Our story
How we got here.
We're Léonore and Olivia. We met in London and we'd both spent years working in beauty, Léonore on the lab side, Olivia on the brand side. Then we became mothers.
We kept looking for a body care we'd actually want to put on our shelves, that we could also use through pregnancy and after, without playing safety roulette with the ingredient list. Nothing we tried did both.
So in March 2023 we started Theonlychapter. Léonore took over the formulation with a partner lab in London. Olivia took over the product, the packaging, and the brand. We spent more than a year saying no to almost every shortcut, cheaper textures, faster suppliers, fragrance "to make it commercial." We wanted the cream we'd been looking for, not a softer version of it.
There's a Tuesday that first winter we still laugh about. Pre-orders sold out 48 hours in. The contract filler that handled our viscosity was booked until November, so we hand-corked the first 200 jars in Olivia's Notting Hill kitchen until 4 a.m., sterile zone built from a steam tent and a UV lamp, lukewarm pizza for company. We still keep the spreadsheet of those first 200 names in a drawer.
The first chapter is the Firming Body Cream you see today.