Twenty-four-year-old Alexis Ren has been in the public eye since she was 15; she caught the world’s attention by way of bikini photos that she posted to Tumblr. Flash-forward nearly a decade, and Ren is making a name for herself beyond her body.
“I was just known for so long [for] my body and being a model and getting sexualized — and I didn’t have any problem with that, or so I thought,” Ren said. “[But] I started to think that maybe I could be a mentor or maybe the things that I was learning could actually be helpful to girls.”
Now, she runs We Are Warriors, a platform she founded in 2020, which she called a “personal wellness and education community.” It hosts educational content with experts tapped by Ren. Last month, author Nicole Lapin hosted a financial challenge that educated members on personal finance fundamentals applicable to even Ren’s younger audience. It offers Ren — and her members — a safe space to “test out who I am,” said Ren.
On We Are Warriors, there are two tiers of digital monthly memberships, one is $15 and the other is $33. The community boasts 3,000 members spanning 72 countries. Most members are ages 19-25. It is through this platform that she has teamed up with her personal skin guru and popular facialist among L.A. influencers, Sonya Dakar, to introduce two kits of miniature products, launching today. The kits target sensitive and blemish-prone skin and are under $100 to be accessible to Ren’s younger fan base.
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The We Are Warriors community will address skin care, with Dakar’s help. She’s already filmed three-and-a-half hours of content for the platform that address questions sent in by members. “I like to have relationships with brands,” Ren said, explaining that she finds long-term partnerships to be more beneficial than one-off promotional posts. With Dakar, the relationship is an organic one, said Ren, as she’s been working with Dakar on her own skin for the past two years. “I know that her products not only help the skin, but they [also] fundamentally change the way your skin behaves in the world,” she said, “But that took me a year or two to find out.”
Ren has over 14 million followers on Instagram, and with that, it’s safe to say she has access to whatever beauty products she wants. Still, she maintains that she uses a routine made up solely of Dakar’s products. “I start with the Sensi Wash cleanser, and then I spray her Rubica Hydrating Toner on my face. While my toner is still wet on my face, I add her Nano Hydrator Moisturizer. I also apply the Organic Omega Oil — that’s my go-to. Then I put on the Blue Butterfly Balm. [Finally] I use the Jade Energy Eye Balm, [followed by] SPF.” The products are not cheap, Ren recognized — they’re priced $16-$195. So she’s excited to offer the more affordable kits including some of her favorite products to her community.
The pre-taped content, where Dakar will answer questions like “How to get rid of blackheads,” will launch on June 4, said Ren. Kicking off at the same time, Ren will host weekly calls with We Are Warriors members on skin care throughout June. Ren plans to dive significantly deeper than Dakar by guiding her community through questions like, “’What does beauty mean to us?’ ‘Why do we value beauty?’ and ‘Is what beauty means to us a trauma response?'” Her hope is that community members “can come out of it with a healthier understanding of the spiritual element [of beauty].”
