We Tried Almost Everything From Prequel. Here Are the Standouts.
During a recent brainstorm meeting, I brought up the resurgence of more clinical, doctor-founded skin-care brands, and one name kept coming up: Prequel. Founded by dermatologist Dr. Sam Ellis in 2023, the brand isn’t exactly new, but it seems to have reached a tipping point. Editors love it. Creators on social media love it. And, increasingly, people who have grown weary of buzzy ingredients and luxury price tags seem to love it, too.
Part of the appeal, says Ellis, is that we’ve entered a more practical, education-driven phase of skin care. Consumers are more ingredient-savvy than ever and less interested in prestige prices for fancy packaging and slick marketing.
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The inspiration came from Ellis’s patients. “People who need to use skin care for their dermatologic conditions such as eczema or rosacea were somewhat uninspired by the products they were told to use — often from the same few drugstore brands,” she says. “I wanted to create a brand that was ‘basic plus’ — everything that my patients need on a day-to-day basis but special and effective enough that they wanted to use those products again and again.” That philosophy is where the name comes from. Ellis thinks of Prequel as the “first chapter” of someone’s skin-care journey — the foundation that comes before any cosmetic treatments and other enhancements.
