My background as a chemical engineer slowly changed the way I thought about that cycle. Skin is working all the time, long before anything becomes visible. Every day, it protects, renews, repairs and responds to stress, sleep, light and the environment. The most important work often happens during the quiet stretch when everything still appears fine.

Then came years in demanding work environments. Long days, pressure, travel and too little sleep began to make the idea feel personal. I could see the visible signs, but I understood that the real story had started much earlier, beneath the surface, while the skin was still coping and compensating.

That was the part I became interested in. The period before the crisis. The ordinary maintenance that protects skin health over time.

It is a quieter story than transformation. There is no dramatic before-and-after for skin that stayed resilient, balanced and healthy. The result appears gradually, in the way skin recovers, holds its strength and continues to function well through the demands of everyday life.

That became the foundation of how I began to think about skincare. Small, consistent actions can shape the skin we live in years from now. Supporting healthy skin every day asks far less of it than repairing accumulated damage later.

Your skin already understands prevention. It has been protecting, renewing and repairing itself your entire life. The more I learned, the more obvious it became that the smartest thing we can do is support that quiet work before anything ever feels urgent.

At the same time, I have trainings for something I can’t talk about just yet. It’s a funny feeling because I feel incredibly confident while also feeling like I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. I don’t think those two things contradict each other anymore.

What I do know is how beautiful it is to watch something you’ve worked so hard for, sacrificed so much for, finally come to life. Looking at my packaging, holding my cream and my serum, seeing formulas that lived in my head for so long become real… I don’t think I’ve ever felt more alive.

I’ve been told I’m too quiet, too serious, too busy. That I should “live a little.” But can I tell you something? I don’t think I’ve ever lived more than I do now.

It makes me wonder why we spend so much of our lives trying to follow a path that was never really ours.

A famous quote of Sartre is: “L’enfer, c’est les autres.” As I’ve gotten older - and apparently “more boring” - I’ve realized how true that feels. We become conscious of ourselves through the eyes of others. We start defining ourselves through how we’re perceived, even though nobody else actually lives inside our minds. They only know us through what we choose to show them, and from that they form an opinion that, somehow, we often end up believing ourselves.

But being seen, and sometimes judged, doesn’t change reality. You work on your body because it makes you feel stronger, that’s a fact. You drink less and party less because you care about your health, that’s a fact. You’ve never felt better in your own skin, you’re healthier, you’re happier, you’re glowing, that’s a fact. Nobody else’s opinion can take those things away from you. The only way I’ve found to genuinely feel good about myself is by becoming more of who I already was instead of trying to become someone else.

People still ask me, “Are you going out after?” Usually, no. I’m probably going home to spend the evening with my boyfriend, or my two cats, or my family, or having dinner with one of the few friends who stood the test of time and quietly watched me become “too boring.” And honestly, I wouldn’t trade that life for anything.

Because who I am, at my core, is a creator. Not in the way we use the word today, but in the most literal sense. My brain looks at the world and immediately wants to build things that don’t exist yet. Some of the ideas are probably delusional, although I still believe they’ll happen one day. Others seem impossible, yet I somehow still believe I can make them happen. The skincare development, the skinclinic that’s being built behind the scenes, the side job in wealth management, building my own body and mind, creating businesses, solving problems. My mind doesn’t really stop creating.

Will I do all of it? Maybe. Will I do it all at once? Definitely not. I’ll prioritize when I have to, and I’ll fail at plenty of things along the way. But creating is what fills my soul. It isn’t going out every weekend or constantly travelling, and that’s okay.

Maybe none of these ideas will succeed. Maybe some of them will fail spectacularly. But I’ll always have the privilege of knowing that I tried to take something that existed only in my mind and bring it into the real world. To create something that didn’t exist before. And through those things, people won’t just see a product or a company, they’ll see a part of me. And I can’t think of anything more invigorating than that.

She wanted to talk about a project she has been dreaming of building alongside her 9-to-5. She had the vision, but felt lost about where to start. How do you build something when it feels as though everything already exists? How do you sell something when there might already be a hundred versions of it out there?

I told her something that sounds cliché until you actually start building.

I said: It might already exist, but no one is you.

And nothing has made me realise this more than entrepreneurship.

You think you’re building a product or a brand, but what you’re really building is an extension of yourself: your experiences, your perspective, your obsessions, and your way of seeing the world.

No one has your story. No one has your touch. No one has your energy. That is the part that can never be copied.

We’re always told to be ourselves, but I don’t think anyone talks enough about how therapeutic it is to create something that comes from that place. There is something deeply meaningful about taking an idea that has lived quietly inside you for years and giving it a life outside of yourself.

I have always been fascinated by ambitious women. The kind of women who are capable of building extraordinary things, yet somehow question themselves more than anyone else.

Perhaps it’s because having a vision requires a certain degree of optimism. Perhaps it’s because believing you can create something from nothing feels, at times, slightly irrational.

So we end up colliding with the reasonable questions.

“What if it doesn’t work?”

“What if nobody buys it?”

“What if it isn’t successful?”

And the truth is that, most of the time, we do not have the answers. And that’s okay.

Because sometimes we place so much importance on the outcome that we forget what it means to create in the first place.

Showing yourself, sharing your ideas, and allowing a part of who you are to exist outside of you is already a form of success. Far more than we often realise.

Most people never give themselves that permission.

So we just have to do it, step by step, for our own sake.

Because one day we will look back and see that there is a piece of us out there in the world that did not exist before.

Whether it becomes our full-time business is another question entirely.

As women, we spend so much of our lives managing responsibilities, expectations, and other people’s needs that it becomes easy to put our own ideas on hold.

But if there is something inside you that keeps asking to be created, I think one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself is to build it and tell its story.

Because people can only know us through what we choose to share. If we never show who we are, how can anyone truly know us?

I think that’s partly why building Olérique has meant so much to me.

I’ve always been quite reserved as a person, and in many ways Olérique has become my way of expressing parts of myself that words never could.

I am so proud to be showing a piece of myself through building it.

And if you’re a woman carrying a quiet fire inside you: let it out, in any way you know how, without thinking about whether you will become successful.

Because the world deserves a chance to meet you through it. 🤍