There’s a new skincare brand on the market and I tried all of it.

Finnish skincare brand Djusie officially launched a week or so ago, and I’m ready to offer a scientific review as I’d pre-ordered the products before Christmas and already have a couple of days of use under my belt.

The woman behind the brand is Finnish Katja Kokko, pioneer in natural beauty and cosmetics, whose blog reviews of various beauty products were insanely impressive in their meticulousness already years ago. Given her thorough approach to skincare and wellbeing (her training credentials are breathtaking), her second beauty line was going to be serious.

First, full respect for successfully bringing a new skincare line to the already extremely saturated market. Djusie kicks off with three products: cleanser, balancing toner and a face oil. It’s a good, compact set that covers the basics before adding bells and whistles. I’m usually more convinced with brands that start small – it at least gives the impression that focus has been more on developing the product than on fantasising about world domination by assembling together a little bit of everything for everybody. (Gold standard example: Vintner’s Daughter.)

So. On with the show:

Name
Djusie seems to be a playful take on juicy. At least the product descriptions mention juicy skin often enough. It’s a good name, and pointedly not Finnish. The Danish skincare brand Nuori already did that. Their brand consultant once explained to me that nuori means fresh, which it does not. I sometimes still admire her confidence in lecturing me about my mother tongue, given that nuori was -and probably still is – absolutely the single Finnish word in her vocabulary. (It means young.)
Extra points for not including any random Nordic letters, either, à la the cow sauce -snafu (Kosas quietly replaced the å with an a). That trend already moved to coffee houses and seems to be fading.

Packaging
Djusie’s colourful and playful packaging is decidedly targeted to international audience. I know this because Finns don’t do colour. Anywhere*. You can visit a private Finnish home, a senior citizens care home, the President’s official residence or a mental asylum and you will see identical furniture and ‘colour’ palette of light plywood in all of them. Interior textiles can range from white to beige, but do note that tablecloths of any kind are prohibited by law (they would distract the dinner guests from the table’s birch surface).
During colder seasons (ie. all the time), people move about as if in a funeral procession, because black is the only accepted colour for outerwear.
There are no exceptions to these rules.
Djusie’s bottles are glass, which gives them a nice, heavy stature. The packaging is not exactly luxurious, though, and especially the toner could have benefited from a different dispensing system.

Infuriatingly tiny white font is used to describe the contents (again, the line is definitely going international given that the product descriptions already come in all official UN languages), and the textured cardboard surface makes is illegible. I don’t know what nocturnal feline with special vision can read the stuff. I couldn’t.

The cleanser
Liquid Silk is a cleansing oil that washes off with warm water (oil to milk -consistency). It’s not too runny, or too gunky like Tata Harper’s cleansing oil, which has to be scraped off. This one removes makeup and is an all-round everyday cleanser. Liquid Silk compares nicely with my favourite, Odacité’s Omega Oil Cleanser, with one minus.
The smell. Liquid Silk smells like the detergent used to remove limescale from bathroom tiles. I am not sure which ingredient causes this, or a combination of them, but the smell is quite strong and does not spark joy.

The toner/Balancing essence
Acid Bloom is probably the most interesting product of the trio, as it is not the usual, spritz-able flower mist. The dark green liquid is patted onto face with hands, and it’s meant to take care of the pH balance of the skin. Ingredients include xylitol, gotu kola, apple cider vinegar and reishi mushroom, so if using this concoction in the mornings does not count as green smoothie I don’t know what does.
The essence has an earthy smell, but it’s not disturbingly strong. My favourite Djusie so far.

The oil
Fruit Glaze is a brightening face oil. Described as berrylicious on the website, it contains several berry seed oils, is light enough but not too runny, and absorbs delightfully well. I tried it with Gua Sha and icy Fraîcheur globes, rather successfully.
It’s not as intense as Vintner’s Daughter or the one by Goopglow. Fair enough, its price point is also a fraction (at €49). For massages and such I think Fruit Glaze can be just the thing. For colder/drier weathers, I would add a layer of moisturiser.
The smell is quite strong, and it’s more fruity than vegetal, but not in the nauseating, sweet way.

Would I repurchase? For products in this price range (under €50) Djusie absolutely pulls its weight.
I like that the brand is designed to be international from the launch: the website is properly done, there’s no clumsy Finnish folklore as ‘brand identity’, and the packaging is of course designed to be as instagrammable as possible. Ultimately, clean/natural skincare lines are a dime a dozen these days, so products have to be extraordinary to survive the fierce competition.
But yes, I’m a bit intrigued by the vinegar essence, so let’s see how plump and juicy my skin is once I go through the bottle.

Finally, to clarify, I have paid the full price for all products and am in no way affiliated / collaborating with the brand.

*We like to let our colourful personalities shine through.