Review: Faith in Face; or, I Bought A Sheet Mask at Marshall’s and It Was Actually Pretty Decent

I love discount stores. Marshall’s, Ross, TJ Maxx, and HomeGoods are my bae. Their prices allow me to pick up items and brands that I’d normally have to enjoy once in a blue moon, and I feel much more at home there than I do in more upscale stores like Dillard’s, Nordstrom, or–God forbid–Neiman Marcus.

I haven’t had the best luck with the skincare products I’ve found in these places, however. My guess is that this is because American retail stores in general tend to have a rather odd and limited selection of Asian and kbeauty-inspired products to begin with, so by the time any stock makes its way to the discount shelves, the selection is even weirder. Most of it is put out by brands I’ve never heard of, or brands I’ve tried and didn’t like. The products themselves tend to have strange consistencies, horrible fragrances, bizarre formulations, or other fatal flaws like vitamin C-starring products stored in clear bottles.

Over time, however, the selection seems to have begun to improve. Shiseido has been popping up in my area, for instance, and yesterday I even saw TonyMoly in someone’s basket. This gives me hope that one day–one day!–I’ll be able to buy Asian skincare products in a brick and mortar store without subjecting myself to the wallet-burning prices of Sephora.

There wasn’t any TonyMoly left by the time I made it to the sheet masks, and instead, I impulse-purchased a Charcoal Mineral Black Ampoule Mask from SNP, The Solution Wrinkle Care Face Mask formulated with peptide by THE FACE SHOP, and a gold royal jelly hydrogel mask from koelf… along with the subject of today’s review, the I Am Always Bright sheet mask by a brand I’d never heard of before called Faith in Face.

[Review] Shiseido White Lucent Brightening Protective Cream w/ Broad Spectrum SPF 18

MY SKIN CONCERNS: Hydration, redness, roughness, PIH, hormonal acne. Normal/combination skin, prone to dehydration because I live in an arid desert.

BACKGROUND

Shiseido, according to wikipedia, is one of the world’s oldest cosmetics companies. It was founded in Japan in 1872, and consequently has some really cool vintage ads that pop up on pinterest every now and then. Fast forward a hundred and fifty years or so, and it’s the fifth largest cosmetics company in the world, posting net sales of $6.8 billion in 2014. [1] By contrast, the Korean giant Amore Pacific–which owns Innisfree, Sulwahsoo, Laneige, Etude House, Mamonde, and a whole bunch of other famous kbeauty brands–posted $3.5 billion that year.[wiki]

But does bigger actually equal better?

The short answer is… not really. Comme ci, comme ça. It’s too bad because in theory, a larger budget means that–as with pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer and Eli Lilly–Shiseido should have the budget to create the sort of R&D enterprise that smaller operations can only dream of. Unfortunately, perhaps because of the YMMV nature of skincare, the quality of their products just doesn’t seem to reflect that for me. I do like some of their products here and there–I like their sunscreen, I liked an eyeliner pen I got from them that’s since been lost, and I LOVE all the hair care products I’ve tried from them–but as for things that I put on my face, it’s just been a

very

sad

meh.

And it’s not even that their facial skincare products are bad–they’re not. It’s just that when I’m asked to pay $45-55 for a cream, or $25-32 for a cleansing oil, I expect the product to give me reasons to spend that amount–reasons which Shiseido so far has not given me.

Let’s get on with it, shall we?