Photo:Peter Ash Lee for Sweet July Skin
Peter Ash Lee for Sweet July Skin
Long before the birth of her Sweet July magazine and her California storefront,Ayesha Currydreamed of having a skincare line that catered to sensitive skin.
Yet, it’s taken several years since the launch of her lifestyle brand to introduce Sweet July Skin. It was a journey Curry never expected to take that long — but was well-worth the wait.
“When I first had the idea more than three years ago, I thought a launch would be ‘next year,’” she tells PEOPLE exclusively. “Psych! Well over three years later, here we are. When you start something from scratch, the amount of testing — consumer testing and lab testing — that goes into these products really surprised me. It was such a cool process, though.”
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The end result is Sweet July Skin, the three-piece skincare launch of Curry’s brand that debuted this month. The collection spotlights superfoods that she she is well-versed in because they are rooted in her Jamaican heritage and had the ability to nurture skin like hers.
“Superfoods were always the original idea,” Curry, 34, tells PEOPLE of where it all began, adding that the stories and learnings from her mother and grandmother contributed to how she created her products. “In the early days, I did so much research on the potency and the superfood nature of all of the ingredients. I would be texting the team at 3 a.m. — it’s so terrible — with ideas and nonsense.”
She turned her research, “ideas and nonsense” into three core ingredients for the launch:Pava Exfoliating Cleanser($39),Pava Toner($32) andIrie Power Face Oil($60).
The exfoliating cleanser, made with papaya and guava, is intentionally “super gentle,” Curry says, because she knows exfoliation can be intimidating for some people.
“The lychee seed gives you the most gentle daily exfoliation because it’s a micro fine powder,” she shares. “It’s not ground-up seeds being abrasive on your skin.”
Curry, whose husband is NBA starStephen Curry, says what she loves about this product is that it makes her skin feel super-clean, whereas some cleansers she’s used in the past haven’t done that.
“It has this beautiful cool breeze feeling after you wash your face,” she says. “Your skin feels so clean and bright and fresh. I love it for that. Plus, it feels super creamy on the skin, so it gets all the makeup off if you have any on.”
The next step in the process is the toner, also made with papaya and guava. It has a gentle glycolic in it that will also slough off any lingering dead skin cells, helping with exfoliation. The last step is the oil, which Curry says is more of a dry oil, and one that she likes to wear under makeup, because it sits that nicely on the skin.
“I was so afraid of oils for the longest time, because I have problematic skin,” she tells PEOPLE. “I didn’t realize that oil fights oil, and that I could actually use a face oil if I used the right one. Now I’m all about them.”
“I’m really proud of this oil,” Curry gushes. “I love the fact that it’s calming and also helps with moisture.”
Narrowing down which three products to start with wasn’t easy for Curry and her team, but she knew she didn’t want to overwhelm her customers or bring the wrong assortment to the table.
“Skincare is really daunting, and there are already so many brands out there,” she says. “Launching with these three products, I felt like somebody could come in, pick any one of them, and implement it into the routine they already have and build trust with us. I’m curious and excited to see what people gravitate toward.”
The products, which are available online atSweet July,AmazonandThirteen Lune, as well as in the Oakland, Calif., Sweet July store, are also vegan, which was important for Curry. As someone who has long struggled with her skin, she wanted to make sure her products would be effective yet non-irritating on as many skin types as possible.
“The smallest thing will irritate my face and send it into a spiral, and I’ll have a wildfire of acne, so I wanted everything to be as clean as possible,” she says. “We worked with a really clean lab, and everyone helped us every step of the way in ensuring our products were created with integrity.”
All the time!
“Everyone’s been so happy for me, but my grandma … she’ll always send me ideas. One day she was like, ‘Have you heard of star apple? That could be great,’” Curry says. “Everyone’s been on the lookout for new unique ingredients for me, which has been really cool.”
Curry adds that her mom is a “day one user” of Sweet July Skin and has been devouring the lab samples of all the products her daughter has given her. TheThe Seasoned Lifecookbook author jokes that her mom is a “hard sell” when it comes to her skincare products but has been “loving” what she’s tried so far.
“She loves it, but it hasn’t launched, so there isn’t more, so she’s telling me she needs it, and I don’t have it!" Curry says with a laugh. “Everybody’s been super supportive, which is great.”
Curry is excited for what’s on the horizon for her skincare collection — and she’s not slowing down. She has more products on the way (and teases something coming in the fall with an ingredient that stems from Jamaica, of course, that she calls “very exciting”) and says this whole venture is something she feels extremely proud of.
“It makes a statement and it fills a space,” she says of pulling inspiration from her roots and using the learnings from her Jamaican family. “I’m paying homage to my heritage and I’m really proud of that. I have a pretty mixed up background, and the thing that’s always kept me grounded is my Jamaican roots. It’s what I feel most connected to, and so I’m very grateful for that.”
source: people.com
