LÉ Blog

Whether you are a skincare newbie or skincare junkie, you’re bound to hear about peptides. It’s that exotic ingredient that shows up in your anti-aging creams and serums that usually comes with a stinging price tag. Yet even for this fancy, seemingly high-tech ingredient category you’ll still have to avoid some duds. The reality is as chemists, you can synthesize a gajillion different peptides out there but very few actually do anything for the skin. So how do you as a consumer know? We proba...

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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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For 2021, we made a goal to flush out our expert series. Let’s be real, we can answer all things skincare (minus pregnancy questions), but you’ve also got questions about hair and makeup too. For our first 2021 expert, we’re bringing out the big guns with our friend @cosmetic_chemist, haircare chemist and the cohost of the Beauty Brains podcast Valerie George. The Beauty Brains happens to be one of the OG cosmetic chemists blogs, and provides a wealth of knowledge on cosmetic chemistry, espec...

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Do thermal water sprays really work? Does spritzing that magical hot spring water provide any proven skin benefits? Should I go with Avene or La Roche Posay thermal water? These are just a few of the questions we have gotten about thermal water based skin mists. We’ll admit, before our friends asked about decoding thermal waters, it wasn’t a topic we really thought much about. Some of the concepts and outrageous claims that came with them felt like it had BS all over it. We even ran a quick i...

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There's an unbelievable amount of moisturizing products out on the market, each promising skin that is softer, plumper, and more dewy than the next. But sadly, more often then not, consumers are left wondering "why is my skin still so dry despite my decked out moisturizer routine?" The reality is that there isn’t just one “best” moisturizer for your face. Each of us has incredibly unique skin with its own quirks, and no one’s skin condition fits neatly into the dry/oily/combination skin type ...

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2020 was the year for stay at home self care, which pretty much led to a huge hunt for all things diet and wellness including collagen ingestibles. In fact, there’s so much collagen stuff out there that there’s even recipes like collagen cupcakes.... But seriously, as of Jan 2021, is there any data suggesting to give collagen a look? Strap in folks, we gotta try to organize a little chaos here. We’ll walk you through what data to look at, what products to avoid, and what to look for in your c...

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Let's hear From the IG Skincare Community! In 2020 we started running a few #lazypolls on instagram, where we polled our community of followers on their top skincare favorites. These were a huge success not only because of the product discoveries but we discovered fellow skincare users helping others through the poll threads. We had to compile the results...here! So here you'll find the compilation of all the lazypolls we ran in 2020 and should you need more details, head to shop my shelf lin...

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Tis the Season for Bundling! Kits can be a great value buy for people who are looking for a skincare routine starting point. But prices can vary from $15 to $450 so what’s a good starting point and what should you be looking for? Above is a snapshot of the kits we’ll go through. We selected these as examples of the type of kits you'll find out there and how we're comparing them. Read on to find out how we choose from these four. The Chemists' Selection Criteria: Products in the kits have to c...

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In our entrepreneurship journey, we have had the opportunity to meet with many other awesome founders. We want to use our platform to shine a light on the great work that these founders are doing. We first met the founders and power couple of Young King Hair Care Stefan & Cora through the Target accelerator program. Young King is a hair care line for multicultural boys (a category often neglected) that's really for anyone with textured hair and kinky curls. Here's the full interview on Stefan...

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We talked about what an awesome and multi-functional ingredient vitamin C, L-ascorbic acid (L-AA), is. It’s no surprise that many brands have their own take on vitamin C making the L-AA landscape quite vast. But not to fear! L-ascorbic acid products can actually be broken down into three types. So today, let’s walk through the different product types and learn how to incorporate them in your routine. You can check out products mentioned in this article here. Classic Water Based Serum Water-ba...

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