Plane tickets to Copenhagen are $370 (for real — check it out on Norwegian Air). With this month’s best drugstore beauty buys, you can put your money toward that great airfare deal, the Copenhagen Acne outlet, Danish cinnamon buns, or any other trip you might have planned for the upcoming months. See below for some great news about Korean beauty that will allow you to buy sheet masks in drugstores nationwide; a budge-proof liquid eyeliner so good, you may be tempted to write notes with it; a great spring/summer moisturizer; and more.
You can now run to the corner drugstore to pick up toilet paper and a Korean sheet mask that will make your skin look refreshed. Thanks to the realized dream of Peach and Lily founder Alicia Yoon, a generous selection of Korean beauty products are now available at your local CVS. You can get lip tint from Holika Holika, ElishaCoy snail essence, and Peach and Lily’s own house brand of sheet masks, Peach Slices. Dewiness is only a step away. Just think of the Postmates possibilities.
I’ve tried plenty of allegedly idiot-proof self-tanners, and either I’m an idiot, or a lot of people are liars. This moisturizing self-tanner from Jergens is the only drugstore version that doesn’t leave streaks resulting from either my own ineptitude or faulty product design. The moisturizer isn’t too thick or thin — it has just the right consistency, so it doesn’t leave you with dull, uneven dark spots around notoriously hard-to-self-tan places such as your ankles and knees. The tanning color is also a believable light brown, never orange. It’s very similar to Jergens’s best-selling gradual-self-tanner (Natural Glow Daily Moisturizer), but speeds ups the gradual-tanning process slightly, so you reach your max tanning color in three days. There is a very slight self-tanner scent, but it’s not too terrible.
When these eyeliners arrived at the office, we instantly marveled at their color payoff and fine, almost pen-like tip. Even the white, teal, and aqua liquid eyeliners are vibrant and bold, appearing almost as the name suggests, like paint. The felt tip was able to make such thin lines, I almost thought about carrying it to use for notes at my next meeting. In any case, the pens are sturdy, yet delicate enough to make even the slightest of cat-eye swoops, and they made me feel like I was a fine artiste while I was drawing on eyeliner. Best of all, it’s supremely long-lasting, with even the swatches I drew on my arm requiring multiple scrubbings to remove.
If you want poreless, almost transparent, Korean-drama-actress skin, Maybelline has a drugstore option for you. In their version of Korea’s favorite superlight foundation, the cushion compact, each compact contains a thin sponge that spring-loads foundation when you press into it. The light, almost sheer formula reduces the amount of blending and patting you need to do with a typical foundation by almost 50 percent, so it’s one of the easiest skin coverage options to use; it never looks cakey, powdery, or pancakey. The only problem is that the eight shades are a little limited — but it’s still better than the shade offerings of most Korean cushion compacts, which usually only offer shades ranging from very light to light.
As I start to become a real person again with the coming of spring, I switch from a cream moisturizer to a gel. Most drugstore facial moisturizers aren’t that great, which is why we rarely recommend them. But this pick from Neutrogena, albeit not new, is packed full of hyaluronic acid, an ingredient that’s been proven to draw water to skin. It has a cooling texture that makes your skin feel instantly softer and more plush, and is a great drugstore dupe for the much-loved Clinique Moisture Surge. It even made it to our list of the best moisturizers for dry skin, but is especially great as we get closer to steamy-subway-station season.
