LÉ Blog

If you’re unfamiliar with the term “Vitamin C Dupe”, it’s a category of ascorbic acid serums that sprouted from the painful price point of the original ascorbic acid serum, Skinceuticals CE Ferulic. As a result, a whole new category of ascorbic acid serums popped up on the market and these products come in all sorts of packaging, price points, and ascorbic acid percentages. For a while, we were holding out on looking at this category because it felt messy. Let’s just say, we knew how much of ...

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Back in fall 2019, we wrote a blog post on CBD in skincare when it was all the rage. During the early days of Covid lockdowns, it really felt like there was a new CBD miracle serum or oil every other week. Even now in spring of 2023, there are still a lot of questions and mystique around this ingredient. So it’s time to revisit CBD and see just what CBD does in skincare, if there are any new clinical studies that have come out on topical CBD, just who might benefit from CBD skincare, and how ...

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Here we'll update all the results of our #lazypolls we've ran in 2021. All of these are general snapshots and products are in no particular order. We highly recommend browsing the poll comments to get personal takes and use experiences. The #lazypoll has been running for the past 3 years and we've enjoyed the evolution of this series. You'll find users helping lost souls, sharing all sorts of detailed experiences, and discovering all sorts of new products. *To help readers learn more about pr...

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In our final podcast episode of 2021, we dedicated the meat of the episode on a chemical exfoliants update. That’s the alphabet clan of PHAs, AHAs, and BHA, and it resulted in a lot of curiosity about PHAs. Though PHA research is still relatively new and not as well-studied as classic glycolic acid, there’s still some really exciting data that validates it’s use as an exfoliator. In fact, we like gluconolactone so much we use 30% of it in our Baby Steps exfoliating treatment! So let’s do a de...

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In this part 2 of our pigmentation guide, we’re going to shed some light on how to shop for the best ingredients & products to target that stubborn hyperpigmentation and build a successful routine. This will mirror a lot of what we talked about in our hyperpigmentation podcast episode, so check out the episode here if it’s easier for you to listen to it. Set Your Expectations Nope! It’s not just your imagination, that dang dark spot is persistent which makes tackling this skin concern pretty ...

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Here we'll update all the results of our #lazypolls we've ran in 2021. All of these are general snapshots and products are in no particular order. We highly recommend browsing the poll comments to get personal takes and use experiences. The #lazypoll has been running for the past 3 years and we've enjoyed the evolution of this series. You'll find users helping lost souls, sharing all sorts of detailed experiences, and discovering all sorts of new products. *To help readers learn more about pr...

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So you’re ready to dive deeper into the world of cleansers. Well this blog post is for you! In this post, we’ll be taking a closer look at the science of cleansing ingredients, go through some popular surfactants, and answer all your questions about exfoliating cleanser ingredients. So let's put some strategy around finding the holy grail cleanser for your skintype. If you haven't already, check out Pt I for the cleanser routine 101 guidelines. The Gentle Cleanser Surfactant Guide Surfactants...

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By now, hopefully we’ve given you a general idea of why you should use sunscreen (premature aging and skin cancer! do we need to say more?!) and are up to date on sunscreen news (chemical sunscreens could use some PR help). Now that you have a sense of the state of the sunscreen world, let’s get to the good stuff and talk products and how to pick your next winning sunscreen sidekick! Step 1: You feeling Chemical or Mineral? The category is vast, confusing, and keeps adding new launches. It do...

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So you wanna get some niacinamide into your routine eh? Welp unfortunately in the past couple of years, this category has become quite the circus of products. So let’s take a stroll through the niacinamide landscape and see if we can find your next niacinamide discovery. But Wait! A Quick Recap Before We Explore If you haven’t already, we highly recommend going back to our niacinamide intro to recap what niacinamide can do for your skin. To sum up in one line, niacinamide has shown that with ...

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Probably one of the first ways you get introduced to AHAs (alpha hydroxy acid) is an exfoliating toner. The only problem is that there are about a gazillion different exfoliating toners out there to choose from. And which one is going to be the best one for your skin type and how do you get the most out of your exfoliating toner? Let’s go through some chemist pro-tips shall we? *For a quick refresher on AHAs, check out our dedicated blog post. The who, what, when for exfoliating toners What a...

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