Our Ingredients
Most ingredient lists start with what sounds good. Ours start with the skin.
Every MAMO formula begins the same way — with a skin need. Dry skin. Sensitive skin. Skin that is irritated, patchy, stripped by hard water or harsh detergents. From there, Darina — my mother, co-founder, and a food engineer and cosmetic scientist with over forty years of experience — works outward. What does this skin actually need? What will genuinely help it? Only then does the formula take shape.
Dry skin needs a richer bar — a higher ratio of butters and oils, a longer cure, a lather that cleans without stripping. It also tends to be reactive, so the next question is what will calm it. Calendula. Chamomile. Botanicals with a reason to be there, not just a reason to appear on the label. Then come the essential oils — chosen for what they do as much as how they smell. Then the colour, from plant clays and powders. Then the final balance, adjusted by hand, batch by batch.
That process is what separates an ingredient list from an actual formulation. Any brand can list the same oils and butters. What changes everything is the ratio, the method, the knowledge behind the decisions — and the botanical infusions that never appear on an ingredient list because they are built into the base before the formula even begins.
The Infusions
Before any ingredient reaches a MAMO formula, most of the botanicals have already been at work for weeks.
We grow calendula, chamomile, lavender, and rosemary in Darina's garden in Wicklow. What the garden does not provide, we forage — yarrow, horsetail, nettle, seaweed, gathered by hand along the Murrough, around Glen Strand and Wicklow Head, through Tinakelly and Murragh and up along Carrick Mountain.
These botanicals are steeped into herbal teas and infused slowly into carrier oils — sometimes for weeks — before they ever reach a formula. The oil carries everything the plant has to offer directly into the bar. It is a slow process. It is also why the products feel the way they do.
What We Never Use — And Why
We do not use oils that go rancid quickly and require higher levels of preservatives to remain stable — the preservatives end up in the formula to compensate for a cheaper ingredient choice. We use minimal coconut oil, despite its popularity in natural soap, because in high quantities it can be drying — the opposite of what skin needs.
You will not find rapeseed oil, almond oil, or sunflower oil in our formulas. You will also not find olive oil pomace — a cheaper, heavily processed byproduct of olive oil production that is frequently listed simply as "olive oil" on labels. We use the real thing or we use something better.
We do not use mica. Many brands list it as sustainably sourced — but the supply chain is difficult to verify with certainty. Around 25% of the world's mica comes from illegal mines in India where child labour is widespread, and the industry's own goal of eradicating child labour from the mica supply chain has already been delayed, now set for 2030. We colour our products with natural clays, plant powders, and botanicals instead. No shimmer, no uncertainty.
We do not use palm oil. The "sustainably sourced" certification exists, but verifying the reality behind it is complex — and we would rather not rely on a certification to justify an ingredient we do not need.
We do not use titanium dioxide. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies it as a possible carcinogen, largely due to studies finding increased lung cancers from inhalation exposure in animals. In rinse-off products the risk is low, but Darina does not need it. We achieve opacity and colour through zinc oxide where necessary and plant-based alternatives everywhere else.
What We Do Use
Cold-pressed plant oils and unrefined raw butters — olive, castor, shea, cocoa — chosen for what each one does for skin. Natural clays and botanicals for colour and function. Irish raw honey and goat milk where the formula calls for it. Essential oils for scent and effect. Homemade botanical infusions as the foundation of almost everything.