Hungarian skincare range Eminence credits its squeaky clean organic credentials for a loyal celebrity following, including Jessica Biel and Madonna, who has said of Eminence’s fruit-soy cleansers: “They contain all-natural ingredients. Everything they make smells like food, their facial cleansers smell like blueberries.”
Established in 1958, the company’s product range contains almost no trace of anything but hand-picked and prepared vegetables, fruit pulps, flowers and exotic spices. Here’s the inside track on Eminence, which is only available at select spas and clinics worldwide, as well as your guide to telling the best from the rest of the organic treatments on the market.
Florentina Matei, chief educator at Eminence Organic Skincare, lifts the lid on the home-grown business that has been passed down through three generations of the Koronczay family – and is currently making a push in the UAE.
On the eco-philosophy
“We’re a family business providing 95 per cent organic skincare products and treatments. We’re free from chemicals like parabens, mineral oils and propylene glycol, et cetera, and if there’s an ingredient you can’t find in nature, you won’t find it on our labels. We teamed up with the Forests for the Future Foundation in 2012, a campaign which meant that with every product sold, we’d plant a tree in countries like Ghana and Uganda. We’ve now surpassed three million trees worldwide, believing that because we take all our ingredients from the earth – mostly grown in our farms in Hungary – we are giving something back.”
On signature organic spa treatments available in the UAE
“We’ve got about 16 facial and eight body treatments available at leading spas, from the Rixos Hotel in RAK to Sharjah Ladies Club and the Mayfair Clinic in Abu Dhabi. A signature treatment would be a paprika facial, with its concentrate of spices to provide stimulation and oxygenation to the surface of the skin. It improves the overall texture, look and glow of the skin and leaves you looking much healthier afterwards. The treatment takes about 75 minutes and the price range is Dh450 to Dh600.”
On where to buy Eminence products
“Our products can be found in big spas such as Talise, Royal Radisson and Rixos. We are available in big clinics such as Cosmosurge, Mayfair Clinic and the Dr Rani Hammad Clinic at Dubai Health Care City.”
Best-sellers
Bamboo Firming Fluid, Dh280; Clear Skin Probiotic Cleanser, Dh189; Strawberry Rhubarb Dermafoliant, Dh200; Coconut Age Corrective Moisturizer Dh280; and Cucumber Eye Gel, Dh319.
Eminence has their own YouTube channel where they give skin tips as well as advice and demonstrations for using their products.
How do I know if a product is organic?
Buyers beware of:
• Synthetic colours & fragrance
• Parabens
• Phthalates
• SLS or SLES, sodium lauryl sulfate
• Toluene
• FormaldehydePhthalates
• Oxybenzone
The advice
• An organic spa should have its certification on display.
• Ask if part or your entire spa treatment will be organic.
• Check what percentage of a product’s ingredients are organic.
• Products should contain natural not chemical preservatives.
• Storage of organic products should be temperature & light controlled.
• The longer an organic product’s shelf-life, the more wary you should be.
Spas with organic treatments:
• Talise spa, Jumeirah Etihad Towers, Abu Dhabi
• Anantara spa, Eastern Mangroves hotel, Abu Dhabi
• Zen Beauty Lounge, Dubai
• N.A.I.L.S organic spa, Dubai Marina
rduane@thenational.ae
