i-D Vice
From hair tinsel to a microneedle tinier than 1/3 the width of a hair, welcome to the new world of K-beauty.
If you’re even an armchair K-Beauty enthusiast, you’ve clicked through enough donkey milk, 24k gold, and snail slime slideshows for one lifetime. You’ve been reintroduced to honey skin, glass skin, mochi skin, cloudless skin… and glanced warily at ads for products containing thousand-dollar truffles and starfish cream. You might have posted a wrinkly Hanacure mask pic or scared your family by emerging from the bathroom covered in grey carbonating Milky Piggy bubbles. Wherever you’re at in your exploration of Korean beauty products, you know that hype (and anything Charlotte Cho or Alicia Yoon says) is the law of the land, and everyone wants a piece.
You know that [K-Beauty] hype is the law of the land, and everyone wants a piece.
I’ve had a long journey with Korean beauty — one that began with my grandmother and mother and the beauty lessons they were taught before my lifetime — and I’ve felt defeated at times by the industry’s colorism, anti-fat campaigns, and allegations of animal harm (most notoriously, snails and bees). But I, like many Koreans and non-Koreans, have succumbed to the sometimes meticulous, frequently rewarding world that is K-Beauty in the two-day-shipping era. So as the summer comes to a close, I’ve compiled a list of ten products that I feel the rookie and the seasoned vet alike can find accessible and effective.
I recently got into veil serum when Peach and Lily dropped the Miwaji Serum Veil as part of the bran’s first original collection in June. All-in-one beauty products are especially enticing for busy city-dwellers like me. The basic concept of a veil serum is that some hyaluronic acid molecules sink deeper into the skin and some stay on its surface, offering two types of moisture. The hyaluronic acid (a super common ingredient in K-beauty) is not only hydrating, but also skin-binding to promote firmness, and ultimately mixed with peptides for a brightening effect. Now, I’m operating off of 10th grade chemistry so I’m just judging by my own results here. I use the cucumber-infused Amarte Aqua Veil Pure Hydration Serum (and Lee personally uses Ges Gep's One Veil 1ster) as the first step after cleansing — especially when I don’t have time to apply my Cicapair, SPF, moisturizer, peptides, essence, and makeup separately. I love the velvety smooth finish (I also noticed that I don’t need to apply an oil-absorbing rice primer like I normally do since my skin doesn’t produce as much of its own oil and moisture when wearing a veil serum).
Amarte’s serum turns into little droplets of water upon application, similarly to the uber-popular Dr. Jart+ Water Drop Hydrating Moisturizer, and other than the refreshing scent, you won’t be able to tell that you’re wearing it. Veil serum is one of the best examples of my prediction that transparent, undetectable skincare will eventually make foundation obsolete.
Amarte’s Ultra Veil Sunscreen is a great example of a next-generation sunscreen that offers 40-minute water resistant Broad Spectrum SPF 50+ in a super light liquid
— Dr. Craig Kraffert