Korean beauty products to the rescue

Urbanwit fashion and beauty blogger, Sarah Kate Watson-Baik, shares her top five favourite K-beauty products from the place this Filipina Californian now calls home – Seoul, Korea.

1. Missha Time Revolution – the First Treatment Essence

A dupe of SK II’s ferment essence, this product costs about a third of the price and doesn’t contain any nasty parabens. A nice product for brighting and anti-ageing.

2. Vant 36.5 and Hera’s Age Reverse

These are both favourite cushion compacts of mine. Hera Age Reverse is a liquid foundation in a cushion compact, that also includes anti-ageing essence and sunblock. The finish is clean and slightly dewy in a ‘Korean celebrity’ kind of way. So convenient to throw in your purse and touch up later in the day. These days, I only ever wear professional long-wearing foundations when I’m doing TV or big events.

3. Etude House – Look At My Eyes

These wonderful eyeshadows are from Korea’s cutest beauty brand, Etude House. The formula and range of colours is great. This brand has a large following of collectors and fans, so there’s always new colours and products to look out for.

4. Sheet Masks

I love sheet masks. In their most basic form, they are a paper mask soaked in essence/serum. You wear them on your face for 10-40 minutes after cleansing and toning. I’m really into the hydrogel or biocellulous versions that are like jelly sheets for your face. I tend to use the upper range from brands such as Innisfree, Etude House, MediHeal, and Hushu that contain more active ingredients. If you use one a day for a week you will have a new face.

5. Banila Co – Clean It Zero

Koreans really love oil cleansing as part of a two-step skin cleansing process after wearing makeup. Clean It Zero is a balm that dissolves your makeup. It washes off super easy unlike other oil cleansers.

Editor’s Note: Sarah chooses to refer to herself as Filipina Californian.

Read more about Sarah Kate Watson-Baik and how she got her start in the Korean fashion world. You might also want to check out her list of favourite Asian fashion designers.

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4 Comments »

Ann 4 years ago

“Californian Filipina”? Did you know Filipina is Polish in origin and means friend of horses? Also, if you go familysearch.org and key in the just the first name Filipina on a search you’ll find various European woman coming up with that name over quite a few centuries. Sarah refers to herself as part Filipino. I find it odd Rachel you refer to yourself as English yet, Sarah who’s nationality is clearly American (California is a state) gets the odd label listed above. You wouldn’t refer to Helen Mirren as an actress. Filipina is sexist and smacks of colonialism.

Bex Shannon 4 years ago

Hi Ann,
Sarah is very proud of her heritage and in-fact refers to herself as Filipina Californian (see http://www.urbanwit.com/about/). It’s important that we depict people in a light that they agree is acceptable, reasonable and true, and we would never apply a title, description, or insinuate a fact relating to one of our respected contributors, without their prior approval.

Niciseoul 4 years ago

Bex, this is lovely written 🙂
Also, on a side-note, I loved the fun fact that you mentioned Sarah’s background. Being multi-culti (mixed) is fantastic!

Bex Shannon 4 years ago

Thanks for the nice feedback.