Rile

For someone who has always loved beauty, I had the luckiest start. After beginning my career at Vanity Fair, I moved on to Vogue, and finally landed a job as the West Coast editor of Allure magazine. For nearly 20 years, I worked with the best experts in the beauty industry, all day, every day. I tested every new skincare and beauty product for a living. I met with founders, dermatologists, makeup artists, photographers, aestheticians, cosmetic chemists, and everyone behind every great product. If it sounds like the dream job, I’m not doing it justice. It was even better. Over the decades, I recommended - or didn't recommend - products to friends who asked. As those friends had kids, and those kids grew up, my friends wanted to know what was a good face wash for an 11-year-old? What deodorant should their son start using? I didn’t have a good answer. When my own children needed help with taking care of themselves and not stinking, I still didn’t have a good answer. We know so much more about skin health today but our kids are still making the same mistakes we made and reaching for products that are often unnecessarily harsh and counter-productive. Which is how I had my fourth baby: Rile. Since it’s for young teens and inbetweens, Rile had to be gender-neutral. As the mother of two sons and a daughter, I know firsthand that this generation is ready to move beyond the tired - and unnecessary - product categories of my childhood. I also knew Rile would not be about perfection. So much skincare marketing is about fear - from a young age, kids are taught that every change in their skin is acne. So they reach for harsh products and go to war with their faces. I want kids - my kids and all kids - to be comfortable with themselves. Good habits, small steps, balance. There’s room in life for green juice and Oreos.