As Antipodes launches a haircare range ten years in the making, founder, Elizabeth Barbalich, reflects on the curiosity that has shaped her global skincare brand – and why understanding how things work still drives everything she creates.

Ask Elizabeth Barbalich a simple question about sensitive skin and the conversation quickly takes on a life of its own. What begins as a straightforward query soon turns into an exploration of how the skin is structured, how natural ingredients interact with it and why the best skincare formulas are greater than the sum of their ingredients.

It is the kind of discussion her team knows well. Elizabeth likes to understand things deeply and from all angles, rarely stopping at the surface. That instinct has shaped Antipodes, the natural skincare brand she founded more than two decades ago. But curiosity was there long before the business itself.

Growing up in rural Canterbury, Elizabeth was always alert to opportunity. As a teenager she noticed sheep manure collecting beneath the slatted floors of nearby shearing sheds. Before long she was shovelling it into hemp sacks and selling it to gardeners at the local market, with the help of a friend’s father and his truck. It was hardly the sort of work that hints at a future in the beauty industry but it revealed something about the way Elizabeth thinks – look closely, ask questions and don’t be afraid to do the work yourself.

A fascination with nature has always sat at the centre of Elizabeth’s thinking. The unique botanicals found in New Zealand’s landscapes are a constant source of curiosity. When an ingredient catches her attention, she dives into the rabbit hole, reading, researching, reformulating and testing until everything comes together.

Over the years she has built close relationships with cosmetic scientists and pharmacists to better understand how ingredients behave and how formulations can be tested and proven to work. It is one part of the work she loves most. Conversations can stretch for hours as she explores how compounds interact with skin cells and
how small tweaks can make one formula perform better than another.

A fascination with nature has always sat at the centre of Elizabeth’s thinking.

It is a subject that clearly brings her to life. She laughs that her enthusiasm sometimes needs tempering. ‘I get very passionate about the science,’ she says. ‘My team are always telling me to bring it down a notch.’

But Elizabeth is not entirely convinced that is necessary. ‘Women are smart,’ she says, ‘and they’re curious about what they put on their skin.’

When she founded Antipodes in 2004, her vision was to showcase the performance of New Zealand’s natural ingredients to the world through skincare formulations that were both luxurious and scientifically credible. That same mindset has shaped the brand’s newest category. It took nearly ten years of research and development for Antipodes to enter haircare – not because the opportunity was not there, but because it has taken time for natural haircare ingredients to become as exciting and effective as those she had long been working with in skincare.

One ingredient that caught her attention was Atlantic seaweed (Pelvetia canaliculata). What fascinated Elizabeth was the way it survives in one of nature’s toughest environments. At low tide it can dry out on the rocks, exposed to sun and air. Hours later, when the tide returns, it rehydrates and continues growing as if nothing has happened. That ability to retain moisture is exactly what makes it such a powerful ingredient for haircare.

For Elizabeth, nature is not just something studied in a lab or captured in a formula. She still spends as much time outdoors as possible. She loves skiing in winter and spends the warmer months running through the rugged landscapes that first sparked her fascination with New Zealand’s botanicals and bees.

More than twenty years after founding Antipodes, Elizabeth still approaches the business with the same instinct that has guided her from the beginning – a reverence for nature, a desire to understand things deeply and a determination to never stop learning.