Written by Menswear Style in Interviews on the 18th January 2021

Sean Holman recently swapped London’s skyscrapers for a bit more sky and relocated his family to the South Coast of England in search of more space and a new perspective. Here he started to take things slower and began to notice the little things: the sound of seagulls instead of sirens, ponies loitering in the road instead of pedestrians, and a few new wrinkles here and there. Some of this was caused by the stress of a second baby on the way, but it was also a wakeup call that he couldn’t take his skin for granted. However, skincare had been rattling around at the back of his mind for a while. A couple of months before this he was at the top of a mountain on a ski holiday with a doctor friend having a conversation about how sun damage is the main cause of skin ageing, and that the simplest thing guys can do to stave this off is to use a moisturiser with SPF every day. After being underwhelmed at what was on offer, he took things into his own hands and co-founded The Other Saint, a sustainable skincare line for men that’s more than simply ‘good enough’, providing the kind of quality and choice that guys deserve, with a sustainable approach to both products and packaging.

In a recent episode of the MenswearStyle Podcast we interviewed Sean Holman, Co-Founder of The Other Saint about his background and the founding story of his men's skincare brand which features sun protection and sustainable packaging. It has been a 6-month project which started at the beginning of the Coronavirus lockdown after relocating to the New Forest from London. Our host Peter Brooker and Sean also chatted about the anti-ageing benefits of using a daily SPF, using compostable pots instead of plastic, the strategy behind product pricing, and why they're direct-to-consumer focused.

“We are a new men's skincare brand specifically targeting men that may not necessarily currently use skincare products or are new to it. My partner and I lived and worked in London for 20 years and we recently moved down to the New Forest. It’s a different way of life down here and we thought, do we want to be travelling back to London every day or just once or twice a week. We've had an eCommerce brand before in high end women's fashion, but we had this skincare brand idea in our head for a while. One of the driving factors was that many brands out there are not particularly sustainable. Everyone throws this word about, but they continue to use plastic products, and their packaging is excessive. Our products feature SPF which is sun protection factor, and you're obviously quite familiar with wearing that when you go on holiday, but in our research, we found that SPF is the best thing that you can apply on a daily basis to stop early ageing, sun damage and more serious factors such as skin cancer. My mum got skin cancer on her face and luckily she was fine, but these things stick with you. You should be putting that SPF on your face every day, not just when you're on holiday. The best thing to do is combine it with a moisturiser because men generally will be using a moisturiser, but perhaps not much else.”

This is a shortened transcribed edit of episode 103 of the MenswearStyle Podcast with Sean Holman, Co-Founder of theothersaint.com. You can listen to the full version below or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favourite podcast player.

We sit down with Sean Holman, co-founder of men's skincare brand The Other Saint which features SPF for daily sun protection to combat anti-ageing.