Our Story
Skincare
that explains
itself.
Mechanism.
Evidence.
Patience.
Three ideas have shaped Opuliss from the first formula. Every active is chosen for a documented mechanism. Every claim is tied to a study you can read. And real skin is built by patience, not shortcuts. This is the founder's story, and the standard it set.
A brand born on the road
For years I lived out of a suitcase. A new city every few weeks, and with it a new climate, new water, new air. My skin recorded all of it. It is sensitive and reacts to sunlight; it peels, it flushes, it gives up its barrier when I am run down, and on the road it almost never had two settled weeks to recover.
The question no one would answer
So I did what you would probably do. I saw dermatologists, in one city after another, and the visit almost never changed. A quick look, a prescription, come back in six weeks if it does not work. I would walk out without once being told what the ingredient actually did, or why it was right for my skin and not simply the next thing on the shelf.
"I did not want another prescription. I wanted to understand my own face."
Hieu Nguyen, FounderEvery ingredient, explained
Opuliss is what I built when I stopped waiting for someone else to explain it. One rule shaped everything: no ingredient earns a place in a formula without a documented reason for being there. Each active is chosen for a peer-reviewed mechanism, matched to a real concern, and the reasoning is written down and cited. That is why an Opuliss page reads more like a dossier than an advertisement.
There is no shortcut.
That is the good news.
“Good skin is not luck, and it is not genetics alone. It is a foundation you build, one honest step at a time. I want that for you as much as I wanted it for myself.”
Hieu Nguyen, Founder of OpulissThe Opuliss standard
Before any formula ships, it has to clear the same four questions. This is the standard behind every bottle, and the reason there are no shortcuts here.
Mechanism first
We start with the molecule and the pathway. The benefit is the consequence, never the opening line.
Cited, not claimed
Every efficacy statement points to a named study. If we cannot cite it, we do not say it.
Formulated to combine
Actives are chosen to work together, not to crowd a label. Fewer, better reasoned ingredients.
Made for sensitive skin
Every formula is judged for reactive, sensitive skin first. If it is not right for mine, it does not ship.
Be first
Be the first to know as new formulas, new science, and new stories arrive from Opuliss.
Sign me up to hear from Opuliss. To learn more, view our Privacy Policy.
The record
What we put in writing
Why I will never ask for a reformulation
In roughly two years, five of the most recognisable complexion products in prestige beauty were rebuilt from the inside out[6]. Some had been on shelves for more than twenty years. They kept their names. They kept their packaging.
The changes were announced. The reason was not.
That gap is the whole subject of this letter. Not the reformulations. The silence around why.
The law moves. Your formula stands still.
Here is the part almost nobody explains. A formula does not have to change for it to become illegal. The rules move underneath it.
Brussels restricted a family of silicones used in leave-on products, with a deadline of 6 June 2027[1]. It capped retinol for the first time, and required a warning on the carton[2]. On 31 July 2026, the list of fragrance ingredients that must be named individually on a label expands from 24 substances to eighty[3].
None of that is a brand deciding to improve anything. It is a brand being told to comply. And because running one formula for Europe and another for everywhere else is not practical, industry reporting suggests the change is usually made once, for the world[6]. A decision in Brussels quietly rewrites a jar in Ohio.
The regulator is candid about expecting exactly this:
"The industry should be allowed reasonable periods of time to adapt to the new requirements, including by making the necessary adjustments to product formulations to ensure that only cosmetic products complying with the new requirements are placed on the market."[2]
Reformulation is written into the law as the assumed response. So when a twenty-year-old product is rebuilt and the press release calls it an upgrade, that is often true and incomplete at the same time. The formula changed. The law is why. The second half rarely makes the announcement.
Nobody is required to tell you
This is the part that should bother you more than it does.
In the United States, a responsible person must list each marketed cosmetic product with the FDA, ingredients included, and update that listing annually[4]. So the change is reported. It goes to a regulator, once a year, into a database you will never open.
I went looking for a duty to tell the buyer, in the European rules and the American ones, and I did not find one. What the law gives you is the current list[5]. Nothing I could find obliges anyone to mention that it used to say something else.
That is the gap I am writing about, and it is the one thing here I can do something about.
What I promise
I do not manufacture anything. Opuliss is sourced. I choose which of a manufacturer's finished formulas to sell and which to refuse. The chemistry is theirs. The refusing, and the record, are mine.
So I am not going to promise you my manufacturer's behaviour. I cannot bind their hand, and a promise I cannot keep is worth less than no promise at all.
What I can bind is my own conduct. Three commitments, and they are the whole covenant:
- I will never ask for a formula to be changed. Not to widen a margin, not to chase a trend, not to refresh a launch.
- I will never mask a change. If a formula I sell comes back different, I will not quietly let it through and keep the name doing the work.
- I will publish every difference I detect, within 30 days of knowing. At every reorder I record the ingredient list and compare it against the one before. Dated, per product, whether or not it flatters me.
That third promise is the load-bearing one, and it is worth being precise about why. It is not generosity. It is simply more than the law asks of me, and on this the law asks nothing.
This covenant runs from 1 May 2026, and I will tell you plainly what happened on that date, because you would find it anyway. I retired an entire skincare range and started over with a single manufacturer. Not one product name carried across.
The store is not open yet, so you will hit a password. What it sold in 2025 is in the Internet Archive, and that is where you should look. You will find products that no longer exist.
I would rather say that than have it discovered. And it draws the line this whole letter depends on: retiring a product is visible to you. Reformulating one is not. The covenant governs the invisible act.
What I cannot promise
A promise is only worth the honesty of its limits. Here are mine, and the last one costs me the most to write.
The law can still force a change. It may well force one soon. Most of the range I source from my skincare manufacturer contains a fragrance mix, and the deadline I mentioned falls on the 31st of this month.
If a label or a formula changes because a regulator said so, I will publish it and I will say the law is why. That is not a loophole. It is the difference between a change I chose and a change I was handed, and you deserve to know which one you are looking at.
An ingredient list cannot show you strength. This is the limit almost no brand admits, so I will. European law says the list runs in descending order of weight. Then it adds this: ingredients under one percent "may be listed in any order after those in concentrations of more than 1 %"[5].
No cosmetic ingredient list has to carry a percentage. So work the arithmetic through. An active could be cut to a fraction of its former level, with nothing added and nothing removed. The printed list could still come back identical, in the same order, entirely legally.
So when I publish a dated record of an ingredient list, be clear about what it proves. It proves the list did not change. It does not prove the formula did not. Anyone who tells you a published ingredient list certifies a formula is either mistaken or selling something.
A permanent formula is not a permanent catalogue. This July I pulled a product rather than ask for its formula to be adjusted. Its own colorants were not permitted for the eye and lip use I was selling it for. As labelled, it was not compliant, and that was my error, not my manufacturer's.
I had two ways to keep it. Ask for the tint to be changed, or narrow what I sold it as. The first was not mine to ask. I did not take the second. So I pulled it, and it cost me a product.
Which leaves the limit, stated as plainly as I can put it. I can promise I will never ask for a change, and never hide one I can see. I cannot promise the product will be there forever. And I cannot promise that a change too small to reach the label will never happen, because I would not see that one either.
Do not take my word for any of this
Here is the flaw in the instrument I am building, said out loud. A record I publish about myself is not independent. It is a brand grading its own homework, and you should treat it exactly that sceptically.
Independent sites already publish dated ingredient-list histories for thousands of products, tracking what a label said before against what it says now. They do not list me yet. When they do, that record is the test, and I will have no hand in it.
That is the point. Not whether my record says I kept my word. Whether someone with no stake in my brand says the same thing.
What this costs
The reformulation cycle is not a scandal. It is the most reliable engine in this industry. New and improved is a reason to talk to you again, to win the shelf back, to relaunch a tired product into a new season.
Giving that up means giving up the easiest story a beauty brand can tell. I think the trade is worth it, and not because I am principled. It is because the thing I am selling is not a formula. Anyone can buy a formula.
What I am selling is that the reasoning is on the table and the record is checkable. Neither survives a quiet edit.
If I ever ask for a formula to be changed in order to sell more of it, I will have broken the only thing here worth having. Not the formula. The record.
So I am putting it in writing, with my name on it, where you can hold it against me.
Hieu Nguyen, Founder, Opuliss
17 July 2026
Sources
- Commission Regulation (EU) 2024/1328 of 16 May 2024, amending Annex XVII to Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006 (REACH) as regards D4, D5 and D6. Leave-on cosmetics deadline 6 June 2027. eur-lex.europa.eu
- Commission Regulation (EU) 2024/996 of 3 April 2024, amending Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 as regards Vitamin A, Alpha-Arbutin, Arbutin and certain substances with potential endocrine-disrupting properties. Retinol limits at Annex III entries 376 to 378. The "Contains Vitamin A" labelling obligation. Recital 20 quoted above. eur-lex.europa.eu
- Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/1545 of 26 July 2023, amending Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 as regards labelling of fragrance allergens. Placing on the market cutoff 31 July 2026. Made available on the market 31 July 2028. eur-lex.europa.eu
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Registration and Listing of Cosmetic Product Facilities and Products (MoCRA). fda.gov
- Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 November 2009 on cosmetic products, Article 19(1)(g) and Article 21. Consolidated text in force 1 May 2025. eur-lex.europa.eu
- The Beauty Edit. The Era of Reformulations and What It's Really About. 24 May 2026. thebeautyedit.ph
The covenant's third promise is a record: at every reorder, the ingredient list of every product is captured, dated, and compared against the one before, and every difference is published within 30 days of being known.
That record lives on its own page, one home so it cannot quietly fork, and it is already running.
Read the Formula Permanence record
