Now a Master Esthetician of 12+ years, Denise developed CRUDE in her kitchen in 2014 after an experiment with oil-cleansing cleared her acne breakouts. She left her esthetics job to offer oil-cleansing facials out of her apartment, and the hype spread quickly. Friends and clients started posting their testimonials and acne before & afters online, and within six months she helped more people heal their acne using her oil-cleansing system than she had in six years using the industry’s most cutting-edge products and treatments. This reality got her questioning the foundations of our modern skincare protocols, and her research and experimentation led her to conceive and formulate CRUDE’s entire line of soapless, detergent-free, flora-friendly self care products.
CRUDE’s curiosity is more than skin deep. Our blog SOUL is a catalog of our modern obsessions, celebrations, and crises from beauty industry trends best left behind to furthering environmental justice through intersectionality. We’re peeling back the layers on what we think we know through thought provoking conversations with brainy contributors from all walks of life. Show up and know up at The School of UnLearning.
Your skin is smart. CRUDE works by getting out of its way. Our products were formulated to care for the skin without disrupting its microbiome. We only use a handful of organic, plant-based ingredients that are absolutely critical to your cleansing, healing, and aliveness. No standard procedures, fillers or nice-to-haves.
Beautiful, bustling, bounteous biome.
You are home.
Teeming with life,
Brimming with bacteria (the good kind) —
You are the healer
The cleaner
The regulator
The protector
The creator
The source
of all that is good and healthy, abundant and diverse.
Intelligent,
magnificent,
anatomical
microbial
divinity.
Oh, epic nature magic,
what we've done to you is tragic,
never intentional,
just old habits.
Sweet Flora,
I adore ya,
and promise to return ya
to your vivacious sebaceousness without
any traces of that audacious no good soapy sudsy stuff —
I'm comin' back home(ostasis)