Well I just couldn’t wait anymore. Out with the practical stuff and in with the ~beauty~ and sparkles! Let’s start with our very first Korean beauty brand review featuring Skin Food, AKA the brand you could mistake for a healthy midnight snack if drunk enough.
Is this angel holding a skull while asking itself existential questions? Maybe.
In this post, find a fine analysis of the Skin Food brand with the good, the bad and the meh.
Skin Food is a low range beauty brand that prides itself on using “healthy food”, natural ingredients that are healthy for your body and therefore for your skin too. According to my calculations, the skin is indeed part of the body, so I accept this argument. Their website even says “맛있는 화장품”, which means delicious cosmetics (yeah right, let’s see what you’ve got to say when I sue you for food poisoning). The ingredients used are indeed edible in their original form and featured in the name of their products and in their package design. For instance, the Black Egg range has egg shaped, white to black gradient coloured pots.
It doesn’t get any subtler.
The smell is also influenced by this “food for the skin” concept. Up until now, all the products that I’ve tried smelled good to very good. The smell is natural for the most part, not too strong or artificial.
What I like about this brand, other than their natural essences and extracts, is that it isn’t as cheap looking as, say, Etude House or Tony Moly for instance. The packaging is cute, but not buy-it-you-prepubescent-ball-of-sap-cute. I think that’s because Skin Food’s products are rather aimed at girls in their late teens – early twenties (that’s me! Oh my, your marketing strategy paid off!). The fact that their bottles are made of glass and their cap of metal also really helps. So, awesome packaging? Yes. It’s kind of a hit-or-miss with this brand, but I’d say that 80% of it is a hit. Though I still have a huge complaint:
COMIC FREAKING SANS
It’s everywhere on their products and it kills me because it looks so unprofessional. It was already frowned upon to turn in an essay typed in comic sans in high school, but to plaster a whole international brand with it? (Asia and the USA means international in Korea, you K-pop fans should know that by now.) Apart from that (huge) typographic faux pas and the few misses here and there, I must say it’s really not too bad.
Guess which one is a miss. (Image provided by theskinfood.com, where the comic sans has been sneakily replaced by an equally generic font.)
Skin Food makes up for their god awful font choice with list of ingredients available in English. That’s right, you actually are able to know what your skin will receive in its face! *cue music from heaven* (I now suspect that angel is writing one of these lists on some cream pot). This is really awesome for people who have allergies and/or a sensitive skin and would like to give a chance to Korean beauty products.
Let’s have a closer look at some of the products I bought. Shea butter extract, honey extract, rice bran water, jojoba oil, avocado oil… Alright, that sounds good! However, these ingredients sometimes are very far in the list, which means their total amount in the product is small. There is alcohol and perfume involved but so far my sensitive skin has reacted well to it. A last thing that grinds my gears: Skin Food picking up The Body Shop’s bad habit of hiding the ingredients behind a fold. I can’t help but feel that they have something to hide when they do that.
0.24mg of avocado oil in Skin Food’s Avocado Toner (but hey, hydrogenated castor oil ranks sixth).
Now, the part that interests us the most: the ₩₩₩. Skin Food is the same price than the other brands in its category, but I get the feeling their products cost more because it’s always filled to only 2/3 of the recipient. Their prices range from ₩1.000 for the Glacier Water Mask Sheet to ₩39.000 for the Blanc Pearl Caviar Serum.
Let’s quickly wrap this up before I get distracted and hit the wrong button.
The good: natural ingredients, list of ingredients in English, pretty packaging most of the time, natural smell, affordable price, glass bottles.
The bad: comic sans, ingredients sometimes hidden behind a fold.
The meh: sometimes small amount of natural ingredients, bland/unprofessional packaging, effect on the long term?
Would buy from this brand? Depends on what. Some of their lines look appealing (Royal Honey, Avocado and Black Sugar) and do make my skin super soft after use, but I feel like their products don’t really have any long term effect. It’s still a good brand for everyday care, really affordable and they try to be healthy, which is always a plus.
ninety degree east 