There’s more to Moroccan beauty than argan oil

Ask anyone to name a Moroccan beauty ingredient, and you’ll get the same answer: argan oil. Fair enough—it’s earned its shelf space. But reduce an entire beauty culture to one pressed oil and you miss almost everything else: a poppy-petal blush older than modern makeup, an indigo powder Saharan women once used against sun damage, and a hammam ritual built around a coarse little glove that will humble anyone who’s never used one.

In other words, argan oil was the trailer. There’s an entire world of Moroccan beauty that deserves to be discovered.    

Start with the hammam, because everyone who’s tried it converts. The ritual pairs beldi soap—a soft, olive-based black soap—with a kessa glove, worked over steamed skin in slow circles until dead skin lifts away in visible rolls. “The kessa glove, even without using Moroccan beldi soap before it, works extremely well to remove your dead skin—you’ll see your dead skin fall off like you’ve never seen it before,” says Leah, 26, the London-based CEO of Zita Moroccan Skin. New York-based beauty content creator Isabel Planes agrees: “The combination of black soap and exfoliating with a kessa glove makes my skin so smooth. The first time I saw how much dead skin came off, I was honestly shocked.” 

Then there’s nila, an indigo-derived powder used for generations to even out skin tone. Historically, Leah notes, women in the Sahara used it to protect their skin against sun damage. “With consistent use it’s amazing for reducing hyperpigmentation and dark circles,” she adds. It’s worth being precise here: nila brightens the appearance of skin. It does not lighten it, and that distinction matters—any ingredient sold as a way to alter someone’s natural complexion isn’t a beauty benefit; it’s colourism with better packaging.

Aker fassi, meanwhile, might be the only ‘clean’ beauty lip and cheek tint you need in 2026: dried poppy petals ground with pomegranate rind into a natural stain for lips and cheeks. Another ingredient to note, prickly pear seed oil—sometimes called the world’s most expensive facial oil, given the sheer volume of fruit needed for one bottle—is quietly entering luxury formulations on the strength of its antioxidant load and vitamin E.

And it’s not just Moroccan beauty brands taking note. Global names, including Christophe Robin, have folded prickly pear seed oil into their formulations, while specialist brands such as DoSe have made the ingredient their hero. The ingredient is beginning to make its way into Indian beauty, too: Farmoganic has built a Moroccan Earth series around ingredients including prickly pear oil and Moroccan lava clay, while Indian brand Deve Herbes sells pure prickly pear seed oil as a standalone facial treatment.

The science, where it exists, is more solid than sceptics assume. Argan oil is the best studied of the group—its oleic and linoleic acid content, plus vitamin E, support the skin barrier and deliver real antioxidant benefit. Prickly pear seed oil holds up too, with a comparable antioxidant and vitamin E profile that justifies its price tag. Sidr, a natural leaf-derived powder used as a cleansing agent or shampoo, has saponins that have documented cleansing and antimicrobial properties. 

None of it needs reinventing—not 10 synthetic ingredients standing in for a ritual built on ghassoul clay, beldi soap, and a kessa glove. So, what’s driving this resurgence of interest in Moroccan beauty? Partly, it’s fatigue. “People are starting to appreciate natural and organic beauty products more, as they’re seeing too many chemicals in the everyday beauty products they’re using,” Leah says. “Even Moroccans themselves are starting to focus more on the traditional and natural remedies their grandparents used.” For them, however, it’s less like discovery, more a return.

The rest is travel and timing feeding each other. Planes’s own Moroccan beauty journey began with the shopfronts of Steinway Street in Astoria that sell Arabic gum and blue nila. For others it might be a trip to Marrakech with a compulsory souk stop. The country’s tourism industry is booming, and in 2023 the government set a goal of doubling the number of international visitors to 26 million by 2030, the year when it will co-host the FIFA World Cup.

Social media does the rest, although even to someone who benefited from it it’s double-edged. “I love that social media is introducing more people to Moroccan beauty,” says Planes, “but I also think sometimes people see something like blue nila or argan oil go viral and don’t realise there’s a whole history and culture behind it.”

Leah sees the same split from the industry side. It’s sent people hunting for hammams in London and Paris they’d never have found otherwise. “That is a form of cultural preservation too,” she says while acknowledging that it also flattens what it spreads. “You can now see companies marketing kessa gloves primarily as ‘fake-tan removers’. When the original cultural practice disappears from the conversation, you are left with the product without the tradition behind it.”

For Leah, too, it isn’t about whether brands use Moroccan ingredients but whether they credit them. “You shouldn’t be able to take something that has existed within Moroccan culture for generations, remove the cultural context, and present it as though it’s simply a new beauty invention,” she says. That extends to sourcing, too: products marketed as ‘Moroccan argan oil’ that are mostly something else entirely aren’t just careless, they’re misleading. In other words: borrowing isn’t the problem. Uncredited borrowing is.

Argan oil got Moroccan beauty through the door. What’s happening now is Morocco deciding you can stay for tea—kessa glove, nila powder, and poppy-petal stain included.