Welcome to On the Line! A new series from Hotline Skin, bringing you exclusive interviews with founders, formulators, strategists and other key players in beauty. I’ll ask the first round of questions and then turn it over to you. Missed the last one? Read it here.

Jordan Samuel Skin has been in my life (specifically, in my bathroom, closet and toiletry case) since at least November 2020, which is the earliest order confirmation I can find in my email.

I’ve been recommending Jordan’s products to clients for about as long as I’ve been using them, usually describing the line as “elevated basics”. By basic I do not mean that the formulas are simple or unoriginal, but rather that they are reliable, effective staples that everyone needs in their routine. Everyone needs a really good cleanser, but everyone’s really good cleanser isn’t the same. So, instead of one cleanser, they have three. Same with moisturizers. Each purposefully and thoughtfully formulated for varying skin types and concerns, without making anything overly complicated.

Today, I’m so excited to introduce you to the man behind it all, Jordan Samuel! We talk about how his ballet career influenced his product philosophy, their recent fragrance launch and take a closer look at what it means to have a small, independent skincare business.

On the topic of independent brands, you’ll notice today that all of the links take you to my Flagship shop. Flagship is a new platform I’m trying out that’s specifically made for independent brands, removing some of the barriers that come with traditional affiliate marketing channels. Among other benefits, it allows brands to make automatic custom discounts ;)

As part of this series, you also get the opportunity to ask your own questions! Ask Jordan anything in the comments and he’ll pop in over the next few days to answer.

Finally, you can find a giveaway at the end of this post! Two subscribers will win a starter kit featuring some of my favorite Jordan Samuel Skin products.

You have one of my favorite backstories, but before we get into it, can you tell us a little about you, before the ballet and outside of the brand?! Where are you from, what was your relationship to skin/beauty like growing up, do you have any pets, any secret talents or fun facts…introduce us to Jordan!

• Thanks, Jolie, and thank you for having me on Hotline Skin. I am originally from Media, Pennsylvania, which is just outside of Philadelphia. I’ve always been into beauty. I have distinct memories from a young age of my mom’s perfume, her scented body lotion, and my dad’s aftershave, but in terms of skin care, I actually have the opposite story of most people... As a child and teenager, I was blessed with good skin and didn’t really spend much time thinking about it. I never saw a dermatologist or an esthetician until I was an adult. My husband and I currently have two cats, Forrest and Missy. I love cooking. I love having very long dinners with friends and family. I’m obsessed with all things Italian and love, love, love traveling to Italy. I’m a former professional ballet dancer. That’s probably Jordan in a nutshell.

Okay, now let’s talk about how you went from professional ballet dancer to esthetician and founder of your own eponymous skincare line! Did you always plan on pursuing ballet professionally? Where did you perform?

• So, yes, I started training in dance at eight years old. At 15, I moved away from home to study at the School of American Ballet in New York City where I lived in a dormitory and trained intensely in ballet. By that point, I was already definitely determined to become a professional ballet dancer. While at the school, we would devote just a small part of our early day to academics and then dance for several hours six days per week. I got hired by Pacific Northwest Ballet (PNB) in Seattle just after my 18^th birthday and danced at PNB for 11 years. As a professional dancer, I was performing in eight shows per week while wearing heavy stage makeup and sweating under hot stage lights. As I mentioned above, since I’d had very little skin issues growing up, I had never learned how to properly take care of my skin, let alone how to properly remove makeup, and my skin was suddenly terrible! It was at that time that I started receiving regular facials, taking an interest in skincare and learning what worked and what didn’t. Going through this journey was what really led me to the idea of becoming an aesthetician once I was finished with my ballet career.

When did you start to make the transition over to skincare and what inspired you?

• In 2007, I broke my foot for the second time in two years. So, obviously, being a professional ballet dancer, I was suddenly confronted with a lot of down time that enabled me to think about the future and really start putting together the pieces of what my next career might look like. I knew it was going to be something in beauty—whether it was in aesthetics, hair, or product development, it was definitely going to be something in beauty. Once I decided to pursue esthetics with the goal of becoming an esthetician, I put a plan in place to make that goal a reality. About a year and a half before I retired from the ballet, when I was trying to chart this plan, a very large, new and modern school for aesthetics opened in Seattle. So, when I retired from the ballet in June 2010, I immediately started my education at the Gary Manuel Aveda Institute in Seattle in August 2010.

Describe Jordan Samuel Skin in 5 words.

• Effective. Streamlined. Gentle. Classic. Smart.

What does “choreograph your routine” mean and how is it reflected in your product offerings?

• Choreograph your own skin care routine is an idea that came about as I linked my experience as a ballet dancer to my time as an aesthetician and then thought about how that influenced the creation of product development for Jordan Samuel Skin. Essentially, what I’m trying to teach and help customers realize is that all of our skins are extremely unique and change month-to-month, week-to-week and day-to-day. With the goal of enabling customers to adapt their routines to address their (ever-changing) current skin condition, I aim to create products that can be mixed and matched interchangeably and used together with no contraindications while giving the maximum possible result.

Hydrate the Mist made me fall in love with glycerin. What are some of your favorite ingredients to formulate with?

• Glycerin is obviously a favorite for many reasons. It’s a great humectant, many people can use it, it’s not too pricey and it really has stood the test of time. As somebody who’s also very sensitive, I love formulating with peptides. Peptides can do many different things—from helping to bind water to the skin to helping to temporarily plump the skin to helping with fine lines and wrinkles to helping with sensitivity and irritation. I think peptides are a great potential solution for somebody who might be sensitive to alpha hydroxy acids or vitamin A products but still wants a result from their products. In addition to peptides, I love working with a range of antioxidants aside from vitamin C, seeing what’s well researched in order to give the skin that extra boost day in and day out underneath our SPF.

What’s your best selling cleanser and moisturizer?

• Our best-selling cleanser, The After Show Treatment Cleanser for Sensitive Skin, is also our best-selling product by a mile, both in the U.S. and across the globe. It is a gel-to-oil cleanser that can be used on dry or wet skin. It is super nourishing and rich while helping to melt down SPF, makeup, dirt, oil and grime without stripping or dehydrating the skin. Our best-selling moisturizer, Moisture Recovery Cream, is what I refer to as our “rich bitch” moisturizer. This product is beyond a barrier repair cream. It is meant to help the most dry, dehydrated skins get back to balance. With a combination of shea butter, squalane, glycerin, triglycerides, fatty acids and ceramide NG, it helps to reduce trans epidermal water loss and keep the skin soft, supple, hydrated, and glowing.

Any sleeper hit products that don’t get enough hype?!

• Funny enough, two of our sleeper products are two of my absolute favorite products. The Matinee Cream Cleanser and Antioxidant Treatment Emulsion are two unbelievable products that do exactly what they say they’re going to do, but for some reason, they don’t get enough love. The Matinee Cream Cleanser is a combination of aloe, glycerin, sesame seed oil, rosehip oil, chamomile, cucumber, and a touch of black silt, which is also known as sea mud. So, it is purifying without drying and works great on every skin—from the oiliest to the driest, which is why I call it our “Goldilocks cleanser.” Antioxidant Treatment Emulsion is perfect for anyone, but especially somebody who has struggled with sensitivity when trying to incorporate a high-percentage vitamin C serum into their regimen. It’s a combination of niacinamide, astaxanthin, peptides to help with redness in certain skin tones, broccoli seed oil, squalane, blue-green algae, walnut extract, and the list goes on and on...

You recently launched your first fragrance, Cortile Dolce, which you say is your love letter to Sicily. My family is Sicilian and I’ve always wanted to go, but if I didn’t already have a reason, the scent alone would be enough to convince me. Talk to me about the decision to create a fragrance and how it came to be.

• Interestingly enough, fragrance was sort of my first love in beauty. As I said earlier, since I didn’t really have skin issues growing up, fragrance served as my entry point to the world of beauty and was the category that initially made me fall head over heels for the beauty industry. When I was injured and first began thinking about what was going to be next after my dance career, one thing I actually did was dabble in making fragrances by blending a bunch of different fragrance oils and essential oils. Obviously, it was easier to do that than to create skincare products because you were just blending a few oils and putting them in alcohol—stability was easier, preservation was easier, etc. And because of that, the business is actually incorporated as Jordan Samuel Fragrances and not Jordan Samuel Skin. We had also actually created a fragrance in 2018 with a larger brand; however, when it came time to manufacture it, the minimums were significantly higher than we thought they were going to be, and it was just going to be too much of a lift for us as a small brand to bring fragrance out at that time. In the meantime, I never let that dream go. I kept looking for perfumers that might want to work with us despite our need for smaller minimum order quantities. We finally found exactly what I was searching for a few years ago in an Italian perfume house, and I was finally able to bring my initial passion for fragrance to the Jordan Samuel brand.

Jordan Samuel Skin is one of the first brands that comes to mind when I think about small, independent skincare brands. I’ve learned so much about what that really means by watching your content, like how you decided on the sizes of your cleansers, challenges with manufacturing and why you haven’t made a sunscreen yet. You’re so transparent about what goes on behind the scenes, but what do you think might surprise people to know about running a small business and the decisions you make?

• I love this question and thank you for thinking of us as a true representation of and advocate for small independent brands. I think people would be shocked at how frustrating sourcing packaging can be for beauty founders—more often than not, minimum order quantities in packaging prove to be the bane of my beauty existence! For example, we often find the perfect packaging only to discover that the minimums are 100,000 units for one product. Unfortunately, that’s not even close to the volume we are doing, so the preferred option immediately becomes a no. In other scenarios, we find packaging that’s maybe not perfect aesthetically or functionally but it’s great for the environment—or better for the environment I should say— but then again, same issue... minimums are ridiculous. Alternatively, maybe it’s something that seems like a perfect packaging solution but then doesn’t work in terms of stability and compatibility with the actual product itself after going through testing. Other times, product texture can be a barrier. For instance, The After Show Treatment Cleanser for Sensitive Skin basically cannot be in anything else other than a tube. We’ve tried it in a big, thick airless pump. We’ve tried it in a normal pump. We have tried it in various types of bottles, and it can really only work in a tube or a jar. And while I don’t mind jars, they are just not the best possible solution for cleansers in general, and especially not for one with this texture, which is why we inevitably go with the tube. So, all of that to say, I think sometimes people are shocked at how many barriers to entry there are in terms of something that is seemingly as simple as selecting packaging. With all the hurdles listed above, half of the time packaging solutions are essentially decided for us, as opposed to us being able to pick our ideal first choice.

Anything else you want to share about you, the brand or what to expect in 2025?

• We, of course, are now going to be marrying fragrance and skincare—not so much for face, but certainly for body. In the upcoming year/years, we are hoping to explore scented body cleansers and scented body moisturizers while obviously still expanding our perfume and skincare offerings.

Final questions. Favorite socks, favorite sandwich, favorite tv show, favorite toothpaste?

• My favorite socks, besides my every day mundane no-show socks, are a lovely pair of colorful, warm socks that my mom knit for me. Favorite sandwich is an everything bagel with tuna salad, lettuce, and tomato (and maybe some pickle) from New York Jumbo Bagel on 2nd Ave. Picking a favorite TV show is hard because I have so many, but I think I would have to say Mad Men—my husband and I have actually rewatched the entire series a couple of times. Favorite toothpaste is Sensodyne Pronamel or the basic whitening peppermint flavor from Tom’s of Maine.

  Shop Jordan Samuel Skin

Your Jordan Samuel Skin order through Flagship is automatically 20% off through the end of April!

Jolie here! You can’t go wrong, but here are some of my favorite JSS products:

The Matinee Gel Cleanser (also in travel size, has just a touch of salicylic acid), Hydrate the Mist (the juiciest. The travel size is amazing for planes, purses, literally anywhere), The Performance Eye Gel (works great under reusable eye patches and has caffeine to help with microcirculation), The After Show Treatment Cleanser for Sensitive Skin (the one that started it all for me. The gel becomes an oil you can use to break down even the heaviest makeup). I’ve only recently started using The Matinee Gel Moisturizer with the warmer weather, but it is 👩‍🍳💋 and super customizable, use alone or layered.

JORDAN SAMUEL SKIN GIVEAWAY

Two subscribers will win (4) Jordan Samuel Skin products: a cleanser and a moisturizer of their choice, plus Hydrate the Mist and The Performance Eye Gel.

To enter:

• Make sure you are subscribed to Hotline Skin and “like” this post

• The winner will be randomly selected and notified via email on Wednesday, April 16th (via the email you are subscribed to this newsletter with)

• Open to US shipping addresses only

• For an extra entry, refer a friend!

  Refer a friend

HAVE A QUESTION?

Your turn to chat with Jordan! Ask him about a product, get personalized recommendations, chat about running a small business or anything else! Jordan will be answering directly over the next few days.

Thank you for stopping by, Jordan!

xx,

Jolie