What's Inside: The Key Ingredients in Mainland Vintage Soaps and Body Products

Every product we make starts with the same question: what does this ingredient actually do, and does it earn its place in the formula? We don't add things to make a list look impressive. We add things because they work.

Here's a look at the ingredients you'll find across our soaps, body butters, and body oils - and why we reach for them.

Coconut Oil 

Coconut oil shows up in nearly everything we make - our soaps, body oils, and body butters. Rich in fatty acids including lauric acid, it builds a generous lather in soap and contributes a silky, lightweight feel in oil and butter formulas. It's one of those ingredients that earns its place across almost every product category because it genuinely performs in all of them.

Shea Butter 

Shea butter is a staple in several of our soaps - Thrive with Pride, Blueberry Bramble, and Flowering Fields among them - and across our body butter line. It's rich in vitamins A and E and has a thick, creamy texture that makes it particularly effective during seasonal transitions when skin needs more than light hydration. If a product feels genuinely nourishing rather than just moisturizing on the surface, shea butter is usually part of the reason.

Epsom Salt 

Epsom salt, also known as magnesium sulfate, is the foundation of our bath salt blends. It's been used in bathing rituals for a long time and for good reason - it dissolves easily, softens the water, and brings a real sense of relaxation to an evening soak. For our bath salts, we blend it with Himalayan and Hawaiian salts and layer in extracts and our custom fragrances to create something that turns a regular bath into an actual ritual.

Cocoa Butter 

Cocoa butter is featured in our body butter formulas, and it's there for its texture as much as anything else. Extracted from cocoa beans, it has a velvety, dense feel that melts on contact with skin. It's rich in antioxidants and contributes to the kind of softness that actually lasts. There's also a naturally subtle cocoa scent to it that works well underneath our custom fragrance blends.

Aloe Vera 

Aloe vera appears in our body oils and in several soaps - Deep Sea, Midnight Skyline, and Monstera Leaf among them. It's a lightweight hydrator that layers well with other ingredients without adding heaviness. We use it specifically in products where we want moisture without any kind of greasy finish, and it holds up well alongside the oils and butters in those formulas.

 

Jojoba Oil 

Jojoba oil is in our body oils and in the Vanilla Noir body butter. What makes it worth reaching for is its similarity to the skin's own natural oils - it absorbs quickly, doesn't clog pores, and carries vitamins E and B without feeling heavy. In body oil formulas especially, jojoba is part of what makes the difference between an oil that sits on top and one that actually absorbs.

 

A Note on How We Source

We're a small studio in Gowanus, Brooklyn. We're not sourcing at scale and we're not working with large, overseas manufacturers. Every batch is made by hand, which means we pay close attention to what goes into each formula - because we're the ones making it.

If you're curious about where our ingredients come from, you can read more about our suppliers and sourcing philosophy on our Suppliers & Communities page.

Thanks,
Sara & the Mainland Vintage team