Going Analogue: A Newsletter

Analogue is a weekly letter from me, mostly about things done in real life, that sometimes take a long time.

As with most parts of life, two things have happened to beauty at once, and they pull in the same direction. It has become more clinical — more actives, more percentages, more of the language of the laboratory. It has also become more digital: found and judged through a screen, without a deeper insight into how it is made or will make you feel.

Both of those are improvements in some ways, especially when it comes to discovering new things and communities. But neither has much to say about how anything is built, or behaves in real life. It's also why I look forward to a physical home for Kanobe, when the time is right.

When thinking of how to sum up Kanobe for this newsletter, Analogue is the word I kept reaching for: ingredients harvested, distilled, and pressed by hand. Conversations with real people and artisans around the world, learning about harvest periods, good and bad seasons, why they still make things in the old way, and what innovations have been mixed with tradition. 

Creating increasingly elaborate formulas in my kitchen: hand blending, slow-infusions, and old school pestles and mortars. Studying aromatherapy, one plant part and molecular component at a time. And then figuring out how to scale as Kanobe grew, with most labs used to doing things a different, more standardised way.

And the weeks and months of waiting: to see how a formula would turn out, for a batch of soap to cure, for a frankincense infusion to be ready. The years of experimenting before Kanobe ever went live. And on the less romantic side, the months of product testing before I can finally share each new product with you.

There's an irony in my being a tech lawyer and building something like Kanobe, and a newsletter about offline rituals. Yet being one is probably precisely why I'm drawn to the artisanal, the tactile, and — when it comes down to it — things that are still very human.

What Analogue Will Be

Analogue is not anti-science or purely nostalgic  — it's about capturing the parts of beauty and life that happen in a real room, with our hands, at a speed that we set.

01 Materials. Where a botanical actually comes from, how it is extracted, and what that changes.
02 Rituals. Small practices and changes that make a real difference to our skin and wellbeing.
03 People. Inspiring growers, harvesters, pressers and makers.
04 And occasionally, something from outside beauty entirely — a place, a building, an argument — when it is better at explaining analogue living than I am.

The next letter arrives on Sunday. It is about what happens to your skin when the heating comes on, and how best to take care of it.

With care,