INCI names, misleading claims, and what the label is really telling you.
When I sat down this morning to look at my list of blog topics, yes, I keep a list, it's my happy place, I saw reading natural skincare labels, and my initial reaction was just dread. Until the next thought popped into my head: What is the origin of the word gibberish? Off I went down that rabbit hole, and you won't believe there is no more apt word to define my feelings about labels. When you read the origin, I think you'll agree.
Being born with the lovely but very challenging challenge of dyslexia, I have learned to love the Oxford Dictionary; it makes so much sense when little else does. So when I tell you labels read like gibberish, I mean it literally. Gibberish is defined as "unintelligible or meaningless speech or writing; nonsense", language filled with unnecessarily obscure and pretentious jargon. Spot on. But it gets better. The most widely accepted origin links it to Jabir ibn Hayyan, an 8th-century Arab alchemist whose writings were so dense and deliberately obscure that his name (Latinised as "Geber") may have given rise to the word. Alchemists were famous for writing in intentional code to protect their secrets.
To say that not much has changed in modern-day natural skincare formulation - aka alchemy - would be apt.
The System Behind the Gibberish — What INCI Actually Is
I have told this story many times, about the shipping industry, and my experience with petroleum and what that did to how I see the ingredients in my bathroom. But stories are made up of even more stories, and this one is harder to tell.
I started losing my hair. Already thin, and then thinner. I want to be honest about what that did to me, because I think you'll recognise it even if your version looked different. Losing my hair felt catastrophic. As I have gotten older, the reality has hit me more clearly: I am just not someone who spends much time worrying about how I look - but here I was, completely undone by my foreseeable future.
Here's the uncomfortable truth I've sat with since: we are raised in a world that tells us our appearance is currency. Right or wrong doesn't come into it; it just is, and pretending otherwise doesn't help anyone. The beauty industry understands this better than we give it credit for. Bless the beauty industry's special heart; it didn't just discover our insecurity; it helped solidify, grow it, and so successfully cash in on it.
And so I went looking for answers the hard way - learning to live with unwashed hair for longer than I'd like to admit, as I fathomed it all out. Coming to the realisation that a shampoo wasn't just a shampoo, and at times was very much part of the problem.
Which inevitably brought me to the label. And to a system I had never heard of, that turned out to explain almost everything. INCI, International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients, was created in 1973 by a trade association in Washington that represents the global beauty industry. The idea was sensible enough: one standardised naming system so that the same bottle of shampoo could be sold in New York or Johannesburg without confusion. And it works beautifully for international trade. For me, standing in a pharmacy holding a natural skincare product, trying to work out what's actually in it? Not so much.
Here's the part that always raises my eyebrows: INCI is still run by that same Washington trade association. The committee that decides how transparent your skincare ingredients need to be is made up of scientists employed by the world's largest beauty corporations. The people deciding the rules are funded by the people the rules are meant to hold accountable. Quite frankly, I’m not a fan, but I'll leave that with you.
If you want to go deeper into exactly how this system works and the fragrance loophole that really freaks me out, I wrote about it here.
Three Things Your Skincare Label Is and Isn't Telling You
What the Label Is Telling You
Everything on the front of the packaging is marketing. The pristine mountain water, the dewy botanical photography, the bold claim of "pure" or "clean", none of it is regulated. Turn it over. The INCI list is where a graspable sense of reality lies.
Ingredients are listed by weight, highest to lowest. I find it useful to think of the list in three zones.
Zone 1 - The Treatment Zone: the first three to five ingredients, making up 80 to 90% of what you're actually putting on your skin. These are the ingredients that define what the product actually is and does. This is where the real work should be happening.
Zone 2 - The Bridge: the middle section, contributing to texture and stability, generally presents between 1 and 10%. Not glamorous, but not irrelevant either.
Zone 3 - The Marketing Zone: everything after the preservative, present at less than 1%. This is where the "enriched with" and "powered by" ingredients most often live. Microscopic amounts, maximum marketing impact. But don't dismiss this zone entirely - if those actives are genuinely plant-derived and purposefully chosen, even small concentrations can have real value. The question worth asking is simply: Does the claim on the front match the reality of what's actually in here?
You'll find preservatives sitting at the bottom of Zone 2, right on the boundary - they are the dividing line between The Bridge and The Marketing Zone. Added at very precise, low concentrations, typically between 0.1 and 1%, because that's all that's needed to keep a product safe and stable.
To be clear, preservatives are essential. Without them, your skincare would be a petri dish within weeks. I'm going to write a whole blog on how to assess them, because they deserve more than a passing mention. For now, the ones you'll most commonly find on a label are phenoxyethanol, caprylyl glycol, and sodium benzoate. Phenoxyethanol is now seen as the literal devil in the natural skincare world, but is it really? That's a conversation for the preservative blog, and I promise it's more nuanced than the fear-mongering suggests.
I've gone on a deep dive into the world of Zone 3 before - the CI codes, the synthetic dyes, and the sensory illusions hiding in plain sight, and you can read that here.
Which brings me to what the label is hiding.
What the Label Is Hiding From You
When a product leads with "enriched with rosehip" or "powered by marula," find that ingredient on the INCI list. If it's sitting in Zone 3, after the preservative, it's present at less than 1%. For me, that's not enriched, it's just a marketing story dressed up as an active ingredient.
But there's a layer beneath even that, and bisabolol is the perfect example. Bisabolol is a genuinely beautiful ingredient, soothing, anti-inflammatory, calming for sensitised skin. Naturally, it's derived from German Chamomile or the Brazilian Candeia tree. It can also be synthesised in a laboratory from petroleum, producing a version that research suggests is only about 50% as active as the plant-derived form.
Here's the problem: both versions carry the exact same INCI name - Bisabolol or α-Bisabolol. The label tells you it's there. It does not tell you where it came from. A brand can choose to write "derived from chamomile" in their marketing without that appearing anywhere on the INCI list, because INCI records the ingredient, not its origin.
How to tell the difference when bisabolol appears on a label:
- Natural / plant-derived: often listed as Alpha-Bisabolol, Natural Bisabolol, or explicitly stated as "derived from Candeia tree" or "derived from Chamomile"
- Synthetic (petroleum-derived): usually listed simply as Bisabolol or α-Bisabolol with no additional descriptor, and typically only 50% as active as the natural form
- Bio-fermented: modern, eco-friendly, produced from sugarcane, retains the same molecular structure as plant-derived bisabolol without the environmental cost. Worth noting: the Candeia tree is slow-growing and increasingly overharvested in Brazil, making bio-fermentation the more sustainable answer when it's available. Bio-fermented ingredients are a conversation worth having in full - I wrote about the fermentation process and why it matters.
Bisabolol is one ingredient. This same source ambiguity applies to dozens of others. That's why, for me, the INCI list can be a bit of a dodge and always worth researching deeper.
What the Label Cannot Tell You at All
For this, you need to know your red flag patterns. For silicones: look for anything ending in -cone, -xane, or -conol. Examples are Dimethicone and Cyclopentasiloxane. For synthetic polymers: look for the Poly- prefix, Acrylate, or Crosspolymer. For synthetic dyes: look for CI followed by a number - CI 19140, CI 42090.
I have to say these are dealbreakers for me, but not necessarily for everyone. My point is that it should be something we easily know about, so making an informed choice doesnt feel like Mission: Impossible.
I've written extensively on the silicones and synthetic polymers specifically here and here if you want to go further.
This is exactly why I chose to create a balm with a short ingredient list, which for me is so reassuring. AYA Balm has a handful of ingredients, every single one named, sourced, and purposeful. And yet somehow it manages to do twenty different jobs. Simple doesn't mean limited.
The INCI list tells you what's in the product. It cannot tell you where it came from, how it was sourced, or whether the brand behind it means what it says. And that, it turns out, is where the real work begins.