The story behind Trilogy Read the full story

Long before they sold skincare, Sarah Gibbs and Catherine de Groot were in the business of selling oil by the barrel. Gibbs ran a company that extracted plant-derived ingredients for the supplement and cosmetics trade, and a co-operative in Africa approached the sisters about processing rosehip oil for bulk export. They got very good at moving it wholesale around the world, and somewhere in that trade came the realization that the ingredient they were shipping by the drum was more interesting than the buyers downstream were letting on. The leap from commodity supplier to consumer brand is the part of the story the marketing tends to skip, and it is the part that matters: the founders understood rosehip oil as chemists and traders first, fans second.

That origin shaped the brand's stubborn insistence on batch-by-batch verification. Rather than treating rosehip oil as an interchangeable bottle of seed oil, every production run ships with a certificate confirming the level of the essential fatty acids that actually do the work, a quality-control habit that grew directly out of the founders' years grading oil for export. From an opening lineup of five products the range expanded past forty across face, body and hair, but the rosehip oil has always been the anchor and the rest of the catalog orbits it.

The brand grew up alongside the broader 'natural skincare' moment of the 2000s and 2010s, when consumers began reading ingredient lists and rewarding plant-forward formulas. Trilogy's pitch fit that mood without tipping into fearmongering, which is part of why it traveled well beyond New Zealand. The fair assessment is that this is a genuinely well-made plant oil brand whose strength lies in the quality and verification of its hero ingredient rather than in proprietary technology. Rosehip oil is a legitimate fatty-acid-rich moisturizing oil, not a retinoid, and Trilogy is at its most honest when it stays inside that lane.

Sources:[1][2][3]

Founded
2002
Origin
New Zealand
Parent company
CITIC Capital
Heritage
Legacy (20+ yrs)
Type
Clean beauty
Verdicts
0 Strong choice · 0 Good choice of 3 assessed
3 products reviewed

All Trilogy Products

Supporting role aging
No.1
Trilogy Vital Moisturising Cream 60ml frosted glass jar with metal lid Rosehip Brand Moisturizer Pick
Trilogy moisturizer

Vital Moisturising Cream

A genuinely thoughtful botanical day-and-night moisturizer that layers multiple antioxidant pathways — rosehip carotenoids, dragon fruit anthocyanins, evening primrose GLA, and vanilla elastase inhibition — into a rich emollient base. The pronounced vanilla fragrance and jar packaging are the two real concessions, and they're enough to disqualify reactive-skin users and bother people who don't love sweet scents.

Key Rosehip Oil · Sweet Almond Oil

drynormal
4.4 (1.3k)
$50.00 $24.64/fl oz
Unproven aging
No.2
Trilogy CoQ10 Booster Oil 20ml amber glass dropper bottle CoQ10 Booster Pick
Trilogy oil

CoQ10 Booster Oil

A genuinely thoughtful anti-aging face oil that incorporates CoQ10 at a working concentration plus a four-berry-seed-oil antioxidant complex — a step beyond the brand's foundational Rosehip Oil for users wanting more targeted anti-aging mechanisms. The vanilla-citrus fragrance and the small 20ml bottle at $50 are the real trade-offs, and they limit it to users who can either tolerate the scent or are using it primarily as a mix-in booster.

Key Coenzyme Q10 · Macadamia Oil

drynormal
4.3 (850)
$50.00 $73.93/fl oz
Not yet assessed acne scarring
No.3
Trilogy Certified Organic Rosehip Oil 20ml amber glass dropper bottle Cult Rosehip Oil Pick
Trilogy oil

Certified Organic Rosehip Oil

Twenty-three years on shelf and still the rosehip oil against which every other rosehip oil is measured — certified organic, properly cold-pressed to preserve the trans-retinoic acid content, and priced where it should be. The earthy natural scent and slower-than-retinoid results timeline are honest trade-offs for an uncompromised single-ingredient oil. For anyone treating scars, photoaging, or stretch marks, this is the category-defining product.

Key Rosehip Oil

drynormal Fragrance Free
4.5 (8.5k)
$25.00 $36.97/fl oz

More about Trilogy

Founded in 2002 in New Zealand by sisters Sarah Gibbs and Catherine de Groot around rosehip oil; NZ's first NATRUE-certified skincare brand (2012) and owned since 2018 by Hong Kong's CITIC Capital via Trilogy International Limited.

Its efficacy case rests on ingredient profiles rather than brand-specific clinical trials.