Some brands are built for a market. Some are built for a moment. And then there are the ones built for a person.

Chrissy Naro built Celeste Naturals for her daughter Gabriella — whose eczema reacted to everything on the market. So Chrissy did what any determined mother would do: she learned to make something herself. She took courses, she formulated, she tested, she refined — until she found something that actually worked.

And then life got harder. A Crohn's disease diagnosis that had gone undetected for years. Sepsis. Emergency surgery. A year of recovery in which her career disappeared and her own skin began to suffer. From that hospital bed, with nothing but love and a formula, Celeste Naturals became real.

Handcrafted, small-batch skincare made with goat milk, grass-fed tallow, raw honey, and beeswax. No synthetics, no fillers. Named after her daughter. Because Celeste means heavenly — and Chrissy wanted everyone going through their darkest moment to feel a little bit of that every day.

This episode is about what it looks like to build something beautiful from the hardest year of your life. And why the brands that start from love are always the ones worth finding.

About Chrissy Naro & Celeste Naturals

Chrissy Naro is the founder of Celeste Naturals, a handcrafted small-batch skincare brand built around farm-fresh, natural ingredients formulated for sensitive, eczema-prone skin. Every product is phthalate-free, paraben-free, and sulfate-free — made by hand in Georgia with goat milk, grass-fed tallow, raw honey, and beeswax. Named after her daughter. Built from love.

🌐 Website: https://www.celestenaturals.com

🛒 Wholesale on Faire: https://celestenaturals.faire.com

📸 Instagram: @celestenaturalsllc

👍 Facebook: @celestenaturalsllc

About Your Host

Lia Cardoso is the Founder & CEO of Skin Leaf Cosmetics and host of Skin Leaf Talks — FeedSpot Top 50 Skincare Podcasts 2025. A cosmetics formulator and clean beauty advocate with over 15 years of experience, Lia built Skin Leaf on one belief: skincare is healthcare.

🌐 skinleaf.co

📸 @theskinleaf.co

📧 press@skinleaf.co

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Look at the back of your moisturizer. What's the first ingredient?

If it's water — and it almost certainly is — you're paying for something your tap provides for free. Most skincare products are between 60 and 90 percent water. Which means most of what's in your routine is diluted before it even reaches your skin.

Leila Haj Nassar, cosmetic chemist and founder of 100and1 Cosmetics, decided to remove it entirely — replacing water with pure Moroccan botanicals: argan oil, aloe vera, rose water, and actives that actually do something. Her co-founder Fatima Rosa, a licensed esthetician with over 15 years of hands-on client experience, brings what the lab alone can never know: what real skin needs, every day, in the treatment room.

In this episode, two founders who built from opposite ends of the same belief sit down with Lia to talk about water-free formulation, Moroccan ingredient heritage, and what the chemist and esthetician dynamic that makes 100and1 different actually looks like from the inside. A conversation about what conscious beauty really means when the formula is the whole point — and why paying for what you actually get should be the standard, not the exception.

About Leila Haj Nassar, Fatima Rosa & 100and1 Cosmetics

100and1 Cosmetics is a water-free, sustainable skincare brand rooted in Moroccan botanical ingredients, built on one belief: you should pay for what you actually get. Founded by cosmetic chemist Leila Haj Nassar and co-founder Fatima Rosa, every formula replaces water with pure actives — no fillers, no compromise.

🌐 Website: https://100and1cosmetics.com

📸 Instagram: @100and1cosmetics

🎵 TikTok: @100and1cosmetics

💼 LinkedIn: @100and1cosmetics

About Your Host

Lia Cardoso is the Founder & CEO of Skin Leaf Cosmetics and host of Skin Leaf Talks — FeedSpot Top 50 Skincare Podcasts 2025. A cosmetics formulator and clean beauty advocate with over 15 years of experience, Lia built Skin Leaf on one belief: skincare is healthcare.

🌐 skinleaf.co

📸 @theskinleaf.co

📧 press@skinleaf.co

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Every cosmetic ingredient on the market was declared "safe" based on a test that never accounted for the other ingredients sitting next to it on your skin — or the thirty years you'll spend using it.

In this episode, Lia Cardoso breaks down the real math behind toxic exposure in the beauty industry: the cocktail effect, where chemicals that are "safe" in isolation become active when combined, and time, which turns a negligible daily dose into decades of accumulation the body can't fully clear.

Drawing on hormone-disruption research and recent studies linking chemical hair straighteners to uterine cancer and fertility issues, Lia unpacks what "safe at this concentration" actually means, and why it's the wrong question to be asking. Educational content, not medical advice — full sources in the show notes.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We obsess over our faces. We build routines around them, spend fortunes on them, and treat every new ingredient like a revelation. And then we completely ignore the rest of our bodies.

Aïda Touré saw that gap and decided to build in it. Texture is the brand pioneering somatic skincare — intentional, zone-based care that starts where most beauty ends. The underarm. The bikini line. The inner thigh. The skin we cover, hide, and never think twice about.

In this episode, Aïda joins Lia to talk about what somatic skincare actually means, why the underarm is one of the most chemically exposed zones on the body and the least cared for, and what happens to our confidence when we finally start paying attention to the skin we've been ignoring. A conversation about body awareness, barrier function, and building a brand in a category that barely has a name yet.

Because your skin is always communicating. It's time we started listening.

About Aïda Touré & Texture

Aïda Touré is the founder of Texture, a somatic skincare brand built around the connection between skin function, body awareness, and how we inhabit our bodies. Texture focuses on the zones traditional beauty has always overlooked — starting with the underarm — with products formulated to listen to the skin's signals rather than suppress them.

🌐 Website: https://textureskin.com/

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/textureskincare/

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/texture-skincare/

🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@textureskincare

About Your Host

Lia Cardoso is the Founder & CEO of Skin Leaf Cosmetics and host of Skin Leaf Talks — FeedSpot Top 50 Skincare Podcasts 2025. A cosmetics formulator and clean beauty advocate with over 15 years of experience, Lia built Skin Leaf on one belief: skincare is healthcare.

🌐 skinleaf.co

📸 @theskinleaf.co

📧 press@skinleaf.co

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

That's how Sarina Pilaroscia's father described living with psoriasis — 45 years of twice-daily steroids and a condition his doctors called lifelong and inevitable. Sarina didn't accept that.

She spent two years educating herself, opened her own R&D lab, and led one of the first Health Canada clinical trials for CBD in cosmetics — all to build Phoilex, a steroid-free, barrier-supportive skincare brand for eczema, psoriasis, and hypersensitive skin.

In this episode, Sarina shares the story of what it took to get her father completely steroid-free for the first time since his teenage years — and what millions of people living with topical steroid withdrawal still don't know. This one will stay with you.

To learn more about Phoilex, please visit: phoilex.com | @phoilex.releaf

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Season 7 is here — and before we dive into everything coming this season, Lia sits down alone to catch you up on everything that happened while you were waiting.

First: Skin Leaf Cosmetics stepped onto the floor of the Be+Well Show in Fort Lauderdale, Florida — our first major trade show in the United States. Five years after starting a brand in a kitchen in Portugal, we showed up. In person. With a booth, with products, and with everything we've built. That moment deserved to be named out loud.

Second: if you've come across a brand called Leaf Cosmetics at leaf-cosmetics.com — there is something you need to know. Lia addresses it directly, briefly, and clearly. That brand is not us. There is an active legal process. And Skin Leaf is not going anywhere.

And third: a preview of the season that's coming. From a daughter who watched her father live with psoriasis for 45 years and decided steroids weren't the only answer — to a founder who built a skincare brand from a hospital bed because her daughter's eczema had no solution on the market — to the chemist who removed water from her entire product line and replaced it with Moroccan botanicals. Season 7 is full of founders who built something real from a real place. And it starts right now.

New episodes every Wednesday. Welcome back.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sunscreen fraud. Lab samples sold as luxury. Celebrity brands collapsing. Children on retinol.

The skincare industry is going through it — and most brands are staying silent. Not us.

In this solo episode, Lia breaks down the four biggest scandals shaking the beauty world right now, separates fact from fear, and gives you practical tools to protect yourself as a consumer.

Because transparency isn't a trend. It's the foundation.

🌿 Get the free Skin Science eBook at www.skinleaf.co

📲 Follow us @theskinleaf.co

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Most people don't have a skincare problem. They have a consistency problem.

In this episode of Skin Leaf Talks, host Lia Cardoso sits down with Marlee Bruno — PA-C, aesthetic injector, and founder of Mind Body & Soul Medical in Pensacola, FL — for a conversation that cuts through the noise of trend-driven beauty culture.

Together they unpack why 10-step routines are sabotaging your skin, what over-layering actually does to your barrier, the most dangerous habits Marlee sees in her clinic daily, and the short list of ingredients that genuinely deliver — including what Skin Leaf's Antioxidant Facial Oil, Sensitive Facial Oil, and Anti-Aging Moisturizer were formulated to do.

No trends. No filler. Just the skincare truth you've been missing.

🎙 Find Marlee: @theinjector_coach | mindbodysoulmedical.com

🌿 Find Skin Leaf: @theskinleaf.co | skinleafcosmetics.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.