Behind the Brand
with Subtle Bodies Co-Founders Ariana Dedianko and Caroline De Sousa
Discover the creativity, innovation, and strategy behind Subtle Bodies [a Skincare Brand & Lab] in this latest interview with Co-Founders Ariana Dedianko and Caroline De Sousa:
What was the initial inspiration behind launching Subtle Bodies?
Caroline:
I think the catalyst moment with Subtle Bodies came when I was dealing with a health issue and had tried everything to heal it. Nothing was working, and I’d always been intrigued by ozone therapy. A girlfriend of mine recommended I see Ariana for ozone therapy, so I went in for a treatment. At the end of the session she said, “Wait one second,” ran to her back house, and came back with a jar. She told me to apply it to the specific area I was struggling with. I was so intrigued — I asked her what it was, and she said, “It’s ozonated olive oil.” Then she added, “Put it on your face before bed, you’re going to love your skin in the morning.” So I tried it. And I kid you not, I woke up the next day and it was the first time I’d ever put something on my face at night and saw true efficacy — a real transformation. The next time I saw her, I said, “What is this magic potion you gave me? You need to put this on the market.” She told me she’d been wanting to, but needed help bringing it to life. That was the moment I realized I needed to help Ariana bring this ozonated balm into the market space.
Ariana:
It was cool because I had been selling this ozonated oil, but never as a salesperson. If it came up in conversation, I’d say, “Oh, you should try this,” but I’ve always shied away from pushing anyone to buy something. When I shared it with her, it was really just, “Give this a try.” And when she came back so excited about it, it validated something I’d already been thinking — that it would be amazing to turn this into a real company and sell it properly. But I always felt paralyzed by the steps: How do I do this? Where do I even start? Can I trust myself to do it alone? I wish I had a partner. So when she said, “We have to do this. Let’s go into business together,” I was like… okay. Her excitement was infectious. It felt like someone saying, “We’ve got this. I’ll lead us.” And honestly, that’s been our history ever since. Caroline has always been the champion — the driving force who says, “This is going to work.” She was the perfect person for me to partner with.
How do you navigate the journey and challenges that come with turning creative vision into reality?
Caroline:
I think one of the biggest hurdles we’ve had is simply staying consistent and just keeping going. We made so many mistakes in the beginning, and those mistakes ended up being beautiful lessons that we learned right from the start. We don’t look at them as negatives. Our POV has always been, “This is a good thing,” because it’s a great lesson to learn now, before scaling, when those same mistakes could be so detrimental to the business.
Ariana:
It’s definitely food for thought. Everything we’ve done has been about creating something outside the box. Working with ozone presents its own challenge because we have to educate people on what ozone actually is. People who are familiar often think of the ozone layer or associate it with something “negative”, so there’s a teaching element involved.
At the same time, we’re going for an aesthetic, ethereal feel with the company. So the question becomes: how do we take something scientific and obscure, and ground it in this creative, beautiful, ethereal company and ethos we want people to feel? That’s definitely been a challenge. For example, we created these soapstone containers. We’ve never seen anyone use soapstone this way. It started as a creative idea, but then came the practical questions: how do we actually do it? Who can make it? How do we ask them to make it close properly? And what challenges does that create for us?
Every step has been one step forward, two steps back and you just have to keep moving. Consistency is everything. It’s sticking to it, learning from each mistake, and continuing forward. And in full transparency, there are so many moments where I’m like, “This is so hard. Should we even be doing this? Maybe we should give up.” And Caroline is always the one saying, “No.” That synergy between us as partners — having the shared vision, and always having one of us grounded when the other fumbles — that’s what keeps us going. If I stumble, she says, “No, keep going.” If she stumbles, I say the same.
So I think, to answer the question, it’s simply: keep moving forward.
Subtle Bodies skincare products are described as “art for your vanity.” How does design play into the experience of the brand?
Caroline:
I think in terms of the packaging — since it’s the first experience someone has before even using the product — we wanted it to look beautiful. Ariana and I both have products we love, but we end up hiding them because they don’t look pretty on the vanity. We wanted this to feel different.
We also wanted to cut through the noise of what’s happening in the industry. We wanted something that felt separate from everything else out there. With ozone being such an elemental hero ingredient, we wanted to bring those elements into the packaging itself. That was really important to us. It took a very long time to get to where we are with it, but I think the packaging plays a huge role in what Subtle Bodies is.
Karla:
How long would you say the timeline is from formulating a new product to launch?
Ariana:
Formulating a new product takes a long time — realistically a year, sometimes two… And honestly, it’s a process that never really ends. From talking to other founders, even those at much bigger companies, there’s always an ongoing cycle of improving and refining. Products we’re familiar with on the market right now might be getting reformulated — for better shelf stability, reduced reactions, or adjusting percentages of actives based on feedback. You’re constantly being guided by client feedback.
Something unique about our formulas is that, aside from our hero product, the Life Balm, we worked through a synergistic partnership with an esthetician who had also been working with ozone therapy. She had spent over 30 years creating products for her clients, and everything was driven by real client feedback — which is incredibly rare.
What we’ve learned in this industry is that most products people know are white-labeled. They’re the same formulas in different bottles. Ours are different: these formulas were built over time, shaped directly by customers. And now that we’ve taken on those formulas and added the ozone component, we’re constantly trying to expand, extend, and improve them. It’s not a static thing — they’re always evolving. And that really aligns with the ethos of Subtle Bodies, because the brand itself is ever-changing.
What’s the 1 thing you’ve done for the brand/business that has made the greatest impact since launching?
Ariana:
I don’t think we’re rewriting the script at all. I listen to a lot of podcasts around entrepreneurship, and the theme is always the same: you just keep moving forward. It ties back to what we said earlier — one step in front of the other. The truth is, anyone who starts a business has no idea what they don’t know. You get into it and realize, oh, I don’t know a lot. But you still have to keep going: put your best effort forward, use the tools and resources you have, reach out to people, connect with like-minded founders.
Caroline has gone to a few group sessions for entrepreneurs, and she always comes back saying, “Oh my God, everybody makes so many mistakes. I feel better.” The through-line is that everyone makes mistake after mistake and those mistakes end up being their biggest learnings. So for anyone wanting to start something, it really is just the starting that reveals the next step on the path. It’s definitely not something unique to us, it’s what everyone who starts a company says.
What impact do you hope Subtle Bodies leaves — on the industry, on the environment, and on the individual using it?
Caroline:
We call ozone “the magical molecule” because we truly believe there’s so much magic within it. The skin — and the body in general — has such an innate intelligence in knowing how to heal itself. So for us, with Subtle Bodies, it’s really about working with products and, as we expand into new categories, allowing the body’s innate intelligence to do what it’s meant to do with ingredients like ozone.
That’s definitely one of the bigger pillars of why we set out to do this to begin with.
Ariana:
Subtle Bodies is really about helping people come back into relationship with their own vitality. It’s not about adding something — it’s more of a stripping away, a reminder of your natural essence, which is light, expansive, and beautiful. Society has a way of dimming us, and with Subtle Bodies, we’re tapping people back into their own relationship with self.
That’s what we try to express in this ethereal way — it’s a feeling. You want to feel good, you want to feel beautiful, and that comes from the inside. It’s a radiance from within. We want to encourage people into that space, where the external reflects the internal.
Subtle Bodies plays on all this information our physical bodies are constantly relaying: the mental, the emotional — all the layers of us, the “subtle bodies” that exist beyond the physical. They’re all informing the physical. And when we bring those layers back into right relationship, our vitality comes back, our glow comes back.
Ariana:
Something that’s really cool, and that I want to add, is that ozone is created naturally in the environment. It’s created by lightning — that smell in the air after a really intense lightning storm is actually ozone. The lightning hits the oxygen molecules in the air, disperses them, and they come back together as O₃, which is ozone. That’s the fresh, clean scent you smell. Ozone is also created in waterfalls. The strong power of the water creates ozone, so that same smell you notice when you’re near a waterfall is ozone too. It ties the molecule to these powerful natural elements. Ozone is such a mystical, magical molecule because it doesn’t stick — it stays as O₃ only for about 30 minutes. That’s its half-life. Over time it dissipates because it wants to return to O₂. It’s this magical, ephemeral thing that’s fleeting. Our whole mission is to capture it — to take this magical thing and share it with people. It has such a deep tie to elemental nature, and we really try to bring that into the brand as well.
Subtle Bodies:
I hope you enjoyed today’s newest edition of Behind the Brand — where we feature brand founders, creative directors, and the visionaries behind impactful brands, campaigns, and launches. For future interview pitches, please email: karla@brandscurated.com
