A skincare line was never the plan for Irene Forte. Upon graduating from Oxford University, she began working in hospitality for her family’s luxury hotel business, Rocco Forte Hotels. When she began looking after the hotel group’s spas for fun, her interest in wellness quickly took her in an unexpected direction. “I wanted to unify the spas with a product range, and when I started looking for a brand, I didn’t find anything that I was super-excited about,” Forte tells Observer. “We have this amazing organic farm in Sicily, which is at our Verdura Resort, and I started to think about doing something with the ingredients from the farm.”
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Knowing that she wanted to take a “natural but not naive” approach to Irene Forte Skincare, which is centered around sustainability and using local ingredients, Forte started looking for a lab to begin formulating products, and along the way, met the brand’s future scientific director, Dr. Francesca Ferri. “She’s a fascinating lady who’s been formulating for over 35 years in the north of Italy,” Forte says of Ferri, whom she’s now been working with for over nine years. “She had experience with spa ranges, but she’s also been awarded patents for her work on breast cancer tumors using vitamin E supplements.”
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