WHILE vitamin C skincare products may enjoy a reputation for their brightening properties, they may leave the skin sensitive, especially under the sun. Korean beauty brand Innisfree is assuring us that that won’t always have to be the case (as long as you wear sunscreen).
Innisfree launched their Vitamin C Green Tea Enzyme Brightening Serum and its accompanying Vitamin C Green Tea Enzyme Brightening Pads in an event on July 11 in Megamall. While the serum was released in stores last year, the pads are completely new.
Pia Ylisa Alday, Marketing Communications Senior Executive for Innisfree Philippines (distributed by Amorepacific Philippines, Inc.) said in a speech, “The green tea enzymes, it actually helps exfoliate your skin. The vitamin C works better because the green tea exfoliates your skin first, so the vitamin C is absorbed better than your skin.”
According to her, it helps fade 45% of dark spots in seven days. According to their website, Innisfree tested the product for three days and four weeks on women aged 20 to 49. Other results in the test included an improvement on acne marks and uneven skin tone.
Addressing skin sensitivity with vitamin C products, Ms. Alday pointed out that in an irritation test they performed, the sensitive skin response was 0.00 (the website says that this was a primary irritation test they performed on sensitive skin). “They’re actually safe to be used every day,” she said. Onstage, she announced that they were handing out keyrings attached with tubes of their own sunscreen: “When you use vitamin C, you should always use suncreen. Actually, if you don’t use vitamin C, you also have to wear sunscreen.”
In an interview with BusinessWorld, she did say, “We don’t recommend using it together with retinol.” Retinol, a member of the vitamin A family, is often used to treat signs of ageing in skin.
BEAUTIFUL SKIN, BEAUTIFUL EARTHMs. Alday also discussed their sustainability campaigns: in February this year, Innisfree received its cruelty-free certification from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). She explained that they only received their certification this year because in some countries (like China), animal testing is still a requirement. “We discontinued the items that are still required to be tested on animals in China,” she said. Other sustainability measures include printing boxes with soy ink, and recycling empty bottles of their products. “You can actually return that to our stores, and we repurpose,” she said. “We’ve actually recycled 1400 tons of bottles.”
She points out that they source their ingredients sustainably: “We’ve been working with other sustainability groups and then we try to make sure that the ingredients we get are from sustainable sources.” For example, the vitamin C in the new products is made from Korea’s Hallabong oranges.
“We get our ingredients from nature…we cannot just take from nature. We have to give back also,” she said.
Innisfree stores can be found in Festival Mall, Glorietta 3, SM Mall of Asia, SM Aura, Mitsukoshi BGC, SM Baguio, SM City Iloilo, SM Clark, SM North EDSA, SM Megamall, SM Makati, and Trinoma. — JLG
