Why I Formulated ICHŌ
Why I Formulated ICHŌ
After 40, my skin changed and nothing on the market was built for it. Everything was selling to me. Nothing was formulated for me. So I learned to make it myself. This is the story behind ICHŌ, and why founder-formulated skincare for women over 40 exists at all.
June 2026If you are reading this, you have probably already had the experience that started all of it.
You reach a certain point, somewhere in your forties, and your skin stops behaving the way it always had. Not dramatically. There is no single morning where everything changes. It is quieter than that. Recovery takes longer. Comfort is harder to hold onto. Your skin feels less like itself.
And when you go looking for help, you find a wall of products that seem to be talking to someone else. Someone younger. Someone with a different problem. You are being sold to, energetically and constantly, but you are not being formulated for.
That gap is the reason ICHŌ exists. This is how it came to be.
ICHŌ is a founder-formulated longevity skincare brand for women over 40, created by a certified formulator and nutritional therapist. It was built around one principle: skin after 40 has changed, not failed, and it needs recovery and resilience rather than anti-ageing correction.
It Started With My Own Skin
In my early forties, life was full in every direction. Leading teams. Becoming a first-time mother. Managing a career that demanded clarity under pressure.
Around the same time, I started to notice my skin behaving differently. Not lines. How it recovered. After stress or a short night it no longer settled the way it used to. It felt drier, tighter, less like itself.
I understood what was happening. Hormonal change, layered with years of accumulated stress. This is normal biology, and it is measurable. But understanding the cause did not solve the problem, because what I could not find was a single product that treated my skin that way.
My skin had not failed me. It had changed. And it needed a different kind of care than anything I could buy.
Why Could I Not Just Buy Something That Worked?
I could not find skincare built for skin after 40 because most of the market is still formulated for younger skin and simply repackaged for older women.
The pattern became impossible to unsee once I noticed it. Anti-ageing serums promising to turn back time. High-strength actives pushed at women already dealing with sensitivity and a more reactive barrier. Formulas designed around a much younger skin profile, dressed in softer fonts and quieter packaging, and sold upward. The marketing changed. The formulation rarely did.
None of it was built for the specific reality of perimenopausal and menopausal skin: a slower recovery cycle, a more permeable barrier, reduced hydration and a lower tolerance for aggression. I wanted something built for this exact phase. Not adapted from something else. Built.
If you want to understand the biology behind this, I have written separately about why skin changes after 40 and how perimenopause changes your skin.
So I Learned to Make It Myself
My background is in marketing technology, not beauty. But I am also a certified nutritional therapist, and I had spent years thinking about how the body responds to stress from the inside out. I was used to asking what the body actually needs at a given stage, rather than what it can be sold.
So I qualified as a formulator and approached skin the same way. What does it genuinely need at this stage, and what is just noise. I wanted to understand the science rather than repeat the claims. I read the studies, learned the chemistry and tested formulations on the only person I could ask to take the risk first. Myself.
I did not commission ICHŌ from a contract lab and put my name on the front. I learned to formulate it, and my own skin was the first to use everything that became the finished product.
What Founder-Formulated Actually Means
Founder-formulated means the person whose name is on the brand made the decisions about what goes into it, and why.
It matters because it changes the questions that get asked during formulation. A formula built to hit a price point and a trend asks: what will sell. A formula built by someone who needs it to work asks: does this build resilience over time, or does it just look like it does. That single question shaped every choice in ICHŌ.
It is also why the range is deliberately small and will stay that way. I was not trying to build a routine for you to manage. I was trying to make the few things that genuinely help and leave out everything that does not earn its place.
What I Built Into the Formula
The result is the Resilience Complex Treatment Crème, built on a few principles I was not willing to compromise on.
The right actives, delivered properly
Botanical ingredients chosen for function rather than fashion, including fermented complexes and a phospholipid delivery approach that helps actives reach the level of the skin where they can do meaningful work. An ingredient sitting on the surface is a different proposition to one delivered where the biology actually happens.
Skin-identical lipids for the barrier
Camellia and babassu oils that support and replenish the barrier rather than simply coating it. After 40, barrier integrity is one of the first things to need help, and one of the most worthwhile to support.
Nothing without a reason
No filler ingredients. No trend actives added for the label. If something could not justify its place by building resilience over time, it did not go in.
You can read more about the thinking behind the ingredients in ferments in skincare and what I look for in every ingredient.
The question behind every decision was the same: does this build resilience over time, or does it just look like it does.
Recovery, Not Anti-Ageing
This is the distinction that ICHŌ is built on, and it is not a marketing line. It is a different philosophy of what skincare is for.
Fighting ageing usually means aggression: stripping, over-stimulating, overriding the skin's own signals to force a short-term result. Supporting recovery means working with the biology instead. It means giving skin the conditions to do its own repair more effectively, and judging a product over a full skin cycle rather than a single morning in the mirror.
For skin that has become more reactive and slower to recover, that difference is not subtle. It is the difference between a product that helps and a product that sets you back.
Why This Matters for You
I did not build ICHŌ as a business idea that happened to land on skincare. I built it because I needed it to exist, could not buy it and had the training to make it properly.
If your skin has changed and you have been quietly frustrated that nothing seems to meet you where you are, I understand that feeling precisely. It is the feeling that started all of this. ICHŌ is what I made in response, and it was made by someone with skin like yours, for skin like yours.
That is the whole of it. No reinvention overnight. Just steady, considered support for skin that deserves to be formulated for rather than sold to.
What is ICHŌ?
ICHŌ is a British founder-formulated longevity skincare brand for women over 40. It is built around recovery and resilience rather than anti-ageing, and was created by a certified formulator and nutritional therapist for skin going through perimenopause and beyond.
Who formulated ICHŌ?
I did. I am Dona, the founder, a certified formulator and nutritional therapist with a background in marketing technology. I learned to formulate ICHŌ myself rather than commissioning it from a contract lab, and tested it on my own skin first.
Why is skincare for women over 40 different?
After 40, hormonal change slows the skin's recovery cycle, weakens the barrier and reduces hydration. Skin becomes more reactive and less tolerant of high-strength actives, so it needs support for recovery and barrier integrity rather than aggressive anti-ageing correction.
Is founder-formulated skincare better?
Founder-formulated means the person behind the brand made the formulation decisions themselves. It does not guarantee quality on its own, but it changes the questions asked during development - from what will sell to what genuinely works - and tends to come with more accountability for what goes into the product.
What does recovery skincare mean?
Recovery skincare supports the skin's own repair processes rather than forcing short-term change through aggressive actives. For skin after 40, this means strengthening the barrier, supporting hydration retention and improving resilience over a full skin cycle.
How many products does ICHŌ make?
Deliberately few. The range is intentionally small and designed to stay that way - a small number of products that work together, rather than a multi-step routine to manage.
Skincare made by someone with skin like yours,
for skin like yours.