What Comes After “Clean” Beauty? Kat Burki on How-to Shop For Skincare Beyond What’s *Not* On the Ingredient List

0:00The following podcast is a Dear Media production.

0:08Welcome to Breaking Beauty, the podcast all about the breakthrough people, products and moments in beauty. We're your hosts, Jill Dunn and Carlene Higgins.

0:21Welcome back to Breaking Beauty Podcast, everyone. I'm Carlene Higgins. I'm here with my lovely co-host. I'm Jill Dunn, everybody. and it's Wednesday. So that means we are back in your feed with another wonderful episode. Like we have been for nine years now, over 450 episodes. And we are two longtime magazine beauty editors turned beauty podcasters. Yes. And I don't know how many of you have discovered new brands through our show. We have interviewed so many founders, for example, everyone from the founder of MAC Cosmetics, Frank Toskin, Emily Weiss, the founder of Glossier, Dr. Shereen Idris.

0:57so many products and brands to discover. And we have a new one we're serving up for you today. That's right. Our guest is founder of Kat Berkey Skin Care. Kat Berkey. Hi, Kat. Hi. How are you? Good. How are you? Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. This is awesome. We're here in New York and we've been here to learn a little bit more about your brand. So thank you for inviting us here. And we're going to share a little bit more. We're going to hype you up a little bit before we get into the all of our chat. Yes. So if you're not familiar, Kat Berkey's products, they can be found backstage at Fashion Week to prep model skin, most recently at the Chloe show in Paris and also to prep for the red carpet.

1:39Yeah, like makeup artist Hong Van Gogh, who's a friend of our show, and he's like one of the most iconic makeup artists on the red carpet. He used Kat's products to prep the skin for Rose Byrne most recently. I believe it was at the Oscars this year, which is very cool. Mm-hmm. And Kat Berkey is all about supporting the skin's microbiome and in general, calming inflammation. And as somebody with rosacea myself, whenever I hear anything about calming inflammation or inflammation, I am listening. And Kat Berkey, she holds a law degree and a master's in health administration. And her years designing preventative health programs and studying chronic disease alongside scientists and epidemiologists is what led to her light bulb moment.

2:26In 2013, Kat launched her eponymous skincare line at Henry Bendel. And today you can find Kat Berkey at really cool retailers like Prontant that opened last year in New York and Liberty London, both with cabines offering Kat Berkey facials, which we both experienced at the Hotel Chelsea yesterday. day. So if you notice, I have a bit of an extra glow. My skin is super plumped and it just feels so like calm. And I truly loved the experience. Oh my gosh. The aromatics just like put me in another zone. I really love it. Yeah. So Kat is going to rewind today back to 2013 and she's going to share with us how she developed her brand and how it's kind of managed to surpass its roots in the height of the raw movement.

3:16Yes, we're going to talk about the evolution and we'll talk about why none of our ingredients start with aqua, aka water, unlike a lot of other skincare brands. We'll get a masterclass in skin's microbiome and learn about the best-selling vitamin C product and why it's different from all of the other serums on the market. And we get a sneak peek of a new innovation that we got to see yesterday. We're going to share it with all of you. With all of that, welcome officially to Breaking Beauty. Well, that was really nice. Thank you. Of course. So take us back to your early days in health administration.

3:55What did your day-to-day look like? And what made you think, I need to start my own skincare brand? In working in disease management, it became very apparent how important the microbiome is to the gut and health and disease, inflammation, disease states, your ability to not roll into a disease state, a negative state, has a lot to do with the microbiome. and we're learning so much more about it, but even the actual biodiversity can create autoimmunity. And we were really looking at why is there so much more autoimmunity happening, especially in the U.S. However, we have a microbiome in our skin as well, which that combination of that biome of the skin and the gut speak.

4:42They speak to one another. So that was where I started to think about skincare. I wasn't thinking about skincare from a beauty perspective. Vitamin C is extremely important to skin health. We don't make vitamin C. Our body doesn't make it. So it's essential we get it through some other source. And it's actually one of the most important ingredients in collagen reproduction and also preventatively. So that was when I was like, okay, let me try.

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7:11Wait less by hers is not available in all 50 states. Wagovi is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS. To get started and learn more, including important safety information, Wagovi clinical study information and restrictions, visit for hers.com. You have one unheard message. Okay, it's 3 a.m. My shoes are gone. And my Uber rating is definitely a zero. You are not ready for this story. Hey, I'm Davis Rowe. You might know me from TikTok, where I share little snapshots of my life. But here's the thing. You only see the 30-second version. There's so much more behind the scenes. The nights out, the mornings after, the drama, the men, and even a little wisdom I've picked up along the way.

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8:37now this was over a decade ago so your brand has clearly evolved over time did you have a tagline at that time that was raw beauty yes we did in hindsight you don't want to market a product with what it doesn't have so we had to evolve into what that science actually is instead of that tagline. The connotation became more food related, which was not what we meant. We really meant how we're formulating is different. No alcohol, there's no fillers, there's no dimethicone, there's no silicones from the very beginning. But what we should have been talking about is the ingredient synergy and the optimization of the biome to deliver.

9:19The real importance in our brand and our differentiation is tools to have the skin repair itself, right? And so the tagline for the brand now is biochemistry-backed skincare. So tell us about how that all sort of came to be and maybe also how it differs. So it became really important. It's always been the same from the very beginning of how we formulate. But to explain that is kind of, you know, there's a lot involved. It's not just, again, going back to what we don't do. Yeah. It's more importantly what we do do. And how do we communicate that in a way that's easy, bite-sized pieces so that you can have a measurement tool that shows you a difference.

10:06Right. That's what we think is important. Not 100 % of my friends thought blah, blah, blah, but, you know, 15 % increase in, you know, elasticity or by a tool-based measurement is super important. So we wanted to, and even the microbiome sequencing, like we can see the health of the microbiome. So there's, for us, it's twofold. It is the biochemistry of how the formula is working together. Called it too simplistically raw beauty, going back to that, but it's really how it's all working together that's super important and that they can and that they can deliver. So it's the holistic approach to that formula and the biochemistry of the skin.

10:47How does that work? How is that signaling? What is it doing with it once it sees it? And how is it using it? So do you guys own your own lab where you do clinical testing or do you use like a third party or? Yes, definitely a third party because otherwise it's a conflict of interest. Third party MD supervised tool based studies only. Right. Yeah. So to your point, it's not a self-assessment of a group of 30 women who are saying, you know, 92 % of them felt that their skin looked more supple or something like that. It's actually measuring like the length of the wrinkle, that sort of. And it's very controlled when you do it that way.

11:29So they're not using any other product. They're only using this product. And it's a physician who's looking at them every day. They're checking in. They're seeing how they're doing. So that's a real third-party MD supervised study. They can do perception studies. That's okay. And usually you do do a roundup perception at the same time, but it's the same group. So a perception study that's not in that environment, who knows what caused what? And that's opinion-based. So it's not of much value. Got it. Let's talk about the number one product in your brand. It's the Vitamin C Cream. Is that right?

12:05That's right. So give us the proper name and what makes it so unique. It's a Vitamin C Intensive Face Cream. And what's unique is our very first product, and it's still our number one seller. It is using stabilized vitamin C. So back in that day, when I'm still thinking about skincare, that was the product I worked on. And I knew vitamin C is essential, as we said before, but it's also notoriously unstable. So, and also the skin has to recognize it to use it. So it really does need to get into the skin. Retinol is another one. So I'm using Reiche Mushroom, which is a really great anti-aging agent.

12:48and, but the two together are going to drive it down deeper. So you're going to get delivery. Not only is the C stabilized, but you're going to get the reishi mushroom taking it in. There is colloidal silver, which actually is really great for the microbiome and that diversity. So it's very well constructed. So what type of vitamin C is it? Is it L-ascorbic acid or tell Tell me more about that. So it's a version of that that's stabilized. So that means it is, it goes through an additional, it's called actually, the commercial name is Stacey, S-T-A-Y-C. And I did a lot of research to find which one I felt was the most receptive to the skin and the clinical studies behind it.

13:36We're never a brand who talks about the clinicals behind our ingredients though, because we're really about the whole formula, because that's what's important. but it actually has the greatest stability and the greatest results for the skin, both from elasticity and collagen. And obviously for, I mean, there's vitamin C has some acne benefits as well and preventative. I have a question because it is in a jar and a lot of germs on our show will say it's like vitamin C, it is so unstable. It should be like in a pump. We have a higher percentage C product that I have in a, a, a pump instead on purpose and a darker glass, but you're not, you should be using it faster than the, you know, the degrading is really happening.

14:22And it's also a cream. If I wanted to do a therapeutic, like really super therapeutic, which we have, which is the C20 Velocity Serum, I'm going to upgrade it with lactic acid. I'm going to actually put the, you know, B vitamins in with it so that it delivers quicker. And it's also the same C So for me, it's a product that C is important, but it's not. And it is a C. It's called vitamin C. But it's still about the cream, right? It's still about everything else that's delivering. But it's not saying it's not. I mean, it's very effective. So it is delivering. And I think it's more about the synergistic ingredient combining and the stability of the actual C itself.

15:02Now, I read that none of your products start with aqua or water at the beginning of the ingredient list, which most products do. When you flip it over, if it's water-based, that's the first ingredient. But you don't formulate that way. Is that true? There is validity to that, although that's not what I'm hung up on. And that was going back to our original concepting in that every ingredient has to serve a purpose, right? We're not just putting fillers in there just from a cosmetic chemistry type of perspective so that it feels and looks good. We're going to look at it from, okay, well, we know we need some type of base for it to live in, right?

15:43To become some kind of texture or deliver system. But we're not going to use water. We're going to use five really well-known, it's almost like a tea we create. And we do it with every single product and we carry our little tea to whatever lab we're going. Okay. It's like how Guerlain has their Guerlainade. Yeah. The base of every. Right. But again, so these are, yes, but it is important because it has Arnica, it has all those things that people really rely on to drive down inflammation. So we're going to make that use out of that, that liquid form that we need. And also it helps deliver other nutrients in deeper.

16:23And so we're just formulating that way. But it's going back to those codification system more so than being we don't have this, you know, like what you just said. Yeah, yeah. We're not creating. That's not what we're hanging up on. But yes, we do do that. For instance, the fragrance. So we're using, everyone loves it, but it's not a synthetic fragrance because that's going to upset the other ingredients. This is how our view is and how we work. But it is a cucumber hydrosol and people love it. So it's great. We're getting the luxury from it. But cucumber is a natural anti-inflammatory too. So and also cucumber hydrosols help drive in other ingredients that are known for collagen producing.

17:07Yeah. So yeah, that's the body works in these multifaceted ways. And and skin care is to be synergistic with what the skin does. And that's how we're formulating. So in a way, it's about just not having kind of a filler ingredient. If you're going to have a base, it may as well have a function. Mm-hmm. Right? A hundred percent. It's not fillers. And unfortunately there's a lot of that and there's no like, okay, let me just find that one ingredient. And then that one ingredient is kind of, you know, degraded in its potential.

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21:36Do you go out into the marketplace and take products off shelves and just look at the inky list? And do you have any pet peeves when you look at other products that you think are maybe like pulling the wool over people's eyes or? All the time. Tell me more. I mean so much.

21:56Where do I start without being too obvious? Exosomes. Yeah. They don't work in skincare. Probiotics, they don't work in skincare. So it's just like people just kind of grab onto things. Oh, I'm going to go launch up before anyone else does. And it's usually the same labs that are meeting them and telling them what's coming up next. That's not really the right way to do it. Yeah. So safe to say there's not going to be a PDRN exosome serum from Kat Berkey anytime soon. No, unless something else happens with it and they figure it out. Right, right, right. I understand that. Talk to us more about probiotics.

22:30in skincare because we do see that a lot. Prebiotics and postbiotics are very important, especially when it comes to the microbiome of the skin. And probiotics are not stable at all. They're dead on arrival, basically, if they're in skincare. So that's just marketing. Okay. So we need to be looking for postbiotics on a label. Or prebiotics even more so. Yeah. Prebiotics are actually giving the skin, they're almost like food. You're giving the microbiome the ability to replicate itself. It's again, it's a really great thing because again, you're giving the skin what it needs to do what it does better.

23:11We can't go artificially populate it. So we want to drive down bad bacteria with antimicrobials and then you want to drive up good bacteria with prebiotics. Yeah. I feel like this concept was something we were hearing about a lot like a few years ago and then we're like kind of stopped hearing about it and I don't really know why that is. Have you found that? Yes, you're right. I don't think the microbiome is going to go away. It's just so even within our bodies, it's so important. But I think it just got over marketed in some ways and everyone's taking probiotics too much. They're just going in everything, which can't be healthy.

23:54It's really about, again, giving inside, you know, fermentation. Biofermentation is a really great way to, which is the breakdown of ingredients, but it also by breaking that down into this biofermented state helps create a really healthy biome, which is why we use a lot of that. So all of our hair care is looking at the scalp biome with that. And it also helps bring in other nutrients. So it's multifaceted as well. I know you are very interested in the microbiome. So I'm wondering if you follow these like at-home routines with certain foods that you eat that help to support the microbiome. Is there anything from like a lifestyle point of view you can share?

24:38I don't eat wheat at all. For me, in our country, it's a very processed product that causes a lot of inflammation. I drink a lot of lemon water. It just really, I just, first of all, it's the only way I can drink water for some reason. Maybe because I do it all the time now. I'm like, okay. But so I'm getting the vitamin C and I'm getting a lot of the, you know, the antioxidants from that. The most therapeutic thing for the body is rest. It really is so important to make sure that that's a part of your day. And for me, it's hard to shut off and do that. It's so hard, but it's so important to like learn clearing the mind.

25:22Clearing the mind for 10 minutes is incredibly healthy. So there's some simple things that we just don't even consider that do dramatic being outside, yeah being outside you know walking on ground yeah exactly is your shelf at home lined with supplements i have a supplement drawer but i do not believe in constant supplementation it's not we have we can get it from our food but our body reserves go down especially from whatever same with skin yeah right it changes in our body so you just have to be like okay i think you know I really need extra D today, right? Or I need, so it's just kind of, I don't do the same thing every single day.