MATER

The source. The origin. The driving force.

Some brands are built in boardrooms, with investment decks, hired formulators, and branding agencies paid to manufacture a story.
MATER Beauty is not one of those.

Thirty years of obsession

I have been fascinated by skincare since my early teenage years, when I first discovered the effect that putting something on your face can have on how you feel about yourself. Long before ingredient lists were something consumers cared about, I was reading them - cross-referencing, researching, trying to understand what exactly in those magical potions brought the magic. Which ingredients did what, so I could seek out the ones I wanted more of elsewhere.

In my thirties, I was everyone's skincare big sister. I'd answer skincare questions, provide product recommendations and prepare custom routines for friends from my own collection. I had opinions about molecular weights of hyaluronic acid before most people knew what hyaluronic acid was. I was a skincare fanatic with a genuine passion for the building blocks of skincare and a compulsive need to understand how things actually worked behind the scenes.

Formulating my own products wasn't something I ever thought was within the realm of possibility, until a new stage of life changed my perspective on most things.

What motherhood takes, and what it gives back

I thought that after fifteen years of long hours in advertising and IT, I understood what being time-poor meant. When I became a mother, I realised what a joke that was!

Those carefully planned, rotating, multi-step skincare routines I'd spent decades refining had no place in my new reality. A serum grabbed at random after a rushed shower was my new routine, while my extensive, lovingly curated collection sat neglected.

And underneath the exhaustion and the all-encompassing love for this tiny new human - I was disappearing. The depression I'd lived with on and off for most of my adult life found fertile new ground, and it was: hello, post-natal depression.

I knew I had to find a way back to myself before I was reduced to "just a mother". So when my son was five months old, I started nurturing the creative spark that gave me joy and made me feel like myself again. I threw myself into creating solid body care products and BAR OF HOPE was born. A small, loyal following grew, and this gave me something that was just for me - a path back to my old self.

The words that changed everything

Soon after, my mother Zdenka became gravely ill.

A few months later, my brother and I held her hands as she took her last breath.

Before she left, she gave each of us words of motherly wisdom. Mine were like a neon sign - obvious and bright and impossible to look away from:

"Start looking after yourself again, Petra. It's not just for yourself - those you care for also need you at your best."

In the moments that followed, the brevity of life became very real. The madness of not cherishing every moment - and the person living it - became very clear.

My priorities shifted. And I wanted to help other women who lose themselves in motherhood shift theirs too.

Why MATER exists

MATER means mother in Croatian - my mother tongue. But it also means source, origin, the driving force behind life itself, as mothers are.

MATER Beauty is not about adding another thing to your endless to-do list. It is about being inspired to put yourself at the top of it - even for just a few short minutes each day.

Mothers, caregivers, working women - we are the driving force behind everything and we are consistently the last to receive care. MATER exists to change that, one small daily ritual at a time.

What I actually make, and why it's different

There are many beauty brands that begin with investment, a hired creative director, a contract lab, a manufactured story or a face to put on the packaging. MATER is not and was never going to be that.

MATER began with thirty years of genuine obsession with the actual science of skincare. With understanding why things work, not just whether they sell. Long before this was a business, it was a passion I could not switch off - a body of self-built knowledge accumulated over decades of reading, researching, experimenting, and genuinely caring about the answer.

Every MATER product is formulated by me - not briefed to a lab, not outsourced to a contract manufacturer with a convenient brand story painted over the top. It's formulated in my own lab, drawing on thirty years of obsessive research and genuine passion for the science of skin.

Each product earns its place. I don't create something unless it brings something genuinely new and useful - a real gap filled, a real result delivered, something that didn't exist in my routine before and now I can't imagine it without.

Over 95% of ingredients across the MATER range are natural or naturally derived - not because natural is inherently better, but because I believe in transparency as a direct response to the marketing gimmicks and greenwashing the beauty industry routinely employs. I am transparent about every ingredient: what it is, where it comes from, why it is there, and what shade of natural it falls into. You deserve to know what you are putting on your skin, and I have nothing to hide.

What you won't find in MATER products: parabens, sulphates, silicones, artificial fragrance, or ingredients included at meaningless amounts simply to make a label look impressive.

What you will find: high-concentration actives, considered combinations, formulas complex enough to replace five steps with two without compromising on results.

7 x Beauty Shortlist Award Winner 2026

Do Less. Expect More.

The FACE Ritual - MATER's hero two-step system - was born from a simple, radical idea: what if your entire skincare routine could be done properly in two steps, morning and night?

Not cut corners. Not compromise. Actually done - with ingredients potent enough to replace your toner, moisturiser, and eye cream, in a water-and-oil layering system designed to work in synergy.

The formulation is complex so your routine doesn't have to be.

This is skincare for women who are already doing everything. Who don't need to be told to do more. Who deserve products that respect their time as much as their skin.