Marie Veronique, the chemist who is early to everything

I've been selling the Marie Veronique brand for a long time now (they were my first brand about 21 years ago!), and there's a pattern I keep noticing… they make products that no one understands and then suddenly a few years later it becomes the thing everyone is talking about, and a dozen other brands rush to launch their own version.

Oil cleansers are the perfect example. We were selling Marie Veronique's oil cleanser long before oil cleansing was a thing, and it took me years of convincing people that putting oil on your face to wash it off was actually a good idea. "Oils dissolve oils" came out of my mouth a lot. It was not an easy sell (admittedly even for me at first), and it’s so odd to think that what is now our most popular product (the EO Free Cleanser) I once had reservations about keeping on because no one wanted to buy it. 

The skin barrier was the same story. Marie Veronique's Barrier Restore Serum was on our shelf years before anyone was talking about barriers, back when most people had never heard the word. I wrote a blog back in 2020 explaining what it was meant to do (it's still on our site), because I was explaining it to everyone who asked. Now it's one of our best sellers and heaven forbid we ever run out!

MV is a very popular brand for us, so a lot of you already know the products. But I don't think the women behind it get nearly enough credit, so I wanted to tell you about them.

It started with a chemist who couldn't fix her own skin

Marie Veronique Nadeau used to be a chemistry teacher (like me! well I didn’t teach chemistry that’s for sure but I was a teacher in my ‘former’ life). She had acne as a teenager (she says it was psychologically devastating), and then rosacea in her thirties, and the products her dermatologist gave her didn't work either. So she did what a chemist does and started making her own. The brand launched in California in 2002.

What I love is that the way they work hasn't changed. Everything is formulated, tested and made in their own lab, so nobody outside the company is deciding what goes in the bottle.

The things they got to first

1. Oil cleansers. See above. The EO Free Oil Cleanser still isn't the prettiest texture or scent, but it works incredibly well, and it's their most popular cleanser.

2. Barrier Restore Serum. It replaces the natural moisturizing factors your skin loses and helps seal them in, so you need less heavy moisturizer on top. It's still one of our fan favourites, especially if your skin is dry, sensitive or just plain upset with you.

3. Microbiome-friendly formulas. Long before "microbiome" showed up on every label, MV was leaving out the harsh preservatives that upset your skin's natural balance, and keeping essential oils out of most of their formulas.

4. A retinol that doesn't wreck your face. This is my fave. Years ago it was thought to be next to impossible to make a clean, prescription-grade retinol, because retinol is delicate and the usual way to keep it stable is with preservatives that damage the skin. It took the team at Marie Veronique three years to formulate this one.

The Multi-Retinol Emulsion combines encapsulated retinol, retinyl sunflowerseedate and bakuchiol, with no fragrance and no essential oils. I'll say it: I think it's the cleanest retinol on the market, and one of my own favourite products. Here's what one customer, Lorraine (65+), wrote about it: "I was using regular retinol and I had the usual red peeling dry skin. Once I switched to this my skin has been glowing."

If you want the full story on retinol, I wrote about why I won't touch tretinoin, and there's a side-by-side of MV's two retinols if you're trying to pick one.

The women behind it

Marie has been making skincare for over 20 years and she's still the one leading the formulating. She's written three books, having just finished The Biology of Skin Aging, and rows 4,000 metres every single day. 

She works alongside celebrity skincare guru Kristina Holey, who joined full time in 2021 as Director of Skin Health and comes from a science and esthetics background. Marie's daughter, Dr. Jay Nadeau, who is a physics professor, is part of the R&D team too. So it's a small group of women, led by a chemist who is still asking how skin ages and what we can do about it.

She's not a fan of the word "clean"

I use the word "clean" a lot, because it's a word people understand. But I totally agree with Marie that it's a complicated one. A lot of people hear "clean" and assume it means nothing made in a lab, because lab-made must mean bad. That isn't how it works. Some synthetic, lab-made ingredients are wonderful for your skin, and some natural ones can irritate it. (Poison ivy is 100% natural, after all.) Where an ingredient comes from tells you very little. What matters is what it does to your skin, and whether it's been tested enough to prove it.

That's Marie's point. She's said she'd rather products be judged on performance, efficacy and safety, and that "clean beauty" is a phrase that's too often used to scare people about ingredients that were never a problem. I get it, and I think she's right. Clean ingredients matter to me, but a clean formula that doesn't work is just an expensive jar. What sets her products apart is that she tests an idea until it holds up, and the clean part follows from that. She calls herself a hardline skeptic and she's proud of it.

Coming in January: the Senolytic Series

Marie's latest answer to the question of how skin ages is the Senolytic Series, and it's coming to Lilou in January.

Here's the short version. As we age, some of our cells stop dividing but don't go away. Marie Veronique calls them "zombie cells," and says they send out signals that add to inflammation and the visible signs of aging. The whole series is built around encapsulated fisetin, an ingredient that's been studied a lot in longevity research and of course MV is on top of. It’s currently two products:

• Senolytic Serum: a lightweight serum for all skin types, aimed at firmness and the skin's structure.
• Senolytic Balm: a richer balm for dry, mature or depleted skin, with barrier support.

Both are meant to be added to what you already use (including retinol), and MV says there are no contraindications within their own regimen. Once we get them I’ll have more info on how to fold into existing routines.

Not sure where to start?

I know MV can feel intimidating. The labels read like a lab report, and there are a lot of serums that sound like they do the same thing. That's exactly why I wrote the Marie Veronique Product Guide. It's the only brand we have a guide for, and it covers who each product is for and how to choose between two similar ones (Barrier Restore or Soothing B3, for example).

And if you'd rather just ask, talk to us. Tell me what your skin is doing and I'll point you to what's worth buying (and what you can skip). 🤍