Topicals Faded Brightening Serum

There was a time about two years ago when this cream was super viral, and it was not possible to order it in Israel. People asked friends from the US to bring it to them, or used all kinds of special shipments from the US just to get this cream. Even I eventually fell for it and asked a friend of mine to bring it to me when he was on a business trip in New York. Luckily these days you can simply order it from Amazon or Sephora UK 😂

So what is it anyway? What is all the hype about? And is it worth it?🤔

Caution digging ahead! ⚠️

This is a lightening cream that contains a stunning combination of lightening ingredients:

✅ Niacinamide - a favorite and popular ingredient that can help with moisture, strengthening the skin barrier, acne, brightening, balancing sebum production, and P. I. E.

✅ tranexamic acid - a relatively new ingredient in the skincare world, but very promising. It is a ingredient mainly intended for the treatment of pigmentation and P. I. E (spots after acne). Another great advantage of it is that it is relatively non-irritating.

✅ Alpha Arbiotan - a very effective lightening ingredient for the treatment of pigmentation of all types.

✅ dcp - brightens and treats pigmentation.

✅ Licorice - an excellent lightening ingredient that can also soothe irritated skin.

✅ Kojic acid - brightening, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory.

✅ azelaic acid - excellent for treating PIE and PIH spots (spots left by pimples), helps reduce redness and treat rosacea, antibacterial therefore can also help with acne, also does gentle chemical peeling. *However* it is important for me to note that the percentage here is only 1%! It's a tiny percentage and I doubt it will do anything. Azelaic acid works in percentages of 5-20% from what I know, so it's a bit of a bummer.

✅ Turmeric extract - soothing, brightening, antioxidant, can balance sebum production.

✅ Centella asiatica - a very popular sedative ingredient. Also an antioxidant and excellent for treating red post-acne spots.

✅ Melatonin - yes yes, the sleep hormone. It is also used as a care ingredient that can soothe and restore the skin as well as brighten it.

✅ Additional hydrating ingredients such as glycerin, squalane and allantoin.

✅ fragrance-free, alcohol and essential oils.

⚠️ Glutathione - a clarifying ingredient, whose major drawback I will detail later in the post.

My experience:

My first impression of it was terrible. As soon as you open it, you smell a boiled egg that you can't miss 😂 At first I thought maybe I left it too long and it went bad, but no - after a short Google search, that's its smell. It was strange to me that it had such a hype but no one talked about the smell 🤮

After reading a bit on their website, I found out that the smell comes from the glutathione ingredient, which has some kind of chemical connection to sulfur, and this is the smell you get 😣 Yes, it's a good and clarifying ingredient, but is it worth it? good question

I thought I would manage to get used to it, but even after two and a half months of continuous use, you just don't get used to it.

Despite the smell, I continued to persevere with it because what don't you do for reviews? 😂

I've seen subtle results from it, not a crazy change, probably because I've used most of these great ingredients before. I actually didn't see much change in skin lightening, and unfortunately not in PIE either, but I did notice that the skin is a little more balanced and calm (maybe it's not related to it either).

It bothers me that the azalea is not in a high percentage, because it is a stunning ingredient. It gives me a little feeling that a lot of lightening ingredients were pushed in there to "buy" the beauty audience, but in practice the ingredients together don't do much.

Many have tried to compare it to Raviva's cream, because it also contains azalea, koji, and tranexami, but compared to it, the azalea in Raviva is 10%, which is an excellent percentage.

So how do I sum it up? I have love-hate feelings about it. On the one hand a stunning list of ingredients full of good things, on the other hand a smell that is hard to contain and ingredients in too suspicious percentages. I couldn't decide if I like it or not, that's why it took me a long time to post this review.

It has already been pretty much forgotten in the skinker world, and I have a feeling that it's because everyone got excited about it and in the end didn't see many results.

If you've tried it, I'd appreciate it if you shared with me in the comments if it helped you or not ❣️

The brand is cruelty-free 🐰❤️