Graydon Moffat ’84 turned her culinary and design talents into Graydon Skincare, a sustainable superfood skincare brand that uses pioneering biotechnology to ensure we have good skin days, every day.
Graydon Moffat
Written by Julia (Stanley) Weaver ’78
Photography by Kayla Rocca
Graydon Moffat is the founder of Graydon Skincare. The company manufactures and distributes natural, effective superfood skincare with sustainability in mind. Graydon is on a mission to give us good skin days, every day.
After graduating from Havergal, Graydon majored in Women’s Studies at the University of Toronto. Now, she is the CEO of a high-performance skincare company. It was a long and winding road to reach this destination.
Having lived in France, Graydon was passionate about food and became skilled in cooking at an early age. She nearly enrolled in culinary school in New York, after getting a certificate as a pastry chef in San Francisco, but ultimately obtained an MFA at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California. It was the nineties and yoga was popular. Graydon learned how to teach Ashtanga yoga while working at several studios. Upon graduating from ArtCenter, she was grappling with her career options.
“I had a lightbulb moment. With my culinary, design, and marketing skills, I should launch a plant-based meal delivery business, which was novel then”, shared Graydon. She launched Divine Dishes and became skilled at cooking hip and healthy food for the beach crowd in Santa Monica. Fermentation became her specialty. She developed a coconut milk yogurt infused with superfruits that became her best selling dish. Inspired by the mentorship of a naturopathic doctor, she discovered that using the yogurt on her face yielded great results and soon, her clients started using it as well.
Left: Supermoon Serum, a multifunctional hydrating water serum with bio-retinol and peptides.
Right: Face Food Mineral Mist, a 2-in-1 pick-me-up acts as both a toner and a hydrating face mist.
Graydon moved back to Toronto and worked in marketing at Nestle and Nabisco. The amount of packaging waste in manufacturing and increasing consumption bothered her. This fueled her interest in sustainability. While Graydon appreciated the knowledge she had gained in a corporate environment, she decided to jump at the opportunity to participate in Toronto’s first 2-year yoga teacher training certification program and pursue a different path.
“I had a lightbulb moment. With my culinary, design, and marketing skills, I should launch a plant-based meal delivery business, which was novel then.”
Recently married and with a baby at home, Graydon had found her niche. Many of her students were young moms, and she noticed that many of them struggled with red, dry, and sensitive skin.
Graydon offered her coconut milk and superfruit yogurt as an in-class treat and armed her students with a small jar to use at home on their faces. They noticed the difference it made on their skin and encouraged Graydon to expand the product line and offer treatments for sale.
Realizing that many women want beauty products that are made better than typical drug store fare, Graydon took this encouragement seriously and developed a plan to scale her business. Graydon Skincare is now distributed in Canada, the USA, and Hong Kong.
When asked what she would advise her younger self, Gradon replied, “Don’t worry so much, but always have a backup plan up your sleeve.”
Graydon is thinking about the future of her business, leveraging new biotechnology offerings to fuel ingredient curation for new product development. She feels that the future of beauty lies in biotechnology rather than natural resources from jungles and farmland, which yield oils, extracts, and actives for the formulation of many skincare brands on the market. Graydon’s next innovation? Her team will be helping to solve some of the world’s dirtiest problems with a brand-new alternative to palm oil. Good skin days? Absolutely. And perhaps, just perhaps, more good days—full stop. Check out graydonskincare.ca
Writer: Julia (Stanley) Weaver ’78 is a Marguerite, having attended Havergal from JK to Grade 13. She obtained a degree in microbiology from the University of Guelph and, until retirement, worked in the biotech field, preparing documentation required by regulatory authorities such as Health Canada and the FDA. Julia spends her time travelling and volunteering with the ROM and Girl Guides.
Graydon’s outfit is from the Urban Traveler by Helene Clarkson ’84. heleneclarkson.com
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