A Beauty Editor’s Favorite Makeup Product She Wears Daily

This wouldn’t be a mindbodygreen beauty product review without dabbling into a little formulary chat, now would it? After all, a product is only as good as the ingredients that make it up. Delicious aesthetics aside, this balm contains a blend of high quality botanicals — many of which make up my normal skin care routine. Given I wear this almost every day, I figure my skin should be getting something out of it, too.

The base is a jojoba and argan oil blend, two antioxidant-rich options that come with glowing recommendations from derms and skin care experts. For those who need a refresher: Antioxidants come with loads of benefits including protecting your skin from free radicals and brightening tone, which make them a must-haves for most skin care products. I’m partial to jojoba oil in particular, as it’s lightweight oil, which I suspect lends this balm it’s slick spreadability and light finish. (Not to mention, it’s structurally similar to your skin’s natural oils so your skin reacts better to it than thicker numbers.) From there, it folds in vitamin E for its anti-inflammatory properties, ability to strengthen the skin barrier, and help you deal with environmental stressors. Not bad for a makeup product.

While the formula leaves out many of the buzzed about ingredients to avoid (parabens, PEGs, and the like) I was particularly interested in their decision to forgo cyclic silicones. Silicones are a nuanced category of ingredients that comes down to your personal preferences, skin and hair tolerability, and (most notably) the type of silicone being used. While I don’t tell people they need to avoid silicones altogether if they don’t want to, I do highly recommend that people stop using this type in particular.

Here’s why: Cyclic silicones do not break down easily in water. And we must remember, even if we are able to wash a product off our face at the end of the night, it doesn’t just disappear — everything we use must go back to the earth eventually. These are shown to bioaccumulate in our water supply and can take hundreds of years to break down, contributing to aquatic pollution. Increasingly, we’re seeing brands skip them for this reason — but certainly it’s not mainstream at the moment. I always appreciate when brands are ahead of the ingredient curve.