.png)
John Kilroy, Cosmetic Formulator and Founder of Foundry on Building a British Luxury Beauty Brand From a Saxon Water Mill in Somerset
- Style Essentials Edit Team
- 4 days ago
- 2 min read
Foundry, the new British luxury beauty brand created by cosmetic formulator and perfumer John Kilroy, builds its entire identity around that transparency. It launches from a former Saxon water mill in Frome, Somerset, with an edit of skincare, bodycare, and fragrance that sits as comfortably in the language of high science as it does in the Somerset countryside that physically surrounds it.
What makes Foundry genuinely distinct from the wave of science-led brands that have defined the premium skincare conversation over the past several years is that Kilroy is not simply sourcing advanced ingredients from external laboratories and assembling them into formulas; he is growing, harvesting, and processing a significant portion of his own botanical extracts, ferments, and lysates from wild berries, flowers, and plant material gathered on site, producing small-batch artisan materials that sit alongside technically advanced ingredients from specialist global suppliers in a formulation approach that treats science and nature as genuinely complementary rather than competing narratives. The result is a brand with both the rigor of a laboratory and the rootedness of something made slowly and deliberately in a specific place.
The launch serums reflect that formulation ambition clearly, with ingredient lists that move through peptides, amino acids, AHAs and BHAs, and plant-derived extracts with real purpose and specificity. One serum addresses the skin's microbiome using vegan placenta extract and fermented vitamin B9; another delivers retinaldehyde paired with vitamin C through nano-encapsulation for controlled and targeted release; and a third combines a full spectrum of vitamins with enzymes and antioxidants in a formula that covers the breadth of skin health in a single step. A night oil built around a large and carefully selected range of plant compounds rounds out the skincare core with the same considered intensity.
The body care and fragrance side of the launch follows the same logic, pairing active-led formulas with fragrance compositions that draw from high perfumery. This includes using citrus oils sourced from specific vintages, Melissa oil from a Norfolk grower, and blackcurrant bud absolute from Burgundy. These sourcing decisions reflect the same attention to provenance and quality that runs through every other aspect of what Foundry makes. All of it produced at the Saxon water mill in Frome, a site that has moved through farming and textiles across the centuries and now houses one of the more quietly remarkable new addresses in British beauty.
Foundry is available at foundryformulas.co.uk, priced from £25 to £180, shipping to the UK and US.
You May Also Like
Comments