Weleda · Touched by Nature · Adam and Eve, naked, on leaves, wrapped around a tube.
Weleda is named after Veleda — the name of wise healers. It says so on their website, casually, as if it were an etymological footnote. It isn't. It's the load-bearing wall of a brand that has been selling the same promise for 100 years: that nature knows what you need. That if you trust it, you will be held.
Rudolf Steiner, Weleda's founder and anthroposophist, meant this literally — nature as spirit, plants as souls, the human being as a cosmic entity. Technology didn't feature in his thinking. Tina Müller, CEO since 2023, speaks for the brand like this:
The anthroposophical inheritance — freshly fertilised, all inconvenient weeds pulled. But the visual appearance of connectedness with nature doesn't produce a fresh, contemporary, surprising image of the world. Instead: Adam and Eve, naked, on leaves, wrapped around a tube. Seen before. Any brand can fill this tube. With any idea. Any promise.
Weleda talks about nature as backdrop, not as living tissue.
An ad campaign describes what a product does. A narrative answers why the world would be poorer without this brand. Weleda has the material — a hundred years, medicinal plants, a founder who meant nature as spirit. But what gets told is the campaign. The reason for being is still waiting to be deciphered.
Touched by Nature. To be touched by nature — at Weleda, this does not mean being challenged, thrown into contradiction as a human being. No. Nature is a service provider. Its mandate: protect, heal, nourish skin.
What gets placed at its side, from human hands, is called a NAD⁺ booster.
NAD⁺ — nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide — is a coenzyme present in every living cell. It governs energy metabolism, DNA repair, cell regeneration. It declines from the age of 25. Longevity research loves it. Biohacking bros administer it intravenously. At Weleda, it comes from organically grown sunflower seedlings — produced via a resource-efficient indoor farming process in Switzerland. A sunflower that has never seen the sun.
This is not a niche product. This is Weleda's most significant launch in a hundred years. CEO Tina Müller called it "the beginning of a new chapter" — and said: Weleda goes prestige. The new Cell Longevity line is Weleda's first appearance in perfumeries. The first step into the premium market. And the first official farewell to the health-food-store aura that made Weleda great.
They take a longevity ingredient from Silicon Valley's biohacking discourse and dress it in a fashionable linen coat. And I wait for the meadow. It won't come. It was optimised.
The promise remains: Touched by Nature. The ingredient comes from a chamber with no windows. That is substance tyranny — not as accusation, but as diagnosis. Nature is asserted. The lab delivers.
Weleda is not alone. The entire natural cosmetics industry plays the same story piano — nature up front, lab behind, promise in between.
Drunk Elephant calls it Biocompatibility: the skin recognises the ingredient. Molecular friendship on a product basis. Pulpe de Vie bets on vegetable and fruit waste — upcycling as conscience, Provence as backdrop.
All of them stay silent about what human skin is supposed to become. An optimised interface? A low-maintenance surface?
I ask myself: do I want to live in skin like that?
Anti-aging is now Slow Aging, Pro-Aging, Skin Longevity. The enemy has a new name. No longer the wrinkle. Transience itself.
I ask: why is my skin a battleground?
Touched by Nature — the promise: whoever applies the cream will be touched by nature.
But don't we look for touch not in the abstract, but quite practically — from other human beings? Our hunger for touch longs for the hand, not the serum. For the moment when someone touches our skin. Anyone who has ever counted how many days can pass without another person touching us knows this longing.
The hand applying the cream is our own. We would rather be the one being touched. But even our own hand doesn't get to enjoy it — it's helping the cream optimise the skin.
Where is Weleda's tickle, its teasing, its shiver-down-the-spine feeling? Skin as a font of pleasure, a giver of delight, a site of sensory drama. Not in the range.
Our skin depends on our inner life. You can see whether things are going well or badly for us. It shows it — uneven sometimes, rosily flushed sometimes, tired sometimes. It has its own language, with its own punctuation. Think of redness as an exclamation mark, a wrinkle as a dash, or pallor as a long sentence with no full stop.
A language you shouldn't ruin by ironing it flat. Ironed flat, every skin becomes a fibre indistinguishable from any other. Stretched over like a botox grimace.
Every skin that shows its story is a skin with a great deal to say. Whoever optimises skin is practising substance tyranny.
Our skin has far more exciting things to report. Let's listen carefully when it speaks.
Which cosmetics company has the courage to stand behind a narrative that lustfully celebrates: our elixirs lubricate.
Are there young natural cosmetics brands out there who don't want to stumble into the trap of substance tyranny? I am ready to "dada-ize" your brand narrative with you.
| Touched by Nature | Touched by nature. Not overwhelmed, not challenged, not wet. Touched — like a push notification from the earth. |
| NAD⁺ | Longevity ingredient in a linen coat. Administered intravenously by biohacking bros. At Weleda, it comes from a sunflower that has never seen the sun. |
| Indoor Farming Switzerland | High-tech greenhouse in neutral language. Nature, but with air conditioning. Grown under controlled conditions, so the wild doesn't get any ideas. |
| Calendula | The sympathy element. Always mentioned when an ingredient needs explaining. Soothes consumers and packaging designers simultaneously. |
| Ritual | Routine with a candle. Appears when the word obligation would be too honest. Lends evening moisturising the character of a religious act without a congregation. |
| Slow Aging | Anti-aging that's been to therapy. The enemy is now called transience. It used to be the wrinkle. |
| Touch Hunger | Frowned upon, because it cannot be tamed. Desire locked inside a tube. Not waterproof. |
| Loneliness | A negative feeling that is meant to stay quiet. The cream replaces dialogue. Not in the range. |
| Skin | The largest human organ. Font of pleasure, giver of delight, site of sensory drama. Dramaturgy included. Optimisation unnecessary. |
| Mortality | Known. Kept quiet. Not soluble in marigold. |