Our Story

The jar that didn't make sense

I was standing in a store, holding a jar of shea butter, and I didn't recognize it.

The label said 100% organic, pure shea butter from Burkina Faso. But it was pale, almost white. And when I opened it, the deep, nutty scent I'd known my whole life wasn't there.

I turned it over in my hands, genuinely puzzled.

I grew up around shea. I knew its colour, its weight, the way it softens against your skin. This looked like the idea of shea, with everything that made it shea taken out.

That small, confusing moment is where Ladoni began.

What Shea actually is

Where I grew up, shea isn't a cosmetic ingredient.
It's care you can hold.

It's butter warmed between a grandmother's palms and smoothed onto a newborn after a bath. Pressed into children's noses before the harmattan winds arrive. Made by hand, by a circle of women, over days.

Unhurried.
Deliberate.
Whole.

It carried colour and scent because it hasn't been stripped of them.

So when I stood there holding something refined that called itself pure, what I felt wasn't outrage. It was recognition of a loss.
Something sacred had been processed down to a claim on a label.

It needed to be brought back.
I needed to carry that care forward.

When my own skin stopped following the rules

Around the same time, my skin stopped behaving like anything a chart could name.

I was diagnosed with PMOS while unsuccessfully trying to conceive. My skin fluctuated constantly. I'd find a product for my "skin type and concerns," and weeks later I had completely different issues. I kept looking for the right correction, and slowly realized I'd been asking the wrong question. My skin wasn't a fixed problem with a fixed solution. It was responsive, cyclical, alive.

What I actually needed wasn't a fix. It was RESILIENCE — skin kept strong and nourished enough to move through hormonal changes without breaking down, so that everything else I did worked better. That single shift, from correcting my skin to supporting it, is the belief the whole brand is built on.

Why Ritual matters

Then I became a mother, and postpartum recovery taught me the last piece.

In that season, I found myself yearning for small moments of care. Not only for my skin and body. I needed something intentional.

The grounding scent of botanicals.
The softness of warm butter between my palms.
A few quiet minutes that were mine.

Not a routine to get through. A practice that returned me to me.

That's the part the industry leaves out. Skincare isn't only what's in the jar. It is also about ritual.

It's the touch.
The scent.
The pause.

The small acts of care that help us feel at home in our skin again.
RITUAL Gentle Cleansing Balm - Ladoni Kind Beauty
VITALITY Renewing Botanical oil - Ladoni Kind Beauty

Why Ladoni exists

Ladoni: “self-care” in Bambara/Jula, the founder’s native language.

It comes from yɛrɛladonni, which means tending to yourself with care, dignity, and respect for all around you.

The brand was built from three realizations:

That ancestral beauty traditions hold wisdom worth carrying forward.

That skin is not something to fight, but something to support through life's many seasons.

And that beauty is more than ingredients and results. It is ritual, touch, scent, and the ways we care for ourselves and one another.

Inspired by African beauty traditions and informed by modern science. Made by hand at the source, made for skin in motion, made to be felt.

Care, kept whole.

— Lethicia

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