Dieux Co-Founder Charlotte Palermino on Deliverance and the Destiny of CBD in Skincare
Co-founder Charlotte Palermino speaks with L'OFFICIEL about Dieux's first skincare launch, CBD in beauty, and more.
Charlotte Palermino got into the skincare business by way of cannabis. Co-founder of Nice Paper, a weekly weed newsletter, with Marta Freedman, the pair became fascinated by what cannabinoids could do. Coming from a media background—Palermino previously worked at Hearst and Snapchat—she could see the potential for the growing CBD space in skincare. "But the one thing that I saw that was missing in everything that was launching was honesty as to the limitations of ingredients; honesty as to what those ingredients actually do and where the testing was," Palermino tells L'OFFICIEL. In what she describes as a "serendipitous" occasion, she was introduced to cosmetic chemist Joyce de Lemos, and "became a trifecta." Perhaps trinity is more accurate, though, as their brand is "religious about results."
Launched by the three women last year, Dieux approaches skincare with transparency, clincially vetted formulas, and Palermino and Freedman's marketing chops. Rather than hop onto beauty trends or buzzwords, the co-founders want to empower their audience to get educated about the claims made in the skincare space.
While CBD has the potential to become the next holy grail ingredient, Dieux isn't taking that lightly. The team has spent months developing its first skincare launch, a face serum called Deliverance, conducting clinical testing and paving the way for science-backed CBD beauty. Containing encapsulated cannabidoids as an active ingredient, the serum addresses irritation, fine lines, and tone with the help other vetted actives like two different peptide complexes and niacinamide.
Dieux's first product, the reusable Forever eye mask, has sold out several times, and with the anticipation of its debut skincare launch, the brand is hopping on the pre-order model. With a waitlist of 8,000, Dieux insiders will get access to the presale today, and then it will open to everyone else tomorrow, May 14.
In Palermino's journey as a beauty brand co-founder, she's also become a guiding voice for those as inquisitive and committed to evidence-based skincare as she. With guides and infographics cluttering her Instagram, she often consults dermatologists like Ranella Hirsch or Angelo Landriscina AKA Derm Angelo to bust skincare myths and misconceptions. Plus, she recently finished esthetician school. So not only does she empathize with the woes of finding the right skincare, she knows how the products actually work.
Here, Palermino speaks with L'OFFICIEL about Dieux's new launch and why she thinks the skincare industry needs to change.
L’O: You and Dieux are all about transparency in skincare, so what have you learned through the research and development for this launch?
CP: Alright, so I'm going to be real frank. CBD is the Wild West. Trying to find a source of CBD that went through the same level of vetting that cosmetic ingredients go through was a long process—like I love when brands try to demonize Petrolatum [AKA petroleum jelly]; to buy Petrolatum it has to be certified by the [United States Pharmacopeial Convention] in this country, triple-refined, and if you don't have that paperwork, then your lab is in breach of good manufacturing practices and the [Food and Drug Administration] could recall your products. There is this myth that things aren't regulated. The actual reality is that there is no enforcement of the regulations.
In terms of cannabinoids, it took us forever to find something that Joyce was even happy with. CBD is a highly volatile compound and she didn't want to work with a full spectrum oil. I spent a year hounding producers, trying to find something that met her standard for a cosmetic ingredient and once we found that, that's when we went into clinical testing.
L’O: CBD is still a fairly new ingredient in skincare. What did your tests reveal?
CP: So our first round of clinicals were on dosing. With Vitamin C, we have a good idea of the efficacy range for percentages. We know that between 10 and 20 percent of L-ascorbic acid, that's where you're going to see the best benefits before you see too much irritation or not enough for it to be active. Same thing with retinol—from .3 to 1 percent, that's where you are going to see an efficacy range, but nobody knew that with CBD. We actually had to do that testing to figure out the cannabinoid complex we have been working on. What is the best range of cannabinoids that will help reduce inflammation? We've done that study and that's what will be in our first serum.
L’O: Why start with a serum?
CP: Ultimately serums are very effective in delivering the actives and delivering the ingredients. We have this cannabinoid complex—are we going to put it in everything? No. We’ve been working on face creams, too. In theory, if you use the serum and then a cannabinoid complex in the cream, you might actually be reducing the effect because cannabinoids plateau and we saw the worsening of results if we used too much. We don't want people overdosing on the use of cannabinoids in face creams.
L’O: How has founding Dieux affected your own relationship with skincare?
CP: This whole process has taught me not only to be kinder to myself, but to brands. Sometimes creators, including myself, are very self-righteous about certain things. It's really hard to make products that can be universal. When I see people rip brands apart for an ingredient list and I know the list and the brand, I think, "Sorry, but you don't know what you are talking about." It's given me a lot of respect for large corporations. A lot of people like to demonize them, but the amount of research and testing that goes into them, after working with a formulator that was with these establishments, it is rigorous and it is really hard to bring a product to market. There is a world where all of [Dieux’s] studies would have failed and we would not have made it to market because it's not to their standards. It gave me a newfound respect. It's also made me more empathetic to myself, because you blame yourself when things do go wrong with skincare, and you blame your skin. Sometimes you just get a little too excited and your skin communicates with you, so it's actually a positive because it shows you your own limitation. You just have to listen.
L’O: With Dieux, your approach has been a slow and steady build, first launching the Forever eye masks last year and taking the time to develop the serum, which as you’ve said, is a long and necessary process. And yet, in the industry at large, there are constantly new products being launched—do you think the cosmetics industry is moving too fast?
CP: I am very terrified that skincare brands are going down the route of fast fashion where they do these small drops, because it encourages overconsumption of skincare. And unlike clothing, I can layer 50 shirts—whether or not they look cute or not is another matter. I cannot layer 50 skincare ingredients, and the reality is that your skin only needs four or five products. And even then "needs" is a very strong word. SPF and cleanser if we are really going to break it down. I think that I am nervous because I see these brands doing limited-edition drops of products and it’s because they are not making money for cosmetics like they were. So if you are not making money, you do limited-edition drops, like Pat McGrath with Supreme. I can have 1,000 lipsticks. Makeup is fashion, but the skin is an organ. Your organ is not a faux-pas. When I see brands with 50 products on their website I think it makes no fucking sense.
L’O: You’ve been outspoken about the dangers of clean beauty marketing—what should people be wary about?
CP: My thing with clean beauty is that it was built on a house of cards. The original argument is that there are 1,300 banned ingredients in Europe and only 11 in the U.S. I used to be really into clean beauty—I was a consumer, I was a marketer. Then, I researched it at the beckoning of a doctor who asked if I ever looked at the actual list. The 1,300 ingredient list is not in U.S. skincare either, so it's based on this ludicrous concept that the U.S. has this toxic sludge in jars, when the reality is that we have very similar products to Europe in the U.S. It is very hard to do claims vetting, to do skin testing, on these “miracle” ingredients. With clean [beauty], science is diametrically opposed. They have these definitions that are not based in reality nor based on empirical evidence. So how can you say it's scientific, if it's not? Now we’re seeing "clean science" and "green science". A dermatologist said it best: "Thanks for helping market science." Science is the study of the natural world, right? Nature is incredibly complex: there are things in nature that can kill us and there are things in nature that help us, and so I think that we need to just agree that things are nuanced. Clean is inherently negative because you are calling everyone else wrong. I am tired that women are made to feel bad. It goes back to Adam and Eve, and I am tired of people making women feel like shit. Can we just agree that this is complicated?
