Finding the best skin care products since 2014. Started with a focus on Korean skincare and grew from there. Skincare tips and beauty tips that work, maybe some hamster butts too
So you’ve carefully assembled your very own custom skincare routine and painstakingly added products in one at a time. You’ve stuck with it for weeks or months, kept notes, and seen some results, at least enough to keep going. But now you feel like you’re in a rut. You’re eyeing your lineup and ogling other people’s routines on Instagram, feeling the urge to make a change. Is it time to switch things up?
Maybe. Maybe not. Could be the best thing you do for your skin. Or a Very Regrettable Decision.
Making good choices for your skin means thinking about why you want to do things to it, so let’s do some thinking together.
May 21, 2019 update: The Soo Ae Donkey Milk 3D Moisture Cream has been discontinued, but together we can bring it back! Soo Ae has offered to bring my favorite barrier-strengthening, all around nourishing, day- and night-appropriate moisturizer back if they receive 5,000 pre-orders for it. To make it easier to reach their goal, they’ve also taken 50% off of the retail price for the pre-sale. Order it here or read on to find out why I love this cream so much after all this time. And please share this post far and wide–we can make this happen!
Originally published September 7, 2015
So let’s talk about moisturizing creams.
Moisturizers are one of the most basic and foundational elements to any skincare routine. Whether you’re reading this from the bottom of the Asian cosmetics rabbit hole or the skincare shelves at your local CVS, you most likely know what moisturizer is and what it does. And you most likely don’t give it much thought. I know I didn’t…until I started using prescription tretinoin. Now I’m all about the creams. This series of three reviews will showcase my three favorite moisturizing creams, the ones that have kept the notorious tret-induced dryness and flakiness at bay so far, helping my skin stay soft and comfortable despite the prescription-strength assault on its moisture levels. Let’s start with my number one: Soo Ae Freeset Donkey Milk 3D Moisture Cream!
If you hang around online skincare communities long enough, you’ll end up seeing at least a handful of variations on the “I Tried a 10-Step Korean Beauty Routine and My Face Burst into Flames” theme. And if you’re newer to skincare or K-beauty, you may at some point be tempted to try this yourself.
I was thinking about how common this is the other day, which prompted me to Tweet this:
Today I feel the need to repeat two things many of us have said for ages:
1. The #kbeauty "10 Step Routine" is a marketing invention NOT a prescription for flawless skin.
2. For the love of God, PLEASE do not throw a million unfamiliar products at your face at once.
But today I feel like I have more to get off my chest, so if you’re thinking that the way to jump into skincare or K-beauty or Asian cosmetics is by throwing an entire routine onto your face at once, please, for the love of your skin, read this first.
The “10-Step Routine” is Marketing, Not Best Practices
I’ve been saying it for years: the “Korean Beauty 10-Step Skincare Routine” is a myth, created by brand and retailer marketing departments and disseminated through industry-friendly media and unwitting independent influencers in order to drive the demand for more products. It is not the universal secret to honey glass cloud skin that looks like an Instagram filter was put on it in real life.
Now, to clarify, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a long routine. I do a long routine most nights of the week–something that might look like this:
(June 2018 skincare routine; some products were provided by brands or shops)
But that’s me. Not you or anyone else. I do what’s right for my skin, which may or may not be what’s right for anyone else’s skin. And I’m not using products in order to fill specific slots in some skincare routine template. It’s the other way around: my skincare routine depends on what works for my skin. It developed organically rather than from a step-by-step form. Sometimes I do three or four steps at night. Sometimes I do…a lot. I do less in the mornings and whenever else I want to.
It’s about what your skin needs. Not about what some external “authority” tells you it needs.
Oh, and those brand lines that have a product for every step, all within the same line’s branding and theme? Please don’t let the existence of these full routine brand lines convince you that you need the entire line on your face. I prefer to think of these lines are offering a variety of options. Maybe I want more ginseng on my face, but I already have a (non-ginseng) serum and cream–in that case, I might pick up the toner. I know brands like to insist that their lines work ~synergistically~ so you should use it all, but in my experience, a mixed routine incorporating a variety of different beneficial ingredients produces better effects.
Trying Multiple New Products at Once Is a Bad, Bad Idea
Okay, so not everyone needs the “full” [however many steps the latest commercial beauty media article specifies] “K-beauty” skincare routine. What about starting a new routine of any length all at the same time?
Please God no.
Just…
There are a lot of things that could go wrong here.
Every unfamiliar product you introduce to your skin has the potential to clog pores, cause irritation, create breakouts, or trigger a reaction. Even my skin, which is generally quite hardy and very rarely suffers anything worse than a bit of redness if I’ve gone too hard with the actives, has had its moments.
Doing this just once gave me one of the worst rashes I’ve ever had the misfortune of experiencing. On my FACE. Also, I wish I could remember what happened to that shirt, because it was really, really comfy.
Now multiply that risk by however many products your potential new routine includes.
The worst thing is, if you have a reaction to just one of the new products you put on your face in combination with a bunch of other new products, you’re not going to have any way of knowing which new product was the culprit. The whole routine is implicated unless you stop using all the products for long enough to let your skin recover, then re-introduce each new product one at a time until you find the one that messed up your skin, at which point you’ll have messed up your skin again.
This is the point at which more than one person has thrown in the towel and declared all of K-beauty or all of skincare to be terrible. And that’s absolutely not true, but good luck convincing someone that it’s not true when “K-beauty” gave them an unforgettably bad reaction that might take months to heal.
As a side note, patch testing can somewhat help mitigate the risks, but it isn’t a perfect solution. Testing your skin’s reaction to a product on one small area of your face or neck might help identify if the product is irritating overall, but unfortunately (or fortunately?), reactions and breakouts don’t always happen uniformly on every single inch of the skin that’s exposed to the offending product. I have certain areas of my face that are more prone to acting up if they come into contact with something they don’t like, but that’s still only probability, not certainty. Depending on the state of my skin, a totally different spot might react the next time.
How to Introduce New Products to Your Skin
Slowly and carefully, that’s how. Skincare isn’t speed dating. Take the time to get to know each product and how you feel about it.
What I mean is, introduce new products to your skin one at a time. When I’m asked about starting a new routine, I generally tell people to give their skin at least a week with one new product before adding another new one to the mix. A week should typically be long enough to see if something bad is going to happen. If you’re willing to go even longer in between new products, however, that’s even better.
You may indeed end up with a long routine that makes your skin happy. Or you may find that your skin maxes out at just a few products, in which case, that should make your wallet happy, too. The point is that you can’t know what’s going to work best for your skin until you get to know your own skin. Your skin is an individual, a free spirit. No K-beauty or skincare “expert” can tell you exactly what to put on it to get the results you want. But they can lead your skin to disaster by trying.
(Want to know more about how I put together a skincare routine? Check out the posts in my Routine Building category!)
Now spill. Has trying to follow the concept of the ~K-Beauty 10 Step Routine~ caused any problems for you?
This may sound strange or even discouraging, but the longer I spend in the worlds of Asian beauty and skincare in general, the less interested I am in the hottest new things.
Don’t get me wrong. Trends are fun; I’ve fallen hard for a few, with no regrets (see: fancy water, honey, ginseng, and obviously and eternally snail). But I’m at a point in my skincare life where I’m ready to accept that there’s very little that’s new under the sun, and of those new things, very little that’s worth more than a quick glance. These days, I see a lot of gimmicks and a lot of manipulation, but not a lot of excitement.
It’s not that I hate new releases and want them off my lawn. It’s more that I look and don’t see much that sounds better than what I’ve already got. I’m settled, and for now I’m happy with that.
So what have I got that makes me so indifferent to what’s coming out? Let’s look!
These are the products that you’ll see over and over on my Instagram.
This post contains affiliate links, which enable me to earn a small commission when purchases are made after clicking them. Affiliate links are marked with an asterisk(*).
Hada Labo Gokujyun Hyaluronic Acid Cleansing Foam
One thing that hasn’t changed throughout my skincare life is my insistence on a neutral-to-low-pH cleanser. Fiddy does not play with high pH cleansers. Not after the last three unfortunate incidents in which I rediscovered my skin’s violent aversion to high pH cleansers. I’m actually pretty liberal among low pH lovers, since I consider anything up to a 7 to be acceptable, but I prefer cleansers with a pH in the 5-6 range.
Hada Labo Gokujyun Hyaluronic Acid Cleansing Foam was one of the first low pH cleansers I liked, and one of the first low pH cleansers I ever blogged about.
In fact, I just opened a fresh bottle a couple of weeks ago.
This mild, unscented, no-frills face wash is about as boring as it gets in terms of skincaretainment. When I’m in a more adventurous or more luxurious mood, it feels like eating unbuttered boiled cauliflower at a Vegas buffet. But when it comes to simply cleaning my face without stripping away my natural moisture or leaving my skin feeling tight, well, unbuttered boiled cauliflower might be bland and boring, but it is good for you.
Also, it’s cheap.
The sole fun factor of the Gokujyun Hyaluronic Acid Cleansing Foam comes from its foaming mechanism, which dispenses a fat cloud of fluffy foam with each press of the pump.
That’s from one pumping. Also note that the pH is between 5 and 6, just how I like it.
Did I mention that it’s cheap? I get it for around $10 a bottle, which leaves me more budget to splurge on products that will actually stay on my face instead of being washed off.
I don’t have a ton to say about this cleanser because it’s, well, a pretty boring cleanser, but it’s also trusty enough that I’ve returned to it over and over throughout the years. At the end of the day, that’s what matters.
Second on my list is a product that is not cheap, but that I’ve consistently found absolutely worth the investment–enough to keep investing in it, bottle after bottle after heavy glass bottle. (And I love the mega-splurgey sheet masks in the line, too.)
Normally I get the bigger bottles, but I found a deal on this one. I’ll just have to replenish sooner than usual.
Many first-timers find the name of this product unnecessarily confusing. While it’s called a “serum,” the “serum” part of the name is secondary in importance to the “first care.” This product claims the potency of a serum but is super lightweight and meant to be applied to skin first after cleansing (or, if you use actives, first after your actives steps). (If you want to know more about the order of product application, I got a blog post for you right here.)
Unlike the Hada Labo Gokujyun Hyaluronic Acid Cleansing Foam, the Sulwhasoo First Care Activating EX is an exciting product. Packed with traditional herbal extracts, including licorice root extract (which I love for its brightening properties), this is a thin, golden brown gel that smells like herbal heaven. Patted into skin, it sinks right in and seems to help subsequent layers absorb more quickly. Immediately after use, it leaves my skin feeling softer but without added heaviness. And with longer term use, it stimulates the circulation in my face, bringing a rosy flush to my cheeks that I never have otherwise.
The softness is nice. The absorption boosting is nice. But the rosy glow is what keeps me coming back for more. Every time I stop using this product, my skin visibly loses some liveliness; when I’m using it again, that liveliness comes right back. I like to look as alive as possible, so I’ll keep this in my routine for as long as I can.
On the excitement scale, the Hada Labo Gokujyun Premium Lotion, which I first reviewed almost two years ago, falls somewhere in between the Hada Labo Gokujyun Hyaluronic Acid Cleansing Foam and the Sulwhasoo First Care Activating Serum EX. The Gokujyun Premium Lotion doesn’t contain any fun and fancy herbal extracts. Nor does it smell like my personal idea of paradise. It’s not quite unbuttered boiled cauliflower, though.
Maybe it’s something like…a healthy but tasty vegetable soup.
The excitement (and my addiction) come from this hydrating product’s five different types of hyaluronic acid. While I think it’s funny when certain brands act like hyaluronic acid is a super premium groundbreaking miracle star ingredient that you can’t find anywhere else, it is true that hyaluronic acid can be awesome. It’s a humectant, meaning that it attracts and holds water. More water in your skin = plumper, bouncier, glowier skin.
The reason the different types of hyaluronic acid matter here is because each type is a different molecular weight and can penetrate to a different level of skin. That creates the potential for plumping and hydration at multiple levels, and that is what the Gokujyun Premium Lotion delivers. This thick, serum-like liquid is on my short list of toners that provide nearly sheet mask-level plumpness and hydration.
Even better, the blandness of the formula makes it suitable for other uses. I particularly like to smear a bit of this on my lips after exfoliating them and before applying lip balm. My lips stay moisturized for longer and look a wee bit plumper, too.
I came back to this after a pretty long hiatus, and I’m so glad I did. I often use this as my only product under sunscreen in the morning, and I never miss out on it at night. Plus, it’s basically a serum product in a toner-sized bottle, and that’s economical.
My exfoliation habits have changed dramatically over the last couple of years.
Back when I first got serious about skincare, actives dominated my nighttime routine. I’d do a separate AHA and BHA all over my face every single night with at least a 20 minute wait time after each, and then my Curology prescription tretinoin with another 20 minute wait time. That’s a lot of actives to throw at one face every night. It’s also a long time to wait before finishing my routine.
I don’t regret my rigorous old routine, but after a while, I found it unnecessary. The daily actives got my skin to a state that I was happy with. Once I got there, I cut back. Two acids a day frequently had my skin feeling like it was close to the edge of overexfoliation, even though it looked nice, and while I wasn’t willing to totally give up my tretinoin, I did want to find ways to reduce my susceptibility to sun damage. At some point, I dropped my daily AHA and limited my BHA to my nose only.
These days, I very rarely use any AHA, and I only use Curology about four times a week for maintenance. What I’ve never stopped doing is putting my BHA on my nose, and I always use the same BHA I have since I first reviewed it in 2015: COSRX BHA Blackhead Power Liquid.
Despite the years that have passed since my first review of this, this is only my third bottle. It lasts forever at the rate I use it.
For those of you new to BHAs or in need of a quick refresher, beta hydroxy acids (BHAs) are often used in skincare to deal with blackhead and acne concerns. BHAs are oil soluble, so they can penetrate into the gunk within pores to loosen up and clear away clogs. In fact, BHAs are a core part of the grit-removing, pore-clearing routine that has been one of the top posts on this blog for years now.
Formulated with 4% betaine salicylate, a milder form of the more common BHA salicylic acid, at a pH of a bit over 4 according to my most recent test, COSRX BHA Blackhead Power Liquid is one of the more gentle yet still effective BHA options I’ve tried. Regular use keeps the pores on my nose free of old sebum and debris that would otherwise make them look larger and darker and that could clog up and cause breakouts. The almost odorless clear liquid sinks into skin quickly–I don’t even give this much of a wait time anymore. I usually proceed with my Curology after just letting the COSRX BHA dry for a few minutes and haven’t seen any loss of benefits.
A part of me suspects that the reason I haven’t moved on from the COSRX BHA is simply because it takes me so damn long to finish a bottle. Since I only use it on my nose, the only place on my face where I have pores visible enough to warrant extra care, I only need the tiniest of drops at a time. I’ll sometimes splash out and smear it all over a freshly shaven leg or something to help prevent ingrown hairs, but that’s rare, and a bottle can last me a year or more.
Still, I can’t deny that every time I do run out of the COSRX BHA, I automatically get another instead of feeling the urge to look for something better. For my purposes, it works out perfectly and with no downside, so what’s the point in taking a risk on something new?
COSRX Advanced Snail 96 Mucin Power Essence and COSRX Advanced Snail 92 All In One Cream
Confession: I’ve sung the praises of COSRX’s snail essence and cream so much lately that I’m not sure what else I can say about these products, except that I’ve gone through bottle after bottle and jar after jar of them without ever getting sick of them. My love has only grown stronger since the first time I blogged about them. In fact, I sang the praises of the Snail 92 All In One Cream as eye cream in a blog post just a few days ago. And every time I’ve tried to move on to another snail product, I’ve ended up coming back to COSRX.
The potential discontinuation of these products is my nightmare.
So what more can I say?
Thick and, yes, slimy, the COSRX Advanced Snail 96 Mucin Power Essence lays down a layer of soothing, smoothing, hydrating protection on my skin that very few other products can match. 96% of the product is snail secretion filtrate, and it shows: this about the plainest and dullest product you could make from such a strange-sounding ingredient.
I mean that as a compliment. Without any fancy tricks or marketing contortions, this snail essence just works. Any irritation that I have calms down faster; any breakouts that I get from other product reactions or the whims of nature heal quicker.
Similarly, the COSRX Advanced Snail 92 All In One Cream is plain, mild, and awesome. Used as a face cream, it softens my skin to a perfectly velvety texture without any greasy residue or unpleasant film. Used as an eye cream, it’s smoothed out my little undereye fine lines to the point where it looks like I took an iron to my face in the mornings. My upper eyelids are slowly firming up now as well. The very soft and also somewhat slimy cream can be a pain to get out of the jar, so I use a scoop. That is my only complaint about the product.
Besides its moisturizing and smoothing capabilities, COSRX Advanced Snail 92 All In One Cream has an additional benefit. It’s so vanilla that it may be one of the safest options for particularly compromised skin, provided you don’t have sensitivities to any of the ingredients in the cream. My good friend Tracy (of Fanserviced-B and general beauty and culture journalism fame) uses a strong azelaic acid gel and just finished a round of Accutane. As you might imagine, her skin is very touchy right now.
Tracy received her jar of COSRX snail cream today. Here are some snippets from our running Snailcast group chat as she tried it:
The last product on my list is the only one I haven’t given a full review to. That’s not because I don’t have anything to say about it. Instead, it’s because Tracy already said pretty much everything I would want to say in her 2015 review of this product. The key takeaway from Tracy’s review:
When used as a booster before toner, Water Oil seems to magically hold moisture to my skin’s surface, help slightly smooth texture and minor scars, give the illusion of “fatter,” more bouncy skin, and create a fantastic base for makeup.
Yes. All of that.
Since Tracy’s review, the product went through a reformulation, but it’s my understanding that the current iteration, which is the one I have and have already torn through three bottles of, is back to the original formula Tracy discussed. That’s a very good thing.
Crap. I’m running low again.
I think one sign of a truly special product is when two people of radically different skin types can both enjoy it. At the time she wrote that review, Tracy’s skin was oily and acne-prone. My skin, on the other hand, generally stays normal, with occasional dry leanings due to climate (and, I guess, age). Yet we both still love it, for fundamentally the same reasons.
I apply my Waterest Lasting Water Oil generously immediately after my Sulwhasoo First Care Activating Serum EX, or first in my routine if for whatever mad reason I’ve chosen not to use the First Care Activating EX for the night. The rich-feeling liquid pats into skin quickly and leaves my skin smoother and fatter, with a soft glow and a sensation of deep nourishment thanks to the micronized oils in the formula.
During dry weather and periods of heavier actives use, it helps keep my skin from desiccating. During milder weather or when I’m being more gentle on my skin, it maintains balanced and abundant moisture levels without making me feel oily. It’s just pretty much the bomb.
My main complaint about the Waterest Lasting Water Oil is that the bottle is freaking tiny for how much I like to use at a time. I go through this stuff extremely quickly (when uploading the photo above, I realized I need to restock and stopped blogging for a minute to make an order). My other complaint is that, for whatever internal reason I’m not privy to, this incredible product is very difficult to find outside of one particular US website, which I’ll link below.
Besides those complaints, I got nothing. I freaking love this stuff.
Buy it: At Club Clio USA (where it’s currently on sale for $12 a bottle)
I promise there will be reviews of new and unfamiliar products coming to this blog in the very near future. I haven’t just been clinging to old favorites, and now that I’ve gotten back on the blogging horse, I’ve got a lot to write about. But as someone who’s been in the game for a pretty long time, I think there’s a lot of value in looking at the products that are good enough to keep using over and over. When we first start blogging, or even just start using K-beauty and AB products in general, it’s easy to love everything. The longer we go on and the more products we compare, the clearer it becomes that most don’t stand the test of time. The ones that do are worth a second or third or fourth look.
One night a few months ago, a terrible thing happened. I went to put on my eye cream–at the time, I was using the Su:m37 Secret Repair Concentrated Eye Cream–and discovered that I’d scraped the entire jar empty.
It was the latest in a long line of fancy hanbang products to bite the dust under my loving care.
I further discovered a distinct lack of other eye creams in my beauty product black hole of a “linen closet.” Nor did I want to use whatever face cream I had planned for the evening around my eyes, for reasons we’ll get into below. The only product on hand that seemed remotely suitable for my eyes was my COSRX Advanced Snail 92 All In One Cream, so in a fit of desperation, I went for it.
And then the next morning I was so pleased at what I woke up to that I went for it again. Then I went for it that night, and again the next morning. And so time passes and here we are today, with me still gleefully putting snail on my eyes morning and night. (more…)
Looking at the front page of this blog, I realize that it’s been over six months since I posted anything here. I’m sorry for the long absence. This year has been a blur, with some pretty intense work, personal, and mental health struggles. Blogging took a backseat to just getting through the often very rough days. But I’m coming out the other side now, and I can’t think of a better way to kick off a renewal* than by going back to the themes of skincare as a tool for self-care that many of us have taken to heart.
*I promise this will be a better “renewal” than the typical product “renewal” that leaves us with fewer beloved ingredients, a corner-cutting new formulation, and ugly new packaging.
Do people ask you for the details of your skincare routine but flinch when you provide an itemized list of your cleansers, actives, toners, essences, serums, sheet masks, creams, and sunscreen? Does intimidation prevent friends and family from following your lusciously hydrated example? Do you look at others’ skincare routines on Instagram and shake your head, sure you’ll never have the time/energy/budget for all that?
A routine like this can be scarier than alligators if you’re new to this kind of thing.
Did you answer yes to any of those questions? Read on.
There are brands so familiar that despite regular use, I hardly ever think about reviewing them anymore. I take them for granted and project my shameful lack of appreciation on everyone else, too.
My Beauty Diary, the first brand I ever wrote about on this blog, is one of the brands I often forget to appreciate. I’ve gone through dozens of boxes of these Taiwanese sheet masks with hardly a word about them. But I finally found a flavor interesting enough to want to blog about it, so here are some thoughts on the My Beauty Diary Duo Brightening Moisture Power Brightening Black Pearl EX+ Mask. (more…)
You know how when you catch up with an old friend after a long time apart, you always touch base on the past and the things that haven’t changed, and it feels really good to know that some things have stayed the same? That’s what we’re going to do today, but with skincare products. (Also, I didn’t do a Best of 2017 post, so consider this my make-up.)
I have a hard time resisting the call of the ~new~, especially now that my job gives me access to a lot of ~new~. That makes these ~old~ products even more special. I keep them buying over and over, because they’re worth my loyalty. (more…)
After all the salt I spewed over the weekend, I’m glad to have something positive to talk about. The Year of the Dog is almost upon us, and that means Lunar New Year promotions and specials. Sulwhasoo’s LNY promotions feature several of my longtime favorite skincare products, which I’m already determined to get onto as many people’s faces as possible through whatever means necessary, so…behold. (more…)
Fifty Shades of Snail 