What We Believe
Stop wasting time on your skincare routine. izé skincare is a company that is never going to convince you to buy anything you don't need. One that is never going to have a 10 product routine, but only a couple simple products you can use daily. A brand where you can recognize every single ingredient. A brand that doesn’t just call itself “sustainable” but actually is. A brand that was started by someone like you and me. A brand that is never going to pay anyone to tell you to “swipe up” on something they didn’t actually use. From seed to bottle, we say what we do, and do what we say.
We Practice Clean Beauty
Our oils are pure, ethically-sourced, and, when possible, our ingredients are purchased locally to minimize our carbon footprint. We handcraft all our products in small batches to guarantee a high level of quality. Our oils adhere most stringent clean beauty standards. Knowing that everything we put on our skin absorbs into our bodies, we source the finest raw natural ingredients the earth has to offer.
We Are Sustainable
We prioritize eco-friendly, responsibly sourced packaging materials and are committed to minimizing waste and footprint. Our shipping boxes and product boxes are all made from 100% recycled cardboard. We do not use any colored ink of foils on our packaging (did you know a lot of skincare brands use inks and other decorative materials on their packaging which affects its recyclability?). We also do not use any plastic besides the dropper portion of our bottle. Unfortunately, there still isn't a good solution to replace plastic droppers. We are working on it! We donate 1% of sales to environmental causes. We only work with certified green vendors.
Here's my full story for those of you who want to get to know me a little better.
Some of my earliest memories are sitting on the bathroom floor watching my french mother do her skincare routine. A routine that hasn't changed in 45 years. A three-step routine consisting of: baby oil to remove makeup followed by a homemade rose water potion and topped off by a thick, vaseline-like night cream that smelled like fresh herbs and flowers. That’s it. Her skin: flawless. From an early age I knew I wanted to work in the wellness industry because I saw how much my mom loved her self-care ritual. Her nighttime routine was sacred to her and made her so happy after a long stressful day of working and being a mom. From a young age I knew I wanted to be in an industry that made women feel good about themselves. So at 20 years old, I moved from San Francisco to New York City and started working in marketing & PR for leading skincare companies from all over the world. Name a top skincare brand and I had probably worked with them. My dream career! Little did I know…
I was THAT person writing all of these clever headlines and ads to try and convince women that they needed to build a skincare arsenal with a cleanser, toner, serum, eye cream, day cream, night cream, face mask… in order to have “perfect” skin. We’d use words like “clean”, “organic”, “sustainable” in our marketing campaigns to somehow make you feel less bad about buying all of this stuff that’s definitely not “sustainable”. We’d call ourselves “clean” but would ship out boxes of product filled with plastic bubble wrap and would gift influencers with “instagrammable gifts” full of plastic junk that 9/10 times ended up in the trash. My goal was to make you spend as much money as possible on your skincare routine because that’s how we made money. The more you spent the more we made. We’d even pay your favorite influencers thousands of dollars to tell YOU, their audience, that they used this entire “routine” to get their “perfect glowing skin” when they probably never actually used the product themselves (yikes!!). This definitely wasn’t the industry I admired as a little girl.
One morning I was getting ready to go to work and my brand new $300 serum fell and shattered all over my bathroom floor -- I was on the verge of tears. My twin sister walked in the bathroom and saw me on my hands and knees trying to scoop the serum up off the floor and started hysterically laughing at me. She always thought my skincare routine was ridiculous and would roll her eyes at my enormous, monogrammed, toiletry bag stuffed to the brim with my ~routine~ and she had her crusty ziploc bag with a toothbrush and three other items (very chic). Here I was spending all of my paychecks on serums and creams and my sister was still using the same blue neutrogena makeup removing wipes and aquaphor balm on her skin. Guess who had better skin? My sister. Guess who spent less than 2 minutes on her skincare routine? My sister. Keep in mind we are identical twins who live together, eat the same food and have pretty much the same lifestyles. So the only thing that was different was my skincare routine. I was piling these random products and ingredients onto my skin without thinking “hmm I wonder how all of these products are going to interact together, maybe it’s going to freak my skin out”. My face was red, covered with blackheads, pimples and little bumps under my skin. It took me four f***ing years (and probably thousands of $ later) to realize that my skin wasn't even that bad in the first place and that my routine was also extremely wasteful. I did some research, talked to experts I knew in the industry and they all told me to do less. My skin was so weak and damaged. That’s the moment when I decided to STOP with all the bullshit and give up on my crazy, complicated and expensive skincare routine. I needed to simplify and make my life easier. I went back to cleanse, moisturize and SPF. Sure I’d do a mask or exfoliate my skin here and there when I felt like it but that’s about it. I started using a face oil morning and night to heal and moisturize my damaged skin and after a few months my skin started to clear up and finally started to feel normal again. Of course I still get a pimple here and there but not nearly as bad or as often as before.
I started to feel really guilty about convincing my friends and people like you and me to buy all of this crappy, expensive skincare. I was now on a mission and decided that I wanted to create a skincare brand to share my experiences with others. I became obsessed with face oils because they helped heal my damaged skin and gave it the moisture and love it needed. Most of the brands I worked with sold face oils as a luxury item that wasn’t a core product in your routine but used as a “last step”. Face oils also falsely get a bad reputation for “clogging your pores” so people with oily or blemish-prone skin wouldn’t dare use an oil. I realized face oils were being totally overlooked and that there weren't any simple face oils on the market that I liked with ingredients that I could trust. I partnered with a cosmetic chemist and we started to develop face oils for different skin types using only plant based ingredients I liked with no fillers or additives (which are commonly used in the skincare world to make a product cheaper to manufacture). I started giving samples to my friends and family and their feedback was “wow, this oil has changed my life, it makes my skin so happy and it saves me so much time”. I knew I was onto something and decided that I wanted to sell and distribute these oils to the public. I wanted to create a brand that was never going to convince you to buy anything you didn’t need. One that was never going to have 10 products but only the best, simple and easy to use 3-4 products you can use daily. That’s it. A brand that doesn’t just call itself “sustainable” but actually is. A brand that was started by someone like you and me, not an influencer. A brand that was never going to pay anyone to tell you to “swipe up” on something they didn’t actually use. I kept saying I wanted something easy, and that’s how I came up with the name izé. It’s pronounced “ease-ay” like rosé. I wanted the name to look and sound french as homage to my french mother and heritage.
