Skincare Brands I Avoid

If we were shopping, these are the brands I’d probably stop you from buying. In my opinion, they are just not what they claim to be and for the price, you could do so much better.

When it comes to makeup, sure whatever brand goes, it’s about how it looks on the skin. But skincare is stuff that you are looking into the ingredients for actual benefits. You are hoping for results. I’m a super skeptic when to comes to most skincare out there. You’re reeeeaalllly going to have to convince me that your product is going to do anything at all. I didn’t believe in visible results until I tried Drunk Elephant. Before, a moisturizer that felt nice and didn’t smell offensive was basically all that really mattered. Which is how so many of us shop. Ingredients lists are hard to decipher. I spent dozens of hours researching. And based on what I’ve seen, I’ve stopped buying from some brands, and have totally overhauled everything I have. 

Boscia 

This is the brand that inspired this post. Everything is so gosh darn gimmicky. 

They have a cool jelly ball cleanser, feet masks, peels that supposedly look like dead skin is being rolled off. Peel off masks. 

But it’s all like tricks you’d find from a street performer. The peel is literally just a glorified glue that is sticky enough to pull bits of dead skin off, and stick in your baby hairs, and it sticks to itself to pill, so you can wipe the little globs of dried glue away. No, that’s not your dead skin rolling off, it’s just the product drying up. It kind of makes it look like it works, but it leaves me with that sinking disappointment feeling. 

The last straw was the unnecessarily aggressive peel off mask emitted fumes that made my eyes water. My skin is not sensitive, I can throw a lot of acids and masks on it for fun. But when my eyes feel like they’re burning, I’m sure my skin is also screaming under there. 

I’ve had it. Bye Boscia. 

Tarte 

Tarte makes me mad with their Maracuja line. This is just passion fruit people. It’s not known for being a particularly powerful antioxidants otherwise we’d be chugging it like pomegranate juice circa 2007. I never see this supposed miracle oil in any other product ingredient list. 

Red flags are when companies go die hard for one cure all ingredient. Caudalie has their grapes, but grapes actually have the scientific papers to back up the claims and they have done clinical studies. Does it really work? Idk but at least there’s something to grasp onto.

If you search maracuja oil, tarte dominates the search page. I’m pretty sure this was a whole marketing scheme to monopolize on this one inexpensive ingredient. And why disguise the name when most people know what passion fruit is. My passion fruit lip balm from Burt’s Bees doesn’t say maracuja to make it sound exotic, and neither have any restaurants done anything like that on the restaurant menu (in English). 

My other gripe with tarte is their use of the word naturals. Which means nothing. It’s purposefully misleading. Natural does not mean non toxic. Heck, you could argue Vaseline is natural because at one point it was unrefined oil, that came from the Earth’s crust. Natural does not mean unprocessed. Natural is a marketing word. 

Tarte is the click bait of cosmetics companies. From fairies to mermaids to pineapples, they’re just out for young people’s money! They have good products I like, but I don’t trust companies with that kind of marketing strategy. The formula is too reminiscent of 20th century CPG companies pushing stuff that’s bad for you. Making stuff to make money and not for the customer. Tarte is like the fast fashion of cosmetics. Latch onto a trend and exploit it. 

They also charge a dollar to add a sample to your order. Not a nice sample. Just a little foil thing. What the actual f. No need to dig into what this company is really about.

Fresh 

McDonald’s fries are great. And they are totally acceptable, and if that’s all you’ve ever had it’s hard to imagine that a potatoes could be transformed and reincarnated as anything mind blowing. But there are actual good fries out there and they will make you want to eat nothing but the fresh crunch and balance of herbs and salt for the rest of your life. McDonald’s fries don’t even scratch the surface of all a fry can be. 

Fresh skincare is the McDonald’s fries of the skincare world. It’s not even fresh. Full of preservatives and masquerades as something natural. Like, oxybenzone is literally so bad for you and the environment and you out that into your lip products? Gross. When I read the ingredients for my fresh stuff i feet betrayed. 

There are some okay products, but even something as simple as a rose toner they can ruin with bht, phenoxyehtanoo, pegs, and fragrance. Like really. Hard pass. 

La Mer

I love that there are always pictures of the deep sea in their marketing. Literally the only thing coming from the deep sea that goes in here is oil from deep sea drilling. Their products feel so luxurious and good to put on, but it’s just dressed up Vaseline, folks. Nothin special here. There aren’t even that many of today’s most proven ingredients. I hate that luxury brands aren’t transparent about what’s really going on. They won’t be able to survive much longer like that. I’m not disputing the fact that their stuff doesn’t work, it may work out very well for some people, but so would another well formulated skincare products (and probably better so). 

Glam Glow

I’m gonna start out saying that I love their charcoal mask. It’s aggressive but I would not recommend it to people willy nilly. No way is this for everyone. It’s harsh, but I have yet to find something that leaves me looking as poreless. 

As for their moisturizers and what not, I have enjoyed their matte volcanic moisturizer in the past, but it just isn’t special enough to justify the cost. I like the creamsicle smell… anndddd that’s about it. Fragrance isn’t skincare though, so I’ve learned to avoid products that might be using fragrance to mask scents of their potions. This line is heavily reliant on gimmicks and introducing novel experiences is more of what they’re selling that actual skincare. Just know exactly what you’re getting into before you put up your cash.  

Benefit 

Good lord. I used to think Benefit was a reputable brand until I started looking into the ingredients and stared into a deep dark hole of parabens. Their skincare is comical because it’s designed to have a retro feel and with the amount of preservatives in them, they really could be from 1962. It just astounds me how far up in the ingredients they put preservatives – sometimes even before filler ingredients. #smh

Okay, I’m done now haha