One of the ongoing themes that I've been championing for a while, and it's also
favoured by other diehard Asian skincare devotees with serious skincare stashes, is the 'Skincare Wardrobe'; the idea that you can have a 'closet' of options to select from rather than wearing everything all at once.
This week, I'm going to be featuring the cleansers currently in my 'Wardrobe', because I have ... 7 cleansers (+1 I am testing, for a total of 8) currently on rotation and they all see regular use. Shocking, I know! But would it be so strange to have 8 different styles of shirts, ranging from tank tops to winter sweaters? Nope. Hence, the concept of the 'Skincare Wardrobe', and we're going to peek into my cleanser 'closet' today.
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| So many cleansers! Can you really use them all? Spoilers: yes. |
Last week in
The Painful Path to K-Beauty Wisdom: 7 Mistakes Beginners Make, under the section '
Buying 'cult' products that don't suit your skin type', I mentioned this concept again:
I look at my products as a 'wardrobe' of options; I may have items in my closet ranging from bathing suits to winter coats, but that doesn't mean I'm going to wear every piece of clothing I own at once. However, having a range of skincare options is actually a good thing, in my opinion, because it populates your wardrobe with options that you can mix and match depending on the 'weather' that day.
This is a really important concept to keep in mind when you're reading tall tales of the supposed number of products used in an Asian skincare routine; even routines I have posted, such as the
Multi-Step Korean Skincare Routine: Winter/Spring 2015, Part II: Current Products, featured a staggering 30 products in its lineup:
Sure, it looks like a lot. The thing is,
real routines don't actually look like that; if you check out my
Instagram, you'll see typical AM and PM routines that I
actually use, on a daily basis.
Here's a random selection of two AM routines, one featuring body lotion, and a PM routine complete with a mask pack:
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| Left to right: AM routine ft a sheet mask, AM routine ft body care, and PM routine ft mask pack. |
As you can see, there are some consistent products, but even though I didn't deliberately pick these to illustrate my point (I only realized after I had collaged them together, haha)
these routines all use different cleansers, which makes them perfect for today's post. (Gotta love that serendipity.) There's a pump-foamed cleanser, a cleansing water, and a foam-with-water cleanser. They're all part of my Skincare Wardrobe, and I pull them out on different occasions.
That doesn't mean that I use it as an excuse to have a million things open at once, so there's no hope of using them before they expire, but it does meant that I have the flexibility to customize my daily routine to perfectly suit my skin's needs that day, and that's what the
multi-step Asian skincare hype is all about, in my opinion. Customization for the win!
In this post:
- Cleansing waters
- Cleansing wipes
- Oil, balm, cream, and gel oil cleansers
- Cleansing powders
- Self-foaming cleansers
- Water-soluble foaming cleansers
I will also mention, before we jump in, that
all of my cleansers are low pH. pH is just
one of the considerations that goes into my choice of cleansers- as you're going to see from all the rejects I've 'purged' from my closet like outdated shirts and ratty jeans.
