How Nara Smith Chose Her First Beauty Campaign

Nara Smith, the American model-turned-influencer who rose to fame with her TikTok videos showcasing aspirational housewifedom, has landed her first beauty campaign — and not for a product she made in her kitchen.

Smith stars alongside dermatologist Dr. Camille Howard in “From Scratch to Soothe,” a campaign intended to reboot and reintroduce Galderma-owned Cetaphil’s eczema line Restoraderm, the brand announced Monday.

Smith, who is 23, will be a familiar face to young consumers. The wife of the model Lucky Blue Smith, who she married in 2020, Smith broke out on TikTok in 2023 when she began sharing videos making food for her children while immaculately dressed and made-up. She became an unwitting avatar of the “tradwife” trend, as influencers on social media began to embrace and glamorise the dying art of housewifery.

While science hasn’t always aligned with the trend, Smith explained to The Business of Beauty in an email how the complexities of eczema caused her to reevaluate choices like the ingredients in her food. “Managing it often requires a more holistic, science-backed approach,” she said. The penchant for from-scratch cooking that has resulted in her most viral videos stems from her avoidance of allergens sometimes found in storebought food.

In 2021, Smith began experiencing flare-ups that caused her skin to peel and her eyes to swell. A recent lupus diagnosis helped her take back control of her body’s largest organ.

“My journey with eczema has been deeply personal and, at times, really overwhelming,” she continued.

Tara Loftis, global president of dermatological skincare at Swiss parent company Galderma, described “From Scratch to Soothe” as a science-forward campaign within a larger Gen-Z-oriented rebrand.

“Eczema is something that young people struggle with a lot, and we feel like we have a responsibility to show up, not just in a design-refreshed way, but in a very smart, scientific way,” Loftis said. The brand worked alongside Smith to design the campaign, adding that the title, which riffs on Smith’s cooking “from scratch” videos, was the model’s idea.

From Scratch to Soothe kicks off with an event in New York, hosted by Smith and Dr. Howard and sponsored by Nylon magazine, and will subsequently roll out on TikTok and Instagram with influencer and dermfluencer collaborations on Cetaphil’s channels alongside paid ads. The brand’s digital storefronts on Amazon and Walmart will display ads of Smith dressed in a diaphanous ice blue dress next to the words “Instant Relief.” By pure coincidence, Loftis added, the brand is using the campaign to target markets in the US and Germany, reflecting Smith’s own ancestry — the model grew up in Germany but moved to California, in 2020, to begin her modeling career.

Loftis said that Smith’s struggles with eczema, which the influencer posted about in gruesome detail last October, singled her out as an unlikely voice for dermatologist-backed skincare. The brand observed a rise in eczema-related Google searches after Smith’s posts, and a subsequent People interview she gave about her experience with the condition.

Loftis joined the Swiss pharmaceutical company Galderma from the LVMH incubator Kendo in 2024, and upon arrival began an audit of Cetaphil’s “brand and product architecture,” she said. “One of the observations we made is that our Restoraderm line wasn’t growing as fast as we wanted it to, despite how loved it was.”

Asked if the tradwife moment factored into Cetaphil’s decision to cast Smith in the campaign, Loftis said the brand is “not here to take a stance on someone’s lifestyle,” adding: “We just want to naturally weave a genuine solution into her narrative.”

Her co-star in the campaign is Camille Howard, a board-certified dermatologist whose clinic is in lower Manhattan and who delights in sharing skincare education with her 200,000 TikTok followers.

“Matthew [Meckfessel, Galderma’s head of US medical affairs] and I were geeking out over filaggrin!” Howard said, referring to a protein that weaves between keratinocytes and helps create the “skin barrier.”

In concert with the new package’s arrival on shelves, the From Scratch to Soothe campaign is designed to help reintroduce the brand’s authority on eczema, endear it to Gen-Z and Gen Alpha consumers and hopefully steal some away from their competitor Cerave. The L’Oréal-owned brand’s liberal use of dermfluencer marketing has helped it remain the number one most relevant skincare brand for male and female teens by a wide margin, according to Piper Sandler’s Taking Stock of Teens spring 2025 survey. (Cetaphil has a smaller, but not insignificant share, ranking second for boys and fourth for girls.)

Smith said she’s looking forward to connecting “with the eczema community” through conversations, panels and experiences.

“The heart of this campaign is connection,” she added, “so it’ll go beyond just what’s on screen.”

Learn more:

The BoF Podcast | Nara Smith and Lucky Blue Smith on Living Authentically in Viral Moments

At BoF VOICES 2024, Lucky Blue Smith and Nara Smith discussed the pressures of being in the public eye, and how staying true to themselves is core to their success — and their sanity.