The Beauty Products I Buy Over and Over Again
Staples to my routine that I believe have made a difference for my skin
We’re back to one of my favorite topics this week: beauty. I’m obviously not a professional, but I am an enthusiastic consumer who has spent the last few years really honing my skincare routine. My goal has been simple: preserve my face as it to the extent possible and feel comfortable walking out my front door without any makeup on my skin.
Botox and lasers have helped with the preservation part, but I think it’s my skincare routine that has given me the clear, glowy but not oily, skin of my dreams (ok and genetics played a role too). My skin is not perfect—no one’s is without a filter! But I think it looks pretty fantastic on the day to day, and I’m proud of it.
Below are my favorites. You’ll see quite a few price points in this list. Some of the more expensive products do, in my opinion, work better. Other pricier items I buy because I love the little touch of luxury they bring to my life. This list isn’t every product I use, but it is the ones I have used and repurchased for the last year or longer.
Cleansers
Gleanser. This is not the first (or likely last) time I’ve mentioned prequel’s outstanding cleanser. But seriously this stuff is so good. It’s formulated with 50% glycerin to keep your skin hydrated, will clean your face of all sunscreen, makeup, and general STUFF from the day, and it’s $18 for a giant bottle. I keep two in constant rotation. One on the bathroom counter and one in the shower (Yes I wash my face in the shower, with hot water. I know it’s allegedly bad for my skin, but efficiency and comfort win out on this one). It’s the only foaming cleanser I’ve used since I discovered the product 1.5 years ago.
Pre-Gleanse. Double cleansing with an oil cleanser as my first cleanse changed my skin. I swear it just leaves my face cleaner and more ready to accept my bevy of serums and products. I used to buy much more expensive and fancy oil cleansers. Then prequel released their oil cleanser and like the Gleanser, it’s outstanding. The pump bottle distributes the correct amount in a non-messy fashion (I had one oil cleanser with a flip top and it was just a constant, slippery disaster). It emulsifies nicely with water, and it doesn’t leave a film of oil on your skin. Finally, like all things Prequel, the price is unbeatable.
Clean Skin Club Towels. I wanted to hate these, but I don’t. If you’re using the same towel hanging next to your shower to dry your face after you wash it, you’re reintroducing more bacteria than you just removed. These single-use towels solve that problem, and while I’m not a fan of single-use items, these are compostable which makes me feel a little bit better. I’ve tried having a stack of clean face-towels on hand to use each night but (1) I suck at keeping up with the laundry it requires and (2) I think the fabric just holds onto more bacteria, even if fresh out of the wash because using facecloths always makes me break out around my chin.
Peels
Alpharet Peel Pads. My skin tends toward a bit sensitive, so I don’t do a ton of harsh peels or exfoliation. But, one good sweep with these a week helps keep my face breakout free, glowy, and ready to absorb all my serums. These pads contain skinbetter’s alpharet, a retinoid and AHA combo that really works to turn over skin cells, along with additional acids. They’re a little spicy, but nothing unmanageable. This is the only kind of chemical peeling I do at home. The rest, I leave to the pros.
Sprays/Toners
Universal Skin Solution Dermal Spray. Yes, another prequel product. I swear they don’t sponsor me. The derm behind the product line, Dr. Samantha Ellis, is my derm, but I fell in love with the line long before I started seeing her (though if you’re in the Bay Area, she’s an excellent cosmetic dermatologist and worth the drive to Danville). This spray contains hypochlorous acid, which is basically a gentler form of bleach. It kills bacteria while somehow calming your skin and reducing redness. I use this before heading to the gym in the mornings as an alternate to a full cleanse, which I do once I get home. My one complaint with this product is I’ve now had the spray-pump fail on me twice. But if they fix that, it’s a 12/10 product. It also now comes in a travel size!
Vitamin C Serum
Alto Advanced Defense and Repair Serum. I’ve talked before about why vitamin C is important, but to make sure we’re all on the same page, Vitamin C protects your skin from environmental and sun damage and helps reverse existing damage. I’ve tried a lot of vitamin C serums, including the gold-standard one by Skinceuticals. They have all broken me out in big, ugly cystic breakouts all over my chin and jaw. I’d given up on vitamin C until I tried alto. It goes on smooth, absorbs fast, and doesn’t break me out. Bonus, unlike some vitamin Cs that smell like hotdog water, alto has no real scent. Is it pricey? Yes. Do I think it’s worth it? Also yes. A bottle lasts me around 3 months.
Other Serums
Epicutis Lipid Serum. I wanted to hate this stuff because the price is obscene. But I can’t because my skin adores it. Every time I’ve tried to phase it out of my skincare routine, my skin gets all red and irritated within days. I don’t know how it does it, but this stuff gets my skin to simmer down. The key is to use a very small amount (pea sized), or it’ll pill under the rest of your skincare. The good news is, using so little means a bottle lasts me about 6 months, which takes some of the sting out of the price tag.
Mystro. This is another serum I wanted to hate because it’s pricey. Unfortunately, it also does what it says: reduces redness and reduces rough skin texture. I’m pretty sure the secret to this serum is niacinamide, which is an ingredient known for helping smooth skin. My skin texture, especially on my forehead used to be pretty rough and bumpy. Within months of incorporating this serum those bumps dissapeared. I’m sure there are other niacinamide serums out there that don’t command mystro’s price tag, but this is one of those products, where the luxury price-point and feel of the product brings me joy. So I haven’t tried to find a substitute.
Retinol
AlphaRet Overnight Cream. Full disclosure, I recently phased this product out of my routine. Not because it’s bad, but because I felt ready for something a little more powerful. Tretinoin is king when it comes to retinols, but my skin hates it. A lot. And yes I know it takes time for your skin to get used to tret, but even after I got through the initial purge and irritation, my skin just felt dry and unhappy all the time. So, I swapped over to this which is a combination AHA-retinol that SkinBetter claims works as well as tret. Do I believe that claim? No. But I used the product for the last year and a half and my skin has been consistently smooth, glowy, and wrinkle free. My quarterly botox obviously helps with the wrinkles, but I still think the alpharet is doing something. So why the swap? Well, as I inch closer to 40, I decided I wanted to move back towards the heavy hitters, and maybe even give tret another shot. So, in an effort to build my retinol/nal tolerance up, I swapped to the next product on this list.
Medik8 Crystal Retinal. Retinal is stronger and gentler than standard over the counter retinols. While it’s not as strong as tret, it’s a nice in-between option for people like me who want to maximize the anti-aging impacts of retinol/al/whatever without struggling with the side effects. It’s been a few months since I started using medik8’s product and spoiler: I love this stuff. I started by alternating it with my final bottle of alpharet, before swapping over to it completely. When I finish the #3 strength I’m currently using, I’ll move up to the #6 strength. I definitely think it’s more powerful than alpharet, my skin is smoother and brighter than it’s ever been. Bonus, medik8’s product is a fraction of the price of alpharet.
Moisturizers/Hydrators
Noon Aesthetics Optimal Moisturizing Guardian (OMG). This is my nighttime winter moisturizer. It’s super rich, creamy, and will give your skin that glowy, slightly sticky feeling I normally hate but have learned to tolerate on those winter nights where I just know the cold is going to dry out my skin. When I use this moisturizer, I wake up with my skin feeling smooth, hydrated and not at all greasy. It’s packed with ceramides and lipids, and has a nice, almost citrusy scent. Every time I use it Craig tells me my face smells great.
Noon Aesthetics Halo-Ronic Serum. This is my daytime moisturizer/hydrator. I know some people find hyaluronic acid drying. I even agree that certain hyaluronic acid products can be drying, but I haven’t had that problem with noon’s. I apply this as my last step before sunscreen and it leaves my skin hydrated, without making my sunscreen pill. If you have drier skin than I do, you might need a real moisturizer during the day, but I find the combination of this serum and sunscreen is more than enough to keep my skin happy.
Trio Rebalancing Moisture Treatment. This is my nighttime moisturizer for most of the year. It’s light, absorbs very fast, and leaves my skin feeling supple and hydrated. If it’s a really dry evening, I’ll layer this under OMG, but most nights I just use trio and head to bed.
Sunscreens
Isntree - Hyaluronic Acid Watery Sun Gel SPF 50+. I love this sunscreen and throw it on every morning before I head to the gym/out for a walk. I like it because it’s moisturizing, offers great sun protection, and doesn’t sting my eyes when I later wash it off in the shower. I don’t tend to layer it over the rest of my morning products because I find it can pill, but it’s a staple for those mornings where I spray on some universal skin solution dermal spray, throw on some sunscreen, and run out the door.
Skin1004 - Madagascar Centella Hyalu-Cica Water-Fit Sun Serum SPF50+. My other favorite sunscreen. This one layers beautifully with my morning routine and never pills. It leaves my skin slightly glowy, but not greasy. I buy it in bulk and live in fear that tariffs/other international trade shenanigans will make it impossible for me to get without buying a flight to Korea.
My Favorite Things On The Internet This Week.
I grew up under the specter of HIV/AIDS. My mom was an opera singer, with a large group of queer friends, in San Francisco, in the 90s. She lost more than one friend. I learned early that HIV was a death sentence, and it terrified me. Fortunately, major advances in medicine in the last 25 years have turned HIV into a manageable condition (not saying HIV isn’t still a big deal—it is. But veyr, very fortunately, an HIV diagnosis is no longer a guarantee of a painful, premature death). This latest drug, a 2x a year shot that works as a prophylactic really does seem like it would revolutionize treatment of the disease and allow us to fully bring the HIV/AIDS epidemic under control.
I’ve been on the protein train since I started lifting in late 2018. My goal was to build muscle, and I knew I needed to give my body the appropriate building blocks. Today, I still consume quite a lot of protein, but seeing the explosion of protein-enhanced products has me raising an eyebrow.
Several NYC substack girlies have already said this article is BS, but I have to assume someone in the Hamptons feels this way, or they wouldn’t have said as much in interviews. So even if it’s not a good global representation of what a summer in the Hamptons looks like, reading it made me wince, and made me grateful that I’ve never been to the Hamptons.
The lines about people being disappeared off the streets gives me chills. What is happening to our immigrant populations is unacceptable, and has deep, lasting impact not only on the people being rounded up by the modern-day gestapo (ICE), but the entire immigrant community.