Allure executive beauty director Jenny Bailly takes in the floral spoils of Jeju Island, South Korea.
BEAUTY PASSPORT
colored contact lenses (and nothing else). And you won’t get far without hitting
the threshold of one of the multifloor beauty emporiums: Innisfree, Etude
House, the Stylenanda Pink Hotel (which is not a hotel but does have a petal-
filled bathtub for you to pose in).
The sheer volume of innovation on these streets is staggering. K-beauty is a
$13 billion business—and growing, says market-research firm Mintel. But when
I speak to the locals, I learn that they don’t feel pressure to keep pace. K-beauty
is often credited with gifting/cursing us with skin-care routines that include
more steps than an aortic valve replacement: double-cleansing, toners,
essences, serums, activators, creams, masks. Yet your average Korean woman,
particularly of the millennial generation, prefers simplicity. Her MO: a “skip-
care” routine. I am introduced to the term on a visit to the Seoul headquarters
of AmorePacific, the company that owns over two dozen of the beauty brands
I encounter in Myeondong (like Innisfree, Laneige, and Primera). Hohyun Song,
an AmorePacific researcher, encourages me to streamline my skin-care routine.
It’s an unexpected pitch from someone who makes skin-care products. But this
company’s HQ has a free day-care center for children of employees (a truly
beautiful thing), so they are clearly operating on a higher moral plane than I am
accustomed to. Anyway, Song doesn’t suggest skipping treatment ingredi-
ents—let’s not get crazy—but does recommend combining hydrating steps to
increase efficiency. Take Cream Skin, a new toner-moisturizer hybrid that
Laneige introduced (only in Korea for now). It has a skim-milk-y consistency but
also contains oils to provide the hydration you’d get from a cream.
Just as I didn’t expect to consider simplifying my beauty routine during a
trip to Korea, I wasn’t prepared to discover a source of authentic natural
ingredients. Korea is known as a hotbed of beauty disruption—not a leader in
“naturals.” Now, though, local ingredients that have long been part of Korean
beauty culture are edging their way into the spotlight. Just a one-hour flight
from Seoul lies Jeju Island, where residents of a 300-year-old village have
spent generations harvesting camellias for their antioxidant-rich seeds. I
detour there and discover that camellia oil is the secret behind my favorite
skin-softening Mamonde sheet mask and Sulwhasoo face oil. Green tea also
thrives in the volcanic soil of Jeju; for 40 years, AmorePacific has cultivated
green tea gardens on the island, engineering varieties to maximize their
skin-protective properties. Walking through these fields, running my fingers
over the leaves that have been proven to moisturize, soothe, and fight free
radicals—now that truly feels like Shangri-La.
68 ALLURE APRIL 2019
FROM LEFT: STOCKSY; COURTESY OF JENNY BAILLY
