measure of success for me.”
Already, Emma Lewisham the brand is turning heads as one of the fastest-growing skincare labels in New Zealand and Australia
— rivalling the most recognised luxury brands. When it launched at David Jones, after a mere six months in business, it was the department store’s “most successful” beauty launch on record. Its pigmentation-correcting Skin Reset Serum is one of David Jones’ best-selling beauty products.
Emma Lewisham is gaining momentum in America too. Its recent launches with Net-a- Porter and Onda stores, co-founded by Naomi Watts, were a retail revelation — as both shoppers and stores learnt the importance of sustainable skincare. “Having a brand with strong values, it brings such growth and so much more fulfilment,” says Lewisham. “I think that businesses have a huge part to play. We empower our customers to make the changes that we desperately need in the world.”
Central to the brand’s success story is providing natural skincare alternatives without compromising on efficacy. Emma Lewisham works with a leading biochemist and scientists in its Auckland laboratory — and taps into international research and development for innovative ingredients. “I genuinely believe that the best product sits in harmony with our health,” says Lewisham. “It ultimately comes back to having groundbreaking products because that’s where the transformation can come.”
Emma Lewisham’s New Zealand-made products are two years in development, largely due to the vast amount of research and independent testing involved. The latest product to come out of this is the limited-edition Illuminating Face and Body Oil — where the team has been able to stabilise an oil-soluble formulation of hyaluronic acid in an innovative, glowing oil. Like other products, it’s 100 percent natural with a high organic ingredient content of 70 percent.
“For our first body product, I wanted to bring to market a truly innovative ultra-luxurious oil that delivers more skin health results than just a beautiful glow. An independent in-vitro test showed the Face and Body Oil delivers antioxidant protection over eight hours at a skin cellular level.”
While Emma Lewisham has its sights on international progress, it’s balancing expansion with sustainability. Even now the brand is officially carbon positive, with a carbon number intricately traced for each product, the team are not patting themselves on the back. “Any carbon number on a product is an admission that there is work to be done,” says Lewisham. “That’s why we went through that certification process. It’s not to offset, not to dodge the real work, but to get visibility and improve the way that we are creating our products.”
The same goes for all 150 ingredients the brand has traced as part of the certification process. For now, Emma Lewisham focuses on using organic ingredients as much as possible but it would like to have ingredients sourced from regenerative farming, which sequesters carbon back into the soil. “We want to continue to create that demand,” says Lewisham. “As we scale and get bigger, we have more of a voice to do so.”
To help solve the global beauty industry’s not so pretty waste problems, Emma Lewisham products are circular, with cleverly designed packaging and refill pods. “We can recycle them but, firstly a solution that has a significantly lighter environmental impact is to reuse, to refill,” says Lewisham. “A circular model would reduce the carbon emissions in the industry by 70 percent, which is absolutely staggering.”
The beauty industry is traditional, and, as such, is in a prime position for a sustainable mindset makeover. “You can’t expect systemic change by doing it alone,” says Lewisham. “So I hope that mentality will be picked up by the wider beauty industry — and also in other industries.”
In line with its promise of transparency, the company has released the intellectual property surrounding its carbon positive and circular moves, known as Emma Lewisham’s Beauty Blueprint. Receiving a positive response already, with competitors both large and small taking
notice and requesting further information on how to create positive change, it’s hitting the mark for the Co-founder’s measure of success.
“I believe that any business that comes out today, needs to be helping to build a better world and to solve something,” she says.
In leading the charge from Aotearoa, Lewisham has felt her fellow New Zealanders rally around her as she continues to climb. “Maybe it’s the mentality that we grow up with that nothing is impossible,” she muses. “We’ve seen so many businesses and sportspeople achieve things on an international scale despite being a small country. I’m sure it’s inspired me in some way.”