This is an episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, which features candid conversations about how today’s trends are shaping the future of the beauty and wellness industries. More from the series →
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If you’re familiar with skin-care brand Dieux, you probably first came across its cult eye masks that all the cool kids have been wearing on Instagram. Now with multiple products, the brand’s celebrity fans include everyone from Hailey Bieber to Harrison Ford.
This week’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast features an interview with Charlotte Palermino, who co-founded the brand in 2020 with Joyce de Lemos and Marta Freedman.
In addition to Dieux, Palermino is known for her prolific social media presence with a fan base of over 668,000 combined followers on TikTok and Instagram. In this conversation, she talked about how her social presence blew up on TikTok when she started sharing her strong viewpoints on everything from SPF to clean beauty. And she discussed how that transfers into running what she calls a “TMI” skin-care brand that gives details on ingredients and clinical trials. On the creative side, she shared the concept behind Dieux’s “God’-like branding and the customer base it calls its “Angels.”
The origins of Dieux‘s cult eye masks
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“I think everybody’s seen the full-face version of the silicone face masks; they’re a little bit uncomfortable to wear. … I just wanted something that would be really targeted to the eyes, because that’s where I think a lot of people want to get more hydration. It’s really thin skin. It’s quite sensitive. And so we just wanted to make something that would feel good, that would look good and that you only had to buy once. Also, we were all really bored at home — if we were lucky enough to be bored at home, because a lot of people were really struggling in 2020. And so, if we could create a little moment of happiness or feeling like you did something other than your general routine, we definitely wanted to give that to people.”
On radical transparency
“I feel like we’re a ‘TMI brand.’ I don’t think anybody is asking for the level of granularity that we put out there. But it does make for fascinating content, because ultimately, we want to just kind of lift the hood a little bit; you can see what you’re buying and what goes into it. There are so many amazing brands out there that do clinical studies and have great formulators, and it’s not necessarily only us, but I will say that it is a rather unique thing to have one of your founders be the person that’s actually making the juice. Normally, it’s you’ve hired somebody or it’s a contract manufacturer, which means it’s a formulator. Everybody that works with that contract manufacturer has access to them.”
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On Dieux’s branding
“We want to take some of the leaps of faith out of beauty. And we want to create spaces where it’s OK to ask questions. I think that brands selling themselves as a Holy Grail, ‘This-is-the-one-product-you-need’ [brand find that] it’s a little bit tough to actually deliver on that promise, because people’s skin is very unique and very different. And so we wanted to create a safe space where you felt OK asking questions, and where you could challenge status quos and what norms are. And we’re going to help answer those questions to the best of our ability.”
