Ayesha Curry on Her First Skincare Launch and Feeling Joy “Every Single Day”

“I’m glad we did play the slow game, because we’ve gone above and beyond,” Ayesha Curry says of taking triple the time she initially planned to launch a beauty line. Today, after three and a half years of preparation, planning, and testing, her vitamin C-packed skincare brand Sweet July Skin officially launches with a suite of three products inspired by her Jamaican roots. It’s a natural next step for her lifestyle brand Sweet July, with the self-proclaimed “beauty junkie” having tried it all at this point—including every one of her grandmother’s beauty tips.

“Growing up, I just remember them always having these little old wives tails about their skincare like, ‘Rub this tomato on your face, like it’ll be good for you,’ or ‘Take this aloe vera and put it on after the sun,’” Curry says. When she started noticing that her mother’s skin was “as smooth as butter” even as the years kept passing by, she started paying more attention to the advice she’d doled out. And while tomatoes may not have made it into the final lab samples, Caribbean ingredients like guava, papaya, and soursop did. Every product has “a little bit of vitamin C and niacinamide” in its formulation, she tells me. “Everybody needs these three products,” Curry says of designing recipes that work on all skin types (and while the industry’s take on “clean” beauty is shifting, they do meet the clean standards of retailers like Sephora and Credo).

The Pava Exfoliating Cleanser (the name is “a hybrid of papaya and guava”) polishes skin with super-fine lychee seed powder that Curry promises won’t scratch your skin like ’90s drugstore brands. “I was one of those girls, too, that was using those harsh ones,” she admits, promising her gentle alternative won’t strip your face. Then there’s the Pava Toner that brightens with natural fruit extracts, and the Irie Power Face Oil that smells of tea tree, neem seed, and rosemary oils and helps target hyperpigmentation and uneven texture, something she notes she’s dealt with her whole life. “I’m also a victim of adult acne,” Curry shares. “What I love about the oil is it’s not oily, if that makes any sense.” She uses it as a makeup base now, and mixes it with other products for extra hydration. “It really is multipurpose.”