Clarins

Clarins is a French cosmetics company founded in Paris in 1954 [7]. It began not with a product but with a place: a beauty institute at 35 rue Tronchet, where the founder built treatments around the idea that wellbeing, happiness and beauty are closely linked. From that single Paris address the company grew into a global group of around 8,500 employees [7], still owned by the founding family — a rarity among large beauty houses, most of which have been absorbed into multinational conglomerates.

The brand is known for plant-based skincare and for its long-running Double Serum, and it positions itself in the luxury segment, having become, by the company's own account, the leading luxury skincare brand in France around 1980.

The first Clarins institute opened in 1954, offering massage-based treatments and skincare advice rather than a retail line; the company's first skincare product followed in 1962. Sources render the founder's name two ways: the brand site and Wikipedia call him Jacques Courtin-Clarins [2][7], while a 2025 press release refers to him simply as Jacques Courtin [8] — the same person, with and without the brand suffix later attached to the family name.

The founding idea, as the company tells it, was to listen closely to women in order to understand their needs and to develop skincare that was safe, natural and effective. That emphasis on listening became part of the brand's self-description; an early customer-card system, introduced in 1968, is presented as one expression of it.

Clarins expanded internationally through the 1970s and established a United States arm in New York in 1981. In 1984 the company listed on the Paris Stock Exchange, and through the late 1980s and 1990s it broadened from skincare into fragrance and makeup, adding a makeup line in 1991 and, the same year, removing animal-origin ingredients from its formulas.

In 2008 the founding family took the company private again through a buyout valued at about 680 million euros, delisting it from the stock exchange [7]. The years that followed reshaped the group's portfolio. In 2020 Clarins sold its fragrance division — including the Mugler and Azzaro houses it had built up since a 1990 partnership with Thierry Mugler — to L'Oréal [7]. Two years later, in 2022, it moved in the opposite direction, acquiring the American clean-makeup brand ILIA and relaunching its own myBlend line [7]. The company marked its seventieth year in 2024.

Clarins remains independent and family-owned, held by the Courtin-Clarins family [7]. Its portfolio today centres on the main Clarins brand alongside myBlend and ILIA Beauty. The group has also held outside stakes over the years: in 1994 it acquired a 23 percent share in L'Occitane en Provence [7]. A new chief executive, Jonathan Zrihen, was appointed in 2025.

The company frames its approach around its founder's principles, which it says it continues to put into practice, and around an expressed willingness to be "always ready to listen, do more and do better." Plant-derived ingredients are central to that positioning: according to Clarins, more than 250 natural plant extracts are used across its formulations, with the company stating a preference for botanical ingredients over synthetic ones where it considers them equally effective.

The brand's best-known product is the Double Serum, first launched in 1985 and reformulated across later generations. It uses a two-phase formula combining water-soluble and oil-soluble ingredients; Marie Claire UK describes a blend of 21 plant extracts, including turmeric, aimed at the visible signs of ageing [9]. The product's sales rate is cited differently across sources: Marie Claire, drawing on the company's website, reports one bottle sold every four seconds [9], while Wikipedia records the figure as one every three seconds [7]. Neither figure is independently verifiable, and both trace back to the brand's own reporting. Other recognised products include the Lip Comfort Oil, introduced in 2014, and the Eau Dynamisante fragrance, launched in 1987.

Clarins manufactures nearly all of its skincare at a facility in Pontoise, north of Paris, and runs Domaine Clarins, a research farm in the French Alps at about 1,400 metres elevation, where it cultivates plants under fully organic production. The company operates an ingredient-traceability platform it calls T.R.U.S.T., which lets customers scan a code on skincare products to trace listed ingredients back toward their source.

Clarins has set a series of targets it dates to 2025, including fully sustainable sourcing, 80 percent organically grown ingredients, fully recyclable or refillable packaging, and a 30 percent lower carbon footprint. The company reports that around 70 percent of its packaging is glass or cardboard, and it has offered refillable formats — including screw-off pumps and eco-bars for its Eau Dynamisante and Eau Ressourçante fragrances — since the late 2010s. It also describes biodiversity and fair-trade programmes such as Seeds of Beauty, a tree-planting partnership with the organisation PUR.

In May 2025 Clarins announced that it had become a certified B Corporation, with the certification covering its Clarins and myBlend brands [8]. The press release noted that few B Corp-certified companies exceed 100 million dollars in turnover with ten or more subsidiaries, framing the certification as unusual for a business of its scale.

The Double Serum has been covered as a long-running flagship by beauty press; a 2024 Marie Claire UK review characterised it as a hero product suitable, in the reviewer's words, for all ages, ethnicities and skin types [9]. The company is also associated with French luxury and botanical skincare more broadly.

Clarins is active. It operates as an independent, family-owned global group, and its most recent milestones — B Corp certification and the appointment of a new chief executive — both fall in 2025.