What does it mean to be elevated, by design? We had a conversation with Jean-Pierre Mastey, the founder of CORPUS®, a natural personal care line that goes above and beyond than what you've come to expect.
CORPUS strives to create a balance between Product and Planet through clean, sustainable experiences without sacrificing quality and performance. What made you start working with natural ingredients in personal care?
My motivation was personal. In 2015, I was expecting my first child. While preparing our home, I went from being someone who read ingredient panels to becoming almost obsessive about what we brought into the house and put on our skin.
At the time, most natural personal-care products seemed to require a sacrifice. They were either not as natural as they claimed, or they compromised on aesthetics, scent, texture or performance. I had spent more than a decade in the industry, and I felt prepared to do it better.
We had attempted natural formulations years earlier, but the science simply was not there yet. A decade later, ingredient technology had evolved considerably. Natural and effective no longer needed to be opposing ideas. That progress is what made CORPUS possible.
How do you see your products helping people slow down and find a moment of peace in their daily routines?
Personal care is made up of small things we already do every day. You shower, apply deodorant and get dressed, often without giving any of it much thought. I like the idea that good scent, texture and design can interrupt that autopilot for a moment.
My own shower has always been a place where I think. There are very few distractions, and it gives me a moment to consider the day ahead or decompress at the end of it. A well-made product can make that familiar routine feel more intentional.
There is a difference between the products we simply use and the products we love. CORPUS was created to make those ordinary moments feel considered and perhaps a little more pleasurable.
Natural perfumery could be compared to the modern vegan chef who transforms the constraints on ingredients into convincing and satisfying substitutes. Can you walk us through your creative process from the initial inspiration to the final product and feeling?
I have often used the vegan-chef comparison myself. Natural perfumery has a much more limited palette than conventional perfumery, but those constraints can also force greater creativity.
We work with essential oils, resins, distillates, fractions, concretes, absolutes and extracts. There are still many familiar perfume notes that cannot be recreated naturally, so the process is not about simply replacing one ingredient with another. It is about finding a different route to the same emotion.
I normally begin with a memory, a place or a feeling. Nº Green, for example, came from childhood memories of peeling tangerines by the pool and having the oils remain on my fingertips. The scent focuses more on the rind than the juice because that was the part of the memory that stayed with me.
From there, we build, test and edit until the fragrance has the complexity and sophistication I expect from fine fragrance. It must then work within the formulation, perform properly and feel right on the skin. The final product has to satisfy every sense – not only smell good.
How do you stay true to yourself and your values while working inside eco-friendly production guidelines?
The guidelines are not something we apply after developing the product. They are part of the design brief from the beginning.
We consider the ingredients, how the product is made, the packaging and the energy used to produce it. At the same time, performance remains essential. A product is not meaningfully sustainable if it does not work or if someone does not want to continue using it.
There are always limitations and tradeoffs, and I try to be honest about those. I do not think sustainability is about making claims of perfection. It is about making better choices wherever we can, continuing to question those choices and improving as better materials and technologies become available.
You carry a beautiful belief that each person has an evolving, intimate definition of luxury that cannot be culturally prescribed or achieved. What are some of the ways this manifests in your own life?
Luxury, for me, has become much more about time, attention and freedom than the traditional things we are told represent it.
It can be getting seven or eight hours of sleep without an alarm clock, having a quiet morning, taking my daughter to school or having enough time to prepare for the day without rushing through it. It is also being surrounded by fewer things, but choosing those things carefully and appreciating how they look, feel and function.
Our definition of luxury should change as our lives change. If it can be universally prescribed or reduced to a price, I am not sure it is really personal enough to be luxury.
If you were introducing CORPUS to someone looking for a gentler, more intentional way of living, which aspect of the brand would you share first to truly touch their heart?
I would begin with the idea that you should not have to sacrifice pleasure in order to make a more thoughtful choice.
CORPUS is not asking someone to completely change the way they live. It is an invitation to reconsider something they already use every day and to choose a version that is more carefully formulated, beautifully designed and genuinely enjoyable.
Good design can elevate an ordinary object into an extraordinary experience. That is the heart of CORPUS: making the everyday products around us more thoughtful, without losing the performance or pleasure that makes us want to use them.
Thank you.
JP & CORPUS®
