Symbiome's thoughtfully curated line gets you glowing with a short list of supercharged clean ingredients.

Symbiome’s The Renewal daily cleanser, The One restorative cream and Rebalance001

According to Instagram’s beauty influencer bunch, the key to procuring radiant skin isn’t an easy one to unlock. Involving a multitude of products and elaborate routines, what stemmed from K-beauty has morphed into something overly complicated and involved. For many, fatigue has set in.

Co-founder and CEO Vicky Levine

Enter Symbiome, a new San Francisco-based skincare line that’s changing the conversation. Billed as the first science-based skincare brand to create a collection of BioIntact products that restore the skin’s microbiome and bolster skin barrier function, each of the line’s products has less than 10 potent ingredients. “Symbiome was born out of our extensive research on the skin microbiome,” says Vicki Levine, the brand’s co-founder and CEO. “We wanted to create a luxury brand that was built upon our proprietary science with skin health serving as the primary design parameter. It doing so, we knew that the products needed to not only be clean but also be minimally and intentionally formulated, while still being extremely effective.”

A selection of the brand’s face oils

The line launched in late 2020 with seven products, including two cleansers, one moisturizer and four oils. In January, Symbiome released a serum and eye cream, and the company has plans to expand to bodycare in late spring. “One of our hero ingredients is fermented oil derived from the Sanoma plant, a shrub native to the Amazon and surrounding area,” says Levine. “This single, powerhouse oil— packed with a host of essential fatty acids, terpenes and vitamins—does the work of numerous ordinary ingredients. We believe that less can do more when rigorous science guides ingredient selection and formulation.”