LA TRADICIÓN DE LA BELLEZA COREANA

Participating as a consumer in the beauty industry is a chance to experience self-care and expression entirely in your control. Designing your routine and desired outcomes is a platform for endless opportunities of market exploration. Specifically with skincare, treatments actually encourage choices that are unique to you, your skin concerns, and your lifestyle; someone who suffers with acne might have an elaborate treatment routine of acids and dermatologist-recommended ointments, whereas someone who has exactly 15 minutes in the morning to get ready might use nothing more than a splash of water and a moisturizer. There is an abundant amount of different product and treatment types on the market, and this bounty allows for a customization of your routine based on your skin goals and desired appearance. No type of skin care speaks more towards this customization and refinement of a routine than Korean skincare, otherwise known as Kbeauty. K-beauty entered the Western beauty scene in 2011, and as more brands infiltrated the market, the American consumer was slowly educated about what Korean beauty is and what it could mean to them. It didn’t really take off until 2018, but when it did, it soared, growing 300% from 2016 to 2018. Currently, Korean skin care and beauty is an integral part of Western skincare markets, boasting its colorful and cute packaging in major department stores. And while Kbeauty came to our shores, Korea continues to grow as a leader in innovation and manufacturing, promising consistent, cost-effective opportunities for production (so much so that European companies are beginning to set up in Korea to learn a thing or two.) How is it different: Korean v. American Treatment in K-beauty focuses on prevention and protection rather than problem solving. Routines often require consistency to see results, as ingredients are typically gentle in nature, and traditionally harsh actives (such as AHAs and BHAs)are kept at lower percentages to maintain skin barrier integrity. As Ashley Hubbard suggests in her Healthline article “Korean Skin Care Routine: All the Steps From A to Z”, Korean skincare routines are about respecting your skin and bringing it to its healthiest status through a multitude of gentle steps. Cleansing, toning, and moisturizing all have the central focus on working with the skin to promote balance, instead of working against the issues that your skin may currently be presenting. With this, Korean skincare focuses more on beautifying the skin you’re in rather than covering it with makeup, which was a traditional Western ideal that has since been challenged. More and more people are opting for bare faces, barely-there makeup, or the “model off duty” look to display the glow and radiancy that their natural base presents. The most central concept and foundational goal to Korean skincare is hydration. Korean skincare trends, like “glass skin” or “honey skin”, identify the benefits of hydrated skin as an aesthetic goal; the more moisturized, hydrated, and functioning your skin layers are, the more plump, dewy, and reflective your skin will naturally look. However, the ultimate truth in Korean skincare is that caring for your skin is not about appearance, it’s about importance. Cells depend on water for function, and their surrounding environment must have its proper lipid ratio to keep water balanced throughout the layers of the skin and to inhibit irritant penetration. Working with your skin to promote its own innate hydration and proper barrier strength also ensures that further skincare steps are able to properly absorb. Beyond hydration, other skincare concerns are largely centered around aging, such as hyperpigmentation, wrinkles, and dehydrated skin. Koreans start young in their routines, ensuring these signs of aging are addressed before they may even happen. Skin is sought to be improved gently and consistently for results that will be more obvious years down the line. Sun care is a huge part of this preventative treatment, ensuring reduction in photo-aging and maintenance of radiant skin. Ingredients like ginseng, snail mucin, and fermented rice water are all traditional materials that promote natural treatment with guaranteed efficacy. As Alexia Inge commented in Emma McCarthy’s article “So-Ko your skin: why South Korean skincare is serious stuff (despite its cutesy packaging” , every component of K-beauty, from packaging to ingredients, highlights how much this category is a hive for innovation. These ingredients, novel to the western beauty sphere, introduce a new potential for not only innovative treatment, but innovation in one’s routine as well. There is nothing more notable about Korean skincare than its promotion of a multi-step skincare routine. In this, skincare is not only about protection and prevention, it’s about the ritual itself, and the respect you show your skin in participating in it. The various possibilities you may choose from to design your unique treatment routine all derive from three core activities: cleanse, hydrate, and protect. Here at RIMAN, we promote a methodology of Korean skincare that is traditional in its tenants but unique in its offerings. Focuses on preventing and protecting are at the forefront of our formulation considerations in the Incellderm line. We concentrated on the three key concepts of Korean skincare to ensure each category contains products with the utmost efficacies. Patented ingredients, technologies, and testing allow us to offer a product line as special as your skin. 1. Cleanse: Cleansing is one of the most important things that you can do to keep your skin healthy and prepare it for future products. Most simplistically, cleansing removes dirt, bacteria, and oil build-up from your face; not only does this keep skin radiant and penetrable for skin care products, but it also prevents further skin concerns, like break-outs. Dirt and oil can clog pores, leading to pimples and blackheads, and lack of proper cleansing can give skin an overall oily appearance, which reduces radiancy. One of the most defining characteristics of Korean skincare is the promotion of the “double-cleansing” procedure. This two-step process is one of the most effective ways to clean your face, as it takes into account the different solubilities of materials on your face. In this process, an oil-based cleanser is used to melt makeup, SPF, or oil-based impurities, like sebum, from the face. An initial rinse of this oil is followed by the use of a water-based cleanser, which utilizes surfactant molecules to entrap remaining oil or dirt particles within micelles and effectively wash them off the face. 2. Hydrate: Proper hydration of the skin is one of the most fundamental and effective ways to guarantee healthy skin. Your skin is made up of nearly 64% water, and any deficiency of the skin’s water content can lead to more concerns than one would think. For example, dehydrated skin is unable to properly desquamate, which means that dead skin cells stick to the next layer of skin and begin to build up on the face. This not only leads to dull skin, but it can even give the appearance of flaking. Alternatively, some may find that their skin overproduces sebum, the skin’s natural oil, to make up for this dryness – this overproduction not only causes oily appearances but can clog the pores, causing acne. Most significantly, dermal dehydration means your skin cells are not getting proper water for cellular function – if this continues, cells eventually die off, reducing the capacity of the skin to withstand traditional signs of aging. Your extracellular matrix (ECM), which is an environment surrounding fibroblasts in your dermis, needs water to function – lack of hydration can cause a reduction in the scaffolding the ECM provides, creating more wrinkles and loose skin. 3. Protect: To seal in the efforts put in towards bettering the skin you’re in, protecting the skin against outside aggressors is the final step towards preventative skin treatment. In our Incellderm line, our complexion product offerings do not exist solely as tools to cover and hide blemishes and imperfections; they exist as treatments themselves. We worked to ensure that each application of our BB cream or Lustre Compact formulas came with the hybrid benefit of protective skincare, so that you can feel confident that your skin is the healthiest it can be, 24/7. At RIMAN, “complexion” and “protection” are synonymous, and we work to ensure you get the coverage you need with the defense that you deserve. One of the most notable forms of protection in the skincare industry is sunscreen. Exposure to UV rays can often be detrimental for the skin; at the extreme end, overexposure can easily cause dermal cancers like melanoma. Yet even short-term/daily exposures pose threats. UV rays have the potential to cause reactive oxygen species (ROS) within the skin. These ROS are unstable in nature, so they need to interact with other molecules within the skin to gain stability. These interactions not only cause inflammation beyond your traditional sunburn, they can even trigger the formation of wrinkles, dark spots, and dry skin. Lastly, there is no better way to protect your skin than utilizing what is naturally your first line of defense to the outside world: your lipid barrier. Your epidermis is composed of layers of skin cells, and the surrounding lipid environment ensures that these cells are tightly packed and consistently hydrated. This packing is known as the “brick and mortar” model of the skin, and it creates a barrier that not only keeps water in, but also keeps potentially penetrating irritants out. An intact barrier retains hydration for moisturized, supple skin, and the defense against outside aggressors means skin looks calm, without redness or inflammation. Unfortunately, it is very common nowadays to have a weakened barrier – the use of harsh chemicals or treatments, overwashing, or general lack of hygienic practices can all strip the skin of the lipids it naturally contains. If the proper ratio is not maintained, the cells are not as tightly packed, which thus leads to irritant penetration and subcutaneous water loss. This water loss can cause dehydrated skin and cellular aging, as discussed previously. Furthermore, the potential for irritant penetration can cause inflammation, which itself can cause aging, known as “inflammaging”. Thus, it is of the utmost importance to maintain a healthy barrier to protect your skin from not only external aggressors, but also from the skin issues they may cause. Whether your skincare routine is 4 steps or 14, RIMAN offers the products you need with the ingredients you can trust. Our product offerings in the ICD line offer benefits no matter the routine you choose to lock-down, be it with every product or just a few. Patented technology brings innovation to traditional ingredients, clinically proven to be efficacious in the areas that matter most. Both immediate and long term results exclusive to our offerings promise skin that you can feel good about and products you can pamper yourself with. What makes us stand apart is not only the commitment to sustainable skincare that works for you, but also the commitment towards consistency in performance. While innovation is not unique to K-beauty, our patented technologies, cultivated ingredients, and marketing promises let us offer something entirely new to the industry, and to you; now it’s up to you to experience it.