Consonant
More about ConsonantA Toronto-based natural skincare brand known for 100% natural, clinically-driven formulas — most famously the award-winning HydrExtreme hydration booster.
The story behind Consonant Read the full story
A stubborn refusal sat at the center of this Canadian line's identity: it would not add scent to its bottles, even though fragrance is one of the cheapest, most reliable ways to make a product feel luxurious and sell. That decision, treating unscented as a principle rather than a niche, framed the whole project of dragging genuinely natural skincare out of the health-food-store ghetto and onto mainstream beauty counters where it could be judged on performance instead of virtue. The catalog stayed deliberately compact, roughly three dozen SKUs spanning a wide affordability range, from low-cost daily basics to premium serums, so the lineup read as a curated edit rather than an endless wall. What turned it from cult favorite into a real retail presence was bricks and mortar: the brand opened a string of Toronto storefronts through the 2010s, starting in the Yonge and Eglinton area, adding a location on the underground PATH concourse in the financial district, and culminating in an intimate flagship on the fashionable West Queen West strip with a dedicated counter for its award-winning hydration booster. Those stores let shoppers touch, smell the absence of fragrance, and feel the textures firsthand, an advantage purely digital naturals brands rarely matched. The ending is as instructive as the beginning. Facing a punishing post-pandemic retail climate and squeezing pressure from wholesale partners, the founder chose to wind the business down rather than limp along or sell out the ethos, announcing the closure openly and shutting the doors at the close of 2024 after a long run. Industry observers singled it out as a rare example of a brand closing with transparency and grace, paying out and communicating honestly rather than vanishing. The formulas now live on only as a legacy catalog.
- Founded
- 2010
- Origin
- Canada
- Heritage
- Established
- Type
- Indie
- Verdicts
- 0 Strong choice · 3 Good choice of 5 assessed
- Top-rated
- Consonant Maximum Glycolic Meta Serum
All Consonant Products
More about Consonant
Founded in 2010 by Bill (William) Baker in Toronto after his own struggles with dry skin and eczema, Consonant Skin+Care was an independent Canadian brand emphasizing natural formulations and fragrance-free products.
Its hero hydration booster, HydrExtreme, won a Canadian Beauty Innovation Award. After 16 years in business, the company closed at the end of 2024, so its catalog is effectively legacy; credibility rested on brand-led testing and natural-ingredient positioning rather than extensive independent clinical research.