I was searching for a solution to my son's psoriasis after chemo
When my son Alessio was ten, he was diagnosed with Juvenile Idiopathic arthritis. The chemotherapy tore his skin to pieces causing severe psoriasis. Cracked hands. His hair started to come out. The steroid creams the consultants sent us home with did nothing or made it worse. The first thing I made was the Soothing Shea Butter for him. It cleared his psoriasis in four weeks. YNNY is named after my son. He's the reason it exists. Now I make these products for you, so you can experience the benefits of radiant skin and hair.
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Most skincare is mostly water
In December 2011, I went to a free bath bomb and soap-making course in Liverpool. It was meant to be a hobby. By the end of the day, I'd realised something I couldn't unlearn. The products on shop shelves are mostly water and filler, and the people they fail are the people who need them most.
A standard cream you buy in a department store is around 60-75% water, 20–25% cheap base oil and emulsifers with only small percentage of active ingredients. That's not how our formulas are. Ours don't contain any water or little water
I made Elixir for myself in 2015. I've been wearing the results ever since.
By the time I was 50, my own skin was changing. Drier. Thinner. The fine lines arrived suddenly, the way they tend to in perimenopause. I wasn't going to start injecting anything. I wasn't going to spend £200 on a serum from a counter at Selfridges. I made my own.
Elixir is an oil-based serum. The base — borage, rosehip, evening primrose — is the active. There's no water in the bottle. Two to three drops, morning and night, is enough. It absorbs in seconds.
Our customers call it: "Botox in a bottle"
Customers started calling Elixir "Botox in a bottle" and 'The Holy Grail' on their own. I didn't put that on the label. But we should!
One eighty-year-old woman emailed me last week after hearing me on the radio and ordered four products in one go. That's who Elixir is for. People who've tried everything and stopped trusting the marketing.
In 2018, Kate McIver Skin claimed they'd invented Elixir.
They hadn't. I had — three years earlier, in my workshop, with my own hands, from notebooks I'd kept since 2015.
I spent five years and £360,000 in court taking it back. I won at first instance. They appealed. I won again.
It was the first reverse passing-off case in the UK to be decided on its facts at trial and upheld on appeal. Lawyers cite it now.
I'm telling you this because, if you're reading the about page of a small skincare brand, you should know who actually made the formula in the bottle. I did. There's a public judgement that says so.
Our Bestselling Essentials
Elixir - Anti-Aging & Skin Rejuvenating Serum
The Radiant Skin Set
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