You know the feeling: You wake up one day, look in the mirror and -- wham! -- the signs of aging are suddenly everywhere. Those fine lines around your eyes. The loose skin along your jawline. The dark spots on your cheeks -- and even on your hands. Before this moment, you spent more time picking out nail polish colors than thinking about an anti-aging skin care regimen. Oh, sure, you moisturize and wear sunscreen. But at a certain point in your skin's aging process, your minimalist approach isn't enough. And it shows.
Beauty editor confession: I'm a huge skeptic when it comes to beauty products. Why? I've been duped too many times by the lure of pretty packaging and over-the-top claims. It's an unfortunate fact that sometimes labels exaggerate. I've never met a foundation that truly lasts 24 hours, a zit-zapper that gets rid of pimples overnight or a split-ends salve that magically repairs damaged strands.
We all want to look our best — and by "best" we mean the most youthful version of
ourselves. There are many ways to slow down the aging process; wearing sunscreen religiously, eating lots of fruits and veggies, drinking boatloads of water,
What comes first? Forget the chicken and the egg, we're talking about our skin care products, like serum, moisturizer, face oil and sunscreen. A cabinet full of products to keep you blemish-, wrinkle- and sun spot-free means nothing if you don't know in what order to apply them. Instead of slapping them on and crossing our fingers, we conducted a skin care nerd-out session with board certified dermatologists Dendy Engelman, M.D., and Craig Kraffert, M.D., who is also the president of Korean skincare line Amarté. We grilled them to find out which products should be applied first, last and everywhere in between so that they can perform exactly as they're supposed to. Here, these derms school us in the exhaustive process of layering skin care.
It's happened to all of us: That one fateful morning when you wake up, catch yourself in the mirror and notice a pair of crow's feet -- those telltale wrinkles that branch out from the corners of your eyes. Welp, it finally happened, you say to yourself, deciding whether to accept your crinkly lines or start obsessively Googling how to get rid of crow's feet.
