The Butterfly Effect

For the 10th anniversary of our iconic Bio Lifting Serum+ we’re celebrating our love of butterflies and giving back to the Taiwan Butterfly Conservation Society.

Fifteen years ago, Sylvie Chantecaille was working in her garden in New York and noticed that Monarch butterflies—who usually make a stop on their annual migration from Canada to Mexico—were nowhere to be seen. This discovery led her on a mission to discover the impact of toxic pesticides and climate change on these fragile pollinators, and the launch of Chantecaille’s first philanthropy collection, Les Papillons. “Butterflies are amazing travelers that are important to helping all ecosystems thrive,” Sylvie says.

Five years later, her love of nature’s intrinsic healing powers inspired Sylvie to launch Bio Lifting Serum, the brand’s most powerful serum, which was recently supercharged with even more effective botanicals that visibly lift, smooth and plump the skin.

So when considering the most meaningful way to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the launch of this now-iconic serum in Taiwan and its gorgeous limited-edition packaging, Sylvie once again turned to the butterfly—in no small part because Taiwan is known as “the butterfly kingdom.” Home to 400 species of butterflies due to its varied climate and altitudes, Taiwan is the only place in the world where thousands of the rare purple Euploea “crow” butterfly—the only other migrating species in the world besides the Monarch—make an annual journey from the island’s north to its warmer regions.

It makes for a gorgeous natural spectacle each December as the butterflies settle into the forested Maolin National Scenic Area (known as the “Purple Butterfly Valley”), where they winter until March. Here, visitors are treated to an amazing sight: hundreds of thousands of wings fluttering in the sun-swept butterfly valley, including Dwarf Crows, Striped Blue Crows, double-branded Black Crows, Chocolate Tigers and several other butterfly species.

But Taiwan’s butterfly populations have been diminishing for years, due to habitat destruction for agriculture and development, as well as pollution. (In fact, Taiwan used to have its own species of migrating Monarch, now extinct.) As recently as the 1960s, scientists doing surveys in Maolin found up to 1 million butterflies in the valley—today that number is closer to 100,000 to 200,000.

“Taiwan has a heritage of respecting butterflies and a rich local biodiversity and we wanted to do a specific local conservation effort,” Sylvie Chantecaille says of this very special partnership. “We hope this will help focus attention on the need to restore space for their survival.”

For this reason, Chantecaille is partnering with the Butterfly Conservation Society of Taiwan to give back a percentage of revenue from sales of our limited-edition Bio Serum+. The Society protects Taiwan’s natural winged treasure by restoring habitat, monitoring populations, and educating farmers about eco-friendly practices to replenish butterfly habitats and reduce the use of toxic pesticides. They also intervene to help make way for the butterflies on their northward migration in early March, working with highway authorities to mount protective netting along National Freeway No. 3 to shield the butterflies from oncoming cars. When the butterflies are especially numerous, they further close a 500-meter stretch of the outside lane to make sure the butterflies get across.

“Taiwan has a heritage of respecting butterflies and a rich local biodiversity and we wanted to do a specific local conservation effort,” Sylvie Chantecaille says of this very special partnership. “We hope this will help focus attention on the need to restore space for their survival.”