Est. 2022 · Montréal
We started by writing down what skin actually needs
The list was four items long: clean it kindly, treat one thing at a time, seal the water in, defend it from the sun. Solène is what happens when a brand refuses to make anything that isn't on the list.
01 — The founding
A chemist's quiet mutiny
Our founder, Élise Fontaine, spent eleven years formulating for houses whose briefs began with the launch calendar and ended with the margin. The actives were real; the doses often weren't. The final straw was a brief for a "concentrate" whose hero ingredient sat below one tenth of its researched dose — behind a fragrance load that most sensitive skin would feel by Friday.
Solène began that winter as a spreadsheet: every skincare claim she trusted, the concentration window behind it, and the shortest list of formulas that would cover the lot. The spreadsheet had ten rows. It still does.
02 — How we formulate
Three principles, no exceptions
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01
Fewer, better
Ten formulas is the entire line — one for each job skin actually has. When a new product idea appears, the first question is which existing one it would replace. Usually the answer is none, and the idea goes back in the drawer.
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02
The number on the front
Every active is declared with its working concentration on the front of the label. If a percentage would embarrass us there, we don't formulate with it. You should never need a magnifying glass and a chemistry degree to know what you bought.
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03
Barrier before actives
No active earns its place by making skin worse first. Everything we make is buffered, dosed inside the researched window, and tested on reactive skin panels — because a routine you have to recover from isn't a routine.
03 — The other label
What we leave out, on purpose
Every ingredient list is two lists — the one printed, and the one refused. Ours is short and non-negotiable.
- Fragrance & essential-oil blends — the most common sensitiser in skincare — and it does nothing for your skin
- Drying alcohols — instant elegance in texture, paid for by your barrier over weeks
- Twenty-ingredient actives lists — five actives at real doses beat twenty at trace amounts
- Miracle vocabulary — no 'detox', no 'glass skin in 7 days', no before-and-afters shot in different light
04 — The studio
Small batches, short journeys
Everything is blended and filled in our Montréal studio in batches of a few hundred units, so nothing sits in a warehouse oxidising while its label promises freshness. Batch codes date every unit; if a formula is more than five months old, it doesn't ship.
Packaging is glass and mono-material plastic, chosen to be refilled or recycled rather than admired. The budget we save on unboxing theatre goes where you can feel it: the concentration line.
