Icon Skincare Luminous BrighteningIcon Skincare Everyone wants to know celebrity beauty secrets, and the most coveted of all would be Marilyn Monroe’s tricks. Those were discovered by Bryan Johns and Alec Call, the founders of iS Clinical, when they stumbled upon a leather notebook containing skincare recipes that was previously owned by Madam Renna, the most renowned facialist during Hollywood’s Golden Age. In addition to Monroe, she tended to the famous faces of Clark Gable, Elizabeth Taylor and Ava Gardner, to name a few. That notebook became the muse of Icon Skincare, a new line helmed by Johns and Call launching today.“Madam Renna was a famous beautician and her husband, Dr. Campbell, was also a doctor to the stars,” Johns says. “This was in the 50s, 60s, all through the mid 80s. They had a location in New York and one in Beverly Hills. They had lots of celebrity clientele. Marilyn was one and went to Madam Renna and her husband from 1949. They helped her get her first part, in The Asphalt Jungle. She continued going to them until 1962 within the last month of her death.”Icon Skincare MilkIt Cleansing PowderIcon Skincare Johns and Call have long been collectors of Hollywood memorabilia, especially of Monroe, and had won a photo of the star at auction in 2016. It came with other ephemera, including business records from Madam Renna. At the bottom of the box they found her notebook filled with skincare products and formulas she made for these stars.“This is kismet,” Johns says. “What are the chances? The book was of over probably 200 formulas falling in my lap. It was this amazing convergence of the universe. Of course, the first thing I do, because I also formulate our iS Clinical products, is start trying to put some things together. A lot of these formulas would not make the mustard today—some of these ingredients they don't allow anymore. But what I did notice is that they use this royal jelly in a lot of the products, and I looked more into the properties of that. We've used honey in some of our products for iS Clinical, and it is one of the leading cosmeceutical brands. It was at that juncture that the chances of merging of skincare and Marilyn, and these other icons, was meant to be.”Icon Skincare MilkIt Cleansing PowderIcon Skincare Though they couldn’t copy the formulas, since they wanted to use cutting-edge science and modern ingredients, they served as the muse of Icon Skincare. “At the same time, we were thinking about what Marilyn embodied,” Johns says. “She came from an incredibly difficult background. One of the things that people noticed about her is she had this luminosity and charisma that she could turn on and off. She could literally go down the street and be wearing a scarf and sunglasses and be nondescript, and she could adjust herself and become Marilyn. Basically, it was confidence. She exuded this glow, and she had great skin. It started with her skin—people would say it almost looked translucent on camera. Confidence is so important that everybody has the ability to become an icon, just from their confidence alone. There are icons everywhere, whether it's medicine or politics, in every aspect of life, and everybody has an opportunity to become one. That was the impetus for this brand we wanted to build.”They knew the brand had to be called Icon, and started developing it in 2018. While iS Clincal is driven by science, Icon Skincare is fueled by joy. Even the packaging—which was created with sustainability in mind and largely made from postconsumer recycled plastic and is mostly refillable—is designed to elicit happiness. The bright colors aim to inspire and bring moments of joy; the inside of the outer packaging features a Pucci-esque print, a favorite designer of Monroe.Icon Skincare The Icon CreamIcon Skincare “Our mission statement is improving the physical and emotional well-being of people,” Call says. “That's been on our minds for 25 years, and we've been doing this with iSClinical. It's physical and emotional, and here we really wanted to appeal to the emotional aspect of what it is to feel confident because you feel good in your skin. We know a lot about how to bring health to the skin and we have that heritage through iSClinical, but the approach we took is instead of doing a bunch of clinical studies and talking about correcting your skin, we wanted to bring out something more joyful, more fun, and appeal to the emotional aspect of what that is to be confident.”Icon Skincare is meant to help you find the icon within yourself. To help more people achieve that, the line is priced lower than iS Clinical, ranging from $32 to $68. All of the product names are fun nods to Old Hollywood, like Camera Ready, a hydrating primer; Luminous Brightening, a vitamin C cream-serum; Satin Resurfacing, an AHA/PHA exfoliating serum; and Take One Cleansing Honey, a facial cleanser. Then there’s the hero product, Icon Cream, inspired by one of Madam Renna’s recipes and comes in two versions: Heritage, the faithful recreation that is 98% true to the original, and Reinvented, a more modern, lighter take without the lanolin base. “One of the formulas in that notebook was pretty darn good the way it is,” Johns says. This seemed to be their most popular product, so I made this cream.” It took years to develop the formulas, and their network of makeup artists shared feedback along the way to shape the final versions.Icon Skincare HydraScene MoistureIcon Skincare Another way Icon Skincare pays homage to Monroe is through their support of Foster Love, a nonprofit dedicated to children in foster care. Giving back has always been of the utmost important to Johns and Call, who have now helped raise more than $4.6 billion for breast cancer and they’ve both served for years on the board of the National Breast Cancer Coalition. When Monroe was growing up, “she dreamed of becoming an actress, and she looked out her window in her room in the orphanage, and she saw the water tower that was RKO at the time, and became Paramount Studios,” Johns says. “She talks about looking out at that water tower and dreaming about her future. [When she became famous] she used to go talk at orphanages and give those kids hope. That was very dear to her heart, so we're going to be supporting that.”That element of giving back fits their mission of spreading joy. “When you feel joyful, you're in a moment that brings confidence,” Call says. “These are incredible products, but we have to grab people emotionally. The one message that we want to continue to drive home is finding the piece of you that is the icon and bringing that forward. Over the evolution of the brand, there will be a lot more about the emotional aspect of skincare in your life and how that brings out your self-confidence. Developing the icon in yourself starts with the skin you're in.”