Inside FUTURE OF SKINCARE: A Self-Interview by Jalila Levesque, Founder and Editor in Chief
*FUTURE OF SKINCARE
*FUTURE OF SKINCARE
Since launching FUTURE OF SKINCARE, I’ve been asked a lot of questions, by friends, by brands, by readers who wanted to understand more about the project and about me. Over time, I realized those conversations carried a thread. Taken together, they form a kind of map of what FUTURE OF SKINCARE is and what it has become in the past two years.
For my birthday on September 1, I decided to pause and gather them. To do a self-interview. Bringing them here felt like a way to reflect, to share, and to give a more personal glimpse into why I built this space.
I don’t usually put myself forward; I tend to stay behind the words. But this time, I wanted to step out a little off my comfort zone, to speak in my own voice, and to connect more directly with those who follow this platform. My hope is that these reflections offer something useful, maybe even the encouragement to follow your own passion or obsession and turn it into a project of your own. When something feels aligned, it’s worth pursuing.
Thank you for being here, for reading, and for supporting FUTURE OF SKINCARE since its beginning. I’m always open to continue the conversation.
Jalila Levesque - Founder and Editor in Chief at FUTURE OF SKINCARE
- When people ask “who are you,” how do you like to answer?
At heart, I’m Parisian, in love with this city, and here by choice. Paris can be complicated, there’s little sun, little nature, no ocean. Yet it’s endlessly aesthetic. Beauty is everywhere if you want to see it: the architecture, the details on doors, the mix of people who come from all over the world. I often say: we may lack trees, but we have people, each carrying their own story and beauty. That energy is what feeds me.
Professionally, I work in advertising as Head of Global Communications at Fred & Farid. It’s rare to stay so long in one agency, but I’ve grown there because it’s a place that never sits still. It’s one of the most creative agencies in the industry, founded by two visionary creatives who built an avant-garde model and kept it alive. We work across Paris, Shanghai, New York, and Los Angeles, helping luxury, beauty, lifestyle brands move with culture, not just following audiences but meeting them with ideas, strategy, and craft.
I also serve as Communications Director for [Ai]magination, an art and luxury social agency. We work with luxury, beauty, and digital brands on how to use Gen-AI with taste, crafting visual experiences and narratives that feel meaningful rather than artificial.
And then there’s FUTURE OF SKINCARE. It started in June 2022, but the seed was planted long before. Since my teenage years, I’ve been obsessed with beauty, reading the back of cream jars, trying to decode why one was more expensive than another, who created it, what made it effective. I was both fascinated and lost in an ocean of products and promises, searching for clarity.
The name FUTURE OF SKINCARE came to me about a year before launch, like an intuition. I kept it aside, and when the time was right, I turned it into a side project. I’ve always believed side projects are laboratories for skills. They allow you to merge your passions, to grow in directions you can’t always explore in your main job. And both feed each other, what I learn in my corporate work enriches my editorial work, and what I experiment with in FUTURE OF SKINCARE sharpens how I show up professionally. Together, they’ve shaped who I am.
- What is your earliest memory of beauty, the first moment of oneness that marked you?
My first memory of beauty is deeply familial. My mother always encouraged me to take care of myself, and summers in Morocco made that lesson tangible. As teenager, she would take me to the hammam in Casablanca. It was a world of steam and ritual, where women with long hair covered themselves in clay and black soap, moving from one heated room to another. At the time, I didn’t fully understand the sequence or the meaning, but I felt its power. Now I see it clearly: it was wellness before the word was fashionable. A space to release energy, to connect with others, and to renew the skin from head to toe before leaving transformed.
Another memory is the black kohl pencil I saw the women in my family use. They would dip a wooden stick into a small pot of powder and trace their eyes with this intense, enigmatic line. Originally, kohl was protective, even medicinal for the eyes, but to me it felt like magic. Anyone who knows me knows I rarely leave the house without my own dark liner, it feels less like makeup than like a tattoo around the eyes, a link to my lineage. That first gesture of drawing black around my eyes was my earliest act of beauty, and also my first sense of stepping into womanhood.
- Where does your passion for beauty come from, and why this enduring relationship?
Beauty has been with me since childhood. I grew up surrounded by aesthetics, design, art, fashion, and the everyday rituals of care. From the beginning, that left an imprint. But my idea of beauty has evolved with time.
As a young girl, I didn’t always feel beautiful. There was no Instagram then, no positive mirrors. The references were television, cinema, or classmates with straight blond hair and blue eyes. I didn’t see myself reflected. My hair was frizzy, thick, tangled, and a daily battle to brush through. My skin tone and dark eyes didn’t match the narrow ideals I saw around me.
Over time, I learned to work with what I had, to highlight my strengths, to turn complexity into character. At first, I leaned on correction: foundation to mask imperfections, products to “fix” what I thought was wrong. But about 15 years ago, I had a shift. I realized it was better to invest in skincare than in makeup. That was the beginning of my deep dive into formulations, spas, cosmetology, and the science of the skin.
Today, beauty for me is inseparable from wellness. It’s not only about appearance but about alignment. When I began to feel more at ease with myself, the mirror became kinder. Beauty transformed from something that dictated my choices into something that accompanied me, less a judge, more a companion.
- What was the first spark that became FUTURE OF SKINCARE?
The spark came from many directions at once. On one hand, I’ve always been a reader of beauty media, consumer and business, but I felt there was little space for depth. Founders I knew often told me the same thing: they were grateful for coverage in glossy magazines or trade press, but those formats rarely allowed them to tell the full story. Most beauty brands are born out of long, complex processes, years of research, failures, experiments, intuition. Those stories need more space to breathe.
At the same time, after Covid, the beauty world felt like an ocean. A flood of new brands, concepts, and products made it almost impossible to navigate. I saw a need for curation, not to cover everything, but to pause, select, and give certain stories the time they deserved. For me, that’s where slow content comes in: not chasing novelty, but slowing down to decode what actually matters.
That was the impulse behind FUTURE OF SKINCARE. From the beginning, I chose to write in English to create a global community beyond borders. I wanted to merge all the layers of the beauty ecosystem, from founders and formulators to curious readers who think of themselves as “skin intellectuals.” People who want more than a caption or a quick review. People who enjoy reading, and who are open to beauty at the edge of science, anthropology, marketing, business, and sometimes even poetry.
It started as my personal need, but it turned out to be shared by many. Today, FUTURE OF SKINCARE speaks to a niche, global audience, deeply engaged, and committed to reading beauty differently.
- How do your two lives, advertising and beauty culture, speak to each other?
People often ask me how I balance both worlds. To me, they’re not separate, the common thread is storytelling. At Fred & Farid, our work is rooted in culture and in crafting narratives that help brands connect. That lens shapes how I look at skincare brands too: I’m always drawn to the story behind the formulation, the philosophy, the founder. It feels natural, almost seamless.
I’m also fortunate to work in an agency that is deeply specialized in luxury and beauty. Across Paris, Shanghai, New York, and Los Angeles, we support many of the world’s leading luxury and beauty brands. Being immersed in that expertise, and working alongside founders with such a sharp, forward-thinking vision, has inspired me well. It has given me the precision and depth that make FUTURE OF SKINCARE feel like a natural extension of my work.
What’s interesting is that there are no real borders. Sometimes people I meet through FUTURE OF SKINCARE become contacts in the agency world, and sometimes it works the other way around. My life doesn’t divide neatly into categories, everything feeds everything.
On a practical level, FUTURE OF SKINCARE is built on slow content. I don’t chase breaking news. I’m lucky that founders, brands, and agencies pitch me directly, which means I can take my time. I test products, I have conversations, I sit with the ideas before writing. Usually I dedicate one deep work session a week, often on Saturdays/Sundays, to draft my articles and prepare content. During the week, I share pieces across social media. The rhythm feels fluid and never forced. It doesn’t feel like extra work; it feels like a second nature.
- You often say beauty is cultural intelligence. What does that mean to you?
When I say beauty is cultural intelligence, I mean that the way we care for ourselves is never neutral. It’s political, sociological, anthropological, even spiritual. It’s also deeply local. The industry may be global, but each country, each market, each culture carries its own rituals and its own ancestral practices, many of which are now returning to the spotlight. To me, honoring beauty is honoring human diversity.
Caring for the skin is both intimate and collective. It’s shaped by the Gen Z universe of social media signals as much as by centuries-old traditions. That’s why I see beauty as culture in motion, it’s always telling us something about who we are and what we value.
This is also what I explore in my Substack newsletter, which I launched a year ago and recently expanded. Beyond the free content, I share Beauty Signals: 3 things each week that caught my attention, whether it’s a scientific advance, a cultural shift, or an anthropological echo. They’re not just trends, they’re fragments of how beauty translates culture.
- What kind of voice did you want to bring into the beauty conversation?
From the start, I knew I wanted FUTURE OF SKINCARE to be written in English. It wasn’t about posture, it was about universality. I wanted to create a language that could reach across origins, industries, and geographies. Paris is my home, but I didn’t want this project to feel Paris-centric or even France-centric. Today the platform is read in more than 110 countries, with the U.S. and U.K. leading, followed by France, South Korea, Northern Europe, even readers from islands in Samoa discovering stories about a founder in Italy. That global circulation is exactly what I hoped for: beauty as a shared language.
This voice also had to be inclusive. I try to represent different cultures, genders, and perspectives, because beauty is a small world once you start digging, and it’s enriched by diversity. I didn’t want to limit myself to founders alone. I also speak with facialists, investors, spa managers, journalists, makeup artist, anyone whose work touches this ecosystem. Each one is a piece of the puzzle, and together they reveal a more complete picture.
For me, wellness is inseparable from beauty, so it was natural to include it. Longevity, biohacking, new approaches to care, these are part of the conversation. But I treat them with nuance. I’m not radical in my own life, and I don’t promote approaches that feel too invasive. Everyone should be free in their choices, but I prefer to focus on what feels accessible, balanced, and aligned with the everyday act of care.
That’s the voice I wanted to bring: global, inclusive, curious, and anchored in a vision of beauty that embraces both science and soul.
- How do you see your role, editor, anthropologist, connector?
With FUTURE OF SKINCARE, I did everything myself from the start, the logo, the website, the pieces of content. It wasn’t perfect, but it carried my energy. That’s why I see myself first as a founder and editor, but also as an observer. I watch signals, I spot brands, I connect ideas across different forms of beauty and community.
The role is multifaceted, and I never planned it too rigidly. What I love is that it can expand without limit. One day I’m an editor, another day an anthropologist, and often a connector. FUTURE OF SKINCARE has grown into a kind of hub where people meet through the platform, even without me. A founder I interviewed may reach out to a facialist I featured, and a collaboration is born. Hearing those stories is the greatest reward, proof that the platform isn’t just content, it’s connection.
And yes, I’m an overthinker. I get caught on small details, sometimes obsessively. It’s part of my character, and sometimes I know it can be too much. But FUTURE OF SKINCARE gave me a place to channel that energy. My questions, my obsessions, became subjects. Why are we collectively obsessed with something? Why does a ritual take hold? What connects one signal to another? Writing allows me to transform that intensity into something meaningful. The best surprise is finding readers who are just as curious, people who don’t find the overthinking tiring, but enriching.
- FUTURE OF SKINCARE lives across formats, Substack, the website, Instagram, private dinners. How do you think about this ecosystem as a whole?
From the beginning, I knew I wanted more than an Instagram account. Instagram is key, it’s where beauty culture lives, and it’s where I personally discover and connect with brands. But it’s not designed for long reading or for content that lasts. Posts disappear into the feed. I wanted a destination where stories could breathe, be discovered years later, and lead readers from one article to the next. That’s why I built the website (www.futureofskin.care) first.
Then came LinkedIn, because FUTURE OF SKINCARE has a strong B2B dimension. It’s where I can connect with professionals who aren’t necessarily on Instagram. A year later, I launched the Substack newsletter. I wanted a more intimate space, one that felt like a letter rather than a broadcast. It quickly attracted a community of readers who love long-form content, who are obsessive in the best way, the kind of people who want to read deeply, not just scroll. This summer I expanded the newsletter with Beauty Signals, a weekly section highlighting three observations that don’t always fit into a full article but still reveal important cultural shifts. Launching it in the quiet of summer worked like a beta test, and it immediately found its audience.
Events came later. At first I hesitated, because beauty already has so many events, and brands do them well. I asked myself: what could I add that would be different? The answer came from something simple: I love hosting dinners. For me, dinners create connection in a way no marketing format can. So from time to time, I bring founders together with people I know and trust, not only from beauty, but from other creative fields. The goal is not speeches or campaigns, but genuine human exchange. Some beautiful collaborations have already grown from those tables.
In the end, all of this forms one ecosystem. When I feature a brand, it rarely appears just once. Whether it’s on Instagram, LinkedIn, Substack, or at a dinner, I like to weave it back into different contexts. If a brand resonates, it becomes part of the club, part of an ongoing conversation rather than a passing mention. That, to me, is what makes FUTURE OF SKINCARE feel alive.
- What kind of community do you hope readers and partners feel they’re part of?
In many ways, I am the community I created. I’m a beauty obsessive, a skincare enthusiast, but also a little geeky, a little studious, the kind of “first-row student” energy I never had in math or science at school. Ironically, now I spend my free time reading clinical studies, decoding lab reports, and testing samples. Passion reshapes you.
Readers of FUTURE OF SKINCARE tend to share that mindset. They want to learn, to go deeper, and to have someone help them filter what matters. They want to know who is behind a formula, whether a project is meaningful, whether it’s worth their monthly beauty budget. Discovering a brand through curiosity, through an interview, a founder’s journey, a sense of mission, can be what helps them choose their routine.
This community isn’t looking for daily novelty. By nature, I can’t and don’t want to cover everything. FUTURE OF SKINCARE is a side project, and that limitation is a gift. Limited time means sharper curation. Slow content means choosing carefully. Together, that creates a sense of luxury, not in price, but in depth.
What connects us is a love for projects with meaning. Many of the founders I feature may not even realize they’re on a mission, but I can see it. My intuition is drawn to that energy. And because contributors and readers come from all over the world, the community itself feels global, like traveling through voices and rituals.
Most importantly, this community doesn’t shy away from long formats. Some answers I publish are pages long, because I never edit them down. For many founders, it’s the only space where they can fully articulate their process. And readers welcome that. They’ll sit with a five- or six-minute read, sometimes longer, because they want substance. That’s what makes this community unique: they’re not afraid of depth.
- How do you decide which brands or signals to highlight, and what does rigor mean in your reviews and conversations?
There are several pathways. The first is direct outreach: my inbox is full of pitches from founders, PR agencies, and even investment funds. Some people contact me through Instagram DMs, but honestly the best way is by email (jalila @futureofskin.care ). Honestly, DMs can get lost, and I don’t always see them.
When something resonates, brands often send products, and I test them myself. I can’t write about anything I haven’t tried. That process is slow by nature, skincare takes time. A mask or body product can show results in a week, but a serum or cream for the face needs weeks, sometimes months. I’ve published reviews after one month, after six months, even after a year. What matters to me is that my words come from experience, not speculation.
Rigor means both science and lived experience. I study formulas, read clinical studies, but I also pay attention to how the product feels in use, texture, ritual, even its psychological impact. With founder conversations, rigor is about moving past press talking points to understand the philosophy and the long road behind a brand. And for me, human contact is essential. Beyond beauty signals, I don’t highlight a brand on the site or Instagram until I’ve met the founder in person, whether that’s over lunch, breakfast, coffee, or even a quick 15-minute visio. I want to know the people shaping these projects.
I rarely write negatively. If something doesn’t work for me, I prefer not to cover it publicly. Often it’s not about the product itself but about how my own skin responds. I may share feedback privately, but on the platform I focus on what I can stand behind.
I also discover signals outside of pitches: at events, over coffee with a founder, in a subway observation, or scrolling TikTok and Reddit. A signal isn’t yet a trend, it’s an echo, an invitation to look deeper. I often say I “wait for the invitation.” It’s part of my human design as a projector: I recognize when something is calling for attention. That’s when I know it’s worth decoding.
- What are the rituals,, skincare, wellness, or otherwise, that sustain you?
My routine is difficult to pin down because I test so many products. I can’t give a definitive list of brands, since I’m always rotating, sometimes pausing the tests to stay with a formula I truly love. But if I had to define my philosophy, I would say I’m a beauty minimalist, even a little “beauty lazy.” I don’t want beauty to feel like work. My routine has to be efficient, pleasurable, and sustainable.
Skincare for me is simple: double cleansing, a serum, a cream or oil, and always SPF, even in winter, even with my skin tone. That habit has made a long-term difference. Masks are my indulgence. I use them often, usually while working in the evening, as a small spa ritual. In the morning, I don’t wash my face, just apply a good serum, vitamin C, moisturizer, and SPF. Makeup is minimal: eyeliner, concealer, brows, a bit of blush. Lipstick when I feel like it.
Wellness extends beyond products. I do quick lymphatic drainage each morning in six points, and twice a week I use LED light therapy (Lucibel), it’s the ultimate beauty lazy ritual, twelve minutes of photomodulation with no effort. Supplements come in cycles: collagen, immunity boosters, anti-inflammatory support. But I pause often, because I don’t want my body to depend on constant supplementation.
I walk as much as I can, 30 minutes each way to the office. It’s both exercise and grounding. I drink water constantly. I try to eat well 70% of the time, and not obsess over the other 30%. For hair, I oil before washing when I can, rely on a solid haircare routine, brush every morning and night to stimulate the scalp.
But beyond all that, peace is the greatest skincare. Peace in relationships, in work, in family. Being in love helps too (because I’m so in love), it shows on the skin, and there’s research to prove it. Stress and obsession are the worst things for beauty. I try not to chase perfection or “glass skin.” For me, it’s more about aura: how you move, how you speak, how you laugh, how you live. That radiance matters more than flawless skin.
Wellness, in the end, is about building a life where you can breathe. Walking in Paris, visiting an exhibition, traveling when possible, nourishing the mind as much as the body. Care should stay a source of pleasure.
- What excites you most right now in beauty culture?
So many things. For a long time beauty has been tied to anxiety, the chase for perfect skin, endless steps, impossible standards. What excites me now are the founders and projects that understand the deeper connection between mind, heart, and skin. They’re building brands like galaxies: not just skincare, but cultures, values, and communities in one.
I’m drawn to brands that show ancestry, efficacy, and biotechnology can coexist. Fewer ingredients, higher concentration. A single advanced formula instead of forty layers. Products that are minimal, hyper-efficient, and designed to last, which means less waste and more meaning.
I also love how porous beauty has become. Through social media, we can watch in real time as someone in Seoul, Lagos, or São Paulo reinvents a ritual. Beauty is no longer local, it’s a global exchange of practices and ideas.
And beyond formulas, beauty is proving itself as a powerful industry. For many women, it’s a path to success and leadership. What was once dismissed as “superficial” is now clearly social, even political. Campaigns can heal, disrupt, and reframe what beauty looks like. Seeing diverse faces and identities celebrated is one of the most hopeful signs of change.
Technology also excites me: AI enabling personalization, biotechnology pushing into the language of polymers and cells, longevity research reshaping what care even means. And in wellness, the revival of ancestral plants and mushrooms, reimagined for mental health and daily rituals.
It’s a parallel world that never stops evolving. I never get bored, it keeps me endlessly curious.
- Where do you want to take FUTURE OF SKINCARE next?
From the beginning, FUTURE OF SKINCARE was built with heart and intuition. I knew what I wanted to create, but I never wanted to rush. The goal has always been to build something consistent, meaningful, and rooted in quality.
Two years in, I want to keep opening horizons: telling more stories, experimenting with new formats, and growing the community across platforms like Instagram and now Substack, which I’d like to bring to even more readers. I see the newsletter as central, but I also want to keep hosting dinners, collaborations, and encounters that feel purposeful.
Travel is part of the vision too. Meeting the community in different markets, documenting projects on the ground, almost like creating living archives of beauty culture around the world. What excites me is impact: knowing that an article, an interview, or a single signal can support a founder’s journey, or help a brand rethink its path.
The beauty industry is demanding, it asks a lot of those who enter it. If FUTURE OF SKINCARE can be a small stone on the road, making the path smoother or more visible, then it’s doing its work.
- Ten years from now, what do you think beauty will reveal about us?
When I walk through the Louvre or any museum, I’m always fascinated by the faces on the paintings. Beyond the craft, what captivates me is the way beauty was captured in each era. From antiquity to the Renaissance, every century had its aesthetic codes, its very specific standards of beauty. Looking back, you see how much those ideals shifted, sometimes in surprising ways.
If we project ourselves to 2035, my hope is that beauty will no longer mean a single canon. I hope these decades will be remembered as the moment when standards broke open. When age, body, skin tone, hair textures, and features of every kind finally found a place. When people could look in the mirror and feel included, not rejected.
I’m optimistic, because I see younger generations carrying a strong emotional, social, and cultural intelligence. They’re pushing us toward a more expansive view. Perhaps in 150 years, when future visitors walk into a gallery of photographs from 2035, they’ll see a mosaic of beauty, diverse, plural, magnificent, not one type repeated, but many coexisting. That, I believe, is the direction we’re heading.
