Renée Rouleau Wants You To Know Your Skin Barrier Is Just Fine

In Her Shoes is back! Presented by eBay, the limited run podcast features women at the top of their field in conversation with Samhita Mukhopadhyay, former Teen Vogue executive editor, current Cut contributor, and author of The Myth of Making It. Our first guest: skincare expert and celebrity esthetician Renée Rouleau, who’s been working dermatological wonders for over 27 years. Sabrina Carpenter, Demi Lovato, and Camila Mendes swear by her, and they’re not the only ones. Her line of skincare products is so beloved she could pivot from business leader to cult leader if she felt like it. Thing is, you can only buy those products on her website or in her brick-and-mortar stores in Texas — not at Sephora, Ulta, or any other retailer — proving that bigger isn’t always better. As she tells Mukhopadhyay, her decision to say no and stay small has raised plenty of eyebrows. She recalls turning down a meeting with an executive from a big beauty brand, much to everyone’s dismay. “People thought I was crazy for not even having the meeting, but I like to do things my way and we were having such amazing success,” Rouleau tells the Cut. “I look at everything like, what problem am I solving here? And I didn’t have a problem that another beauty company could solve for me.”

Listen and subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. You can also read highlights from the interview below.

On the genesis of her online store:

My brother was a web developer and he had built my site [in 1996] and the two of us were talking and I was just like, “People shopping online is going to be a thing.” He was just so supportive of my company, and he said, “Let’s do it.” It was so funny because back then you didn’t have your own domain. You couldn’t have reneerouleau.com. It was through the Yellow Pages. So your domain was this weird URL with all these weird slashes … I’ve always known that skincare education was really important, and as an esthetician I’m always educating my clients on how to care for their skin. So we launched our first website even before e-commerce, and we started pushing out skincare articles in 1997.

On the silliest skincare trend she’s seen in recent years:

The damaged barrier? So dramatic. Our barriers are better than they’ve ever been. When you think about what a damaged barrier is, it’s ultimately just dry skin. We used to have apricot scrubs that were really rough. We were using bar soaps. An oily skin person would never moisturize because the formulas were really heavy and greasy. Fast forward to today and we are more gentle with our skin. To be fair, we have exfoliating acids, we have retinol and those sorts of things, but those are giving amazing results. But this whole like scare tactic of everyone being like, “my barrier’s damaged, can I ever repair it?” It’s fear mongering. And it’s like, don’t worry, your skin heals itself, you’re good.

On choosing the right routine for you:

I always go back to what I said earlier, which is, “what problem are we trying to solve here?” When people are getting professional treatments and buying products, they really need to be asking questions because we are sold a lot of hype. There’s just not one size that fits all. You have to hit it from different angles with different things, kind of like throwing spaghetti at the wall, and see what sticks.