Meet the Brand Reinventing “Clean Beauty”
Ten years in, Graydon Skincare continues to grow, challenging beauty buzzwords through stripped-down formulations and education.
It’s not that hard to launch a beauty brand these days. “You can have a Shopify storefront pretty easily and get someone to white label something for you,” says Graydon Moffat, founder of Graydon Skincare. The real challenge is keeping things going―and growing―as Moffat has for exactly 10 years, even while buffeted by forces both global (the pandemic, Trump’s tariffs) and deeply personal. This year alone, she’s dealt with both skin cancer and the death of her mother.
Graydon isn’t her life’s work—she started the company in her early 50s (she’s about to turn 61), after a career as a yoga instructor and chef. “We really did start as a natural beauty brand—I was very focused on superfoods and how good they were for you from my chef days in California,” Moffat explains. But the key to the brand’s success is not standing still. “I think I’m not the only person who’s tired of natural green beauty that’s turned into clean beauty and everybody’s saying ‘clean beauty,’ and it’s kind of tiresome,” she says.
Photo by James Patrick.
These days, the focus is on providing a buffet of ingredients in products and using cutting-edge techniques to get the most from them. “As much we love plant-based ingredients, I think biotechnology can really amp up efficacy—so, for example, the torula oil that’s in Moon Boost serum, which is largely what makes it orange, is a fermentation.” Moffat’s passionate about educating beauty lovers about what’s in their products—not just from a clean, sustainable perspective but on more nuanced details, like the fact that a higher percentage of an ingredient doesn’t necessarily lead to better results.
Moffat is a founding member of the Indie Beauty Collective, which sprang from a group chat of Canadian founders, and she firmly believes that a rising tide lifts all boats when it comes to business. “It’s hard to be an indie brand founder, and instead of feeling divisiveness, let’s make friends with competitors,” she says. “There are some brands out there that are pretty aggressive and a little bit … not quite as warm and fuzzy as me, and they’re doing really well. But I’ve got a 27-year-old son and there are plenty of 30-year-old founders, so I feel a little bit motherly, in a sense, because of the stage of life I’m at.”
After the challenges she’s faced recently, and all her success, it would be understandable if Moffat decided to take a break—something she sees many of her peers doing. But that’s not for her. The brand is about to revamp its packaging and tweak formulations, after which Graydon Skincare will have a rebirth. “As much as it would be fun to go on a cruise and do all the travelling that some of the people who I went to high school with are doing, that’s just not what my journey is at the moment,” she says. “I know I’m not living the average 60-year old life, and I’m really excited about that.”
