About Us

Adeline formulating in the Sabbatical Beauty lab.

About Sabbatical

Sabbatical Beauty began as an academic experiment, not a business plan.

In 2015, while on academic sabbatical from a tenured professorship, Adeline started formulating skincare because her skin wasn’t coping — with climate changes, stress, or the products she could buy. What she kept running into was a familiar pattern: brands loudly advertised “active” ingredients, but when she read the ingredient lists closely, those ingredients appeared in trace amounts — often below preservatives or fragrance.

So she started making her own.

Not because she wanted to start a company, but because she wanted products where the ingredient list matched the claims.

Sabbatical Beauty is built on a simple principle: ingredients should be used at concentrations that actually do something. That means fewer fillers, fewer symbolic inclusions, and formulas where the base of the product — not just the headline ingredient — supports skin health.

The line is Korean-inspired not because it's trendy, but as a formulation philosophy: layered hydration, barrier repair, and the generous use of botanicals like ginseng, rice, sea kelp, centella, and camellia — ingredients Adeline grew up trusting growing up in Singapore, and that modern cosmetic science supports when used properly.

When she shared early formulas with friends, the feedback was consistent: reduced redness, calmer skin, better hydration, and visible changes in texture within weeks. That response — repeated again and again — is what turned a kitchen experiment into Sabbatical Beauty.

Our Vacuum Cleansing Oil has been rated #2 Cleansing Oil by Elle Magazine, we have been awarded Best Local Skin Care Line by Philadelphia Magazine, and have been featured in Allure, Slate, Shape, Beauty Independent, the Guardian and more. 

What "Sabbatical" Means Here

A sabbatical isn’t about escape. It’s about recalibration.

Sabbatical Beauty is meant to give your skin a break from overstimulation — from aggressive actives, diluted formulas, and constant product churn. The goal isn’t perfection. It’s skin that feels calmer, more resilient, and easier to live in.

We formulate for people whose skin reacts to stress, weather, hormones, over-processing, or years of doing “everything right” and still feeling irritated.

Our goal is also to broaden what beauty means, and to empower of all skin tones, textures and ages to fall more in love with the skin they are in.

Why Our Formulas Are Different

Sabbatical Beauty products are made in small batches and formulated by hand, not optimized for mass production.

That allows us to:

• Use botanicals at meaningful concentrations
• Build formulas around functional bases (not just hero ingredients)
• Prioritize barrier repair and inflammation reduction
• Make products that show results and do what they promise

Many of our formulas draw from Korean skincare traditions — not trends — including the use of camellia oil, fermented ingredients, and multi-layer hydration systems that respect the skin barrier.

If you’ve felt disillusioned by big beauty promises, we encourage you to start with a sample and let your skin tell you whether this approach works for you.

Community & Political Organization

Because Adeline came to skincare through a background in race and gender studies, we do not see beauty as politically neutral.

How skin is treated, marketed, disciplined, and idealized is always connected to larger systems — including inequality, access to care, and whose bodies are taken seriously.

Because of that, Sabbatical Beauty has consistently supported organizations working toward a more just and equitable society. This has included fundraising collections and direct donations to groups such as the ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center, National Abortion Federation, Swing Left, Red Wine & Blue, and community organizations like SEAMAAC.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we produced and donated masks and hand sanitizer to local shelters, essential workers, and community groups in Philadelphia, as well as to Powai Polyclinic & Hospital in Mumbai.

In 2024 as part of our Giving Tuesday Initiative we ran a holiday toy drive for SEAMAAC, and in 2025 organized donation gender-affirming facials for the trans community with the Equitable Skincare Project and the William Way LGBT Center. 

These efforts aren’t marketing initiatives. They’re part of how we understand responsibility as a business operating in the world.

We believe that the roots of beauty and skincare are deeply political, because how we treat our bodies corresponds to how we show up in this world both for ourselves and others. Read more in Adelien's blog posthere.

About Adeline

Adeline is the founder and formulator of Sabbatical Beauty.

She has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan and is a former tenured professor of English who held fellowships at the National University of Singapore, Duke University and the University of Pennsylvania. She is also a Formula Botanica Graduate, and hold a diploma in organic skincare formulation and certificates in natural cosmetic preservation and stability testing. 

Her approach to formulation is shaped by close reading, pattern recognition, and an insistence on coherence — skills honed in academia and applied directly to ingredient lists, formulation logic, and skincare education.

Sabbatical Beauty is the result of that crossover: research-driven, herb-forward skincare made for people who want substance over signal — and products that do what they say they do.