Gilda Liljeblad

Gilda Liljeblad is a Swedish skincare brand founded in 1988 by the esthetician Gilda Liljeblad Koornstra [5]. It began as a salon line, created to extend the results of professional facial treatments, and for most of its history traded under the name Gilda Cosmetics. Around the turn of 2020 into 2021 the company relaunched under its founder's full name, with reformulated products and new packaging.

The brand remains active. It sells skincare for all skin types directly through its own webshop and through third-party skincare retailers, and it centres its formulations on three ingredients it describes as scientific pillars: AHA acids, vitamin A, and a microencapsulation process. It stays a family enterprise, with the founder's son among its product developers.

The founder, Gilda Liljeblad Koornstra, trained as an esthetician in Vienna in the early 1970s and went on to run several salons in Sweden, among them Salon Gripsholm at the Hotel Park Avenue in Gothenburg [7]. She launched her own skincare line in Gothenburg in 1988, initially called Gilda Cosmetics, to improve the outcomes of the treatments her salons offered [5].

Education became part of the business early on. In 1993 she opened Gildaskolan, a school for skin and spa therapists that, by the brand's account, has trained close to 2,000 practitioners [5]. Her son, Benjamin Liljeblad, spent his childhood around the business and later trained and worked as a makeup artist in London — for brands including Nars, Becca and Cover FX — before returning to study skin therapy and joining the company as a product developer [5].

The most visible change in the brand's history was its rebrand from Gilda Cosmetics to Gilda Liljeblad. Accounts place the relaunch across the winter of 2020 and early 2021: one editorial source dates it to early 2021 [6], while a Swedish skin-therapist organisation covered the name change on 4 February 2021 [11]. The relaunch carried the founder's full surname, updated formulas and redesigned packaging.

Gilda Liljeblad positions itself as a Swedish skincare specialist and sums up its promise as "Be your best self." According to the company, its aim is to combine products with knowledge so that customers see visible results in both their skin and their confidence. The brand presents its approach as advanced skincare suitable for all skin types, organised around a six-step routine rather than by skin type alone.

The line spans cleansers, toners, serums, face and eye creams, sun protection and masks. Its longest-running product is the Cleansing Oil, which the company markets as a customer favourite since 1988 [1]. Later hero products include the Fortifying Barrier Cream, the Activating AHA Serum, the Energising Vitamin C Serum and a Calming Mask. Formulations draw on ingredients such as AHA acids, vitamin A, vitamin C, niacinamide, hyaluronic acid and peptides.

Central to the brand's technical story is microencapsulation. Gilda Liljeblad says it uses a patented process it calls RND, or Release on Demand, to hold active ingredients in capsules that release them gradually and keep them stable in the packaging [2].

The company frames environmental care as running from product development through to packaging. It states that its products have been free of parabens and microplastics since 2017 [4], and that production takes place at a facility certified to the ISO 14001 environmental-management standard [4]. Packaging choices vary by product, from recyclable PET for cleansers and toners to sugarcane-based bioplastic tubes for masks. The brand also describes localised Swedish production, direct shipping without intermediaries, and the use of renewable energy.

Alongside its environmental policy, the company supports several charitable partners, including Look Good Feel Better, which offers free skincare and makeup courses to women undergoing cancer treatment; Help Ukraine Gothenburg and Lysekil; and Beautykollektivet, a journalist-run initiative focused on access to hygiene products.

Several products have been recognised in Nordic beauty awards. The Cleansing Oil took silver in the Best Cleanser category at the Global Makeup Awards in 2022, and the Fortifying Barrier Cream was named best day or night cream at Stockholm Beauty Week in 2021 and best facial cream at the Beauty Oscar in 2022 [2]. The Calming Mask was nominated for face mask of the year at the Daisy Beauty Awards in 2022. The magazine Femina has profiled the founder as a "skincare icon" [10].

Gilda Liljeblad is active. It operates its own direct-to-consumer webshop, is stocked by outside skincare retailers, and continued to collect product awards through 2022 following its 2020–2021 rebrand.