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Nobody loves a lovely, fresh scent more than yours truly. Fragrance is wholly subjective – one woman’s perfume is another woman’s stink.  Fragrance, including essential oils, offer few real skin benefits.  Worse yet for many, a scent can trigger irritation or sensitivities. In the pursuit of “better skin”, skincare works best when smells like skincare.  Moving forward, about-face essentials skincare is 100% fragrance-free. Cheers to Better Skin!

Redness, itching, tenderness, flaking, or peeling, also known as retinization, is enough to the most confident want to hide away for days.  Skincare should never hurt, but anyone familiar with retinoids already knows that it can.  Desquamation, or the shedding of the outer most layer of skin (stratum corneum) is a natural body process. Occurring throughout the day and mostly undetectable, this cellular turnover makes way for newer cells and improved skin texture.  The entire life-cycle takes 14 to 28 days and a vital process of healthy skin.  When desquamation advances too quickly, it can trigger an inflammatory response - think sunburn, rapid retinization, contact...

  Save shoes & art, AFE values function over form – better skin first followed by everything else.  This concept drives every decision from ingredients to small-batch formulation, even packaging.  The amber glass containers diminish the degradation of active ingredients while the no-fingers-in dispensers reduce the risk of contamination.  Even the choice to affix labels support product freshness with conservative “best use by” dates.  Simple, effective, & economical, skincare should look better on the skin than the shelf.  AFE chooses function over form in skincare, every time.  Shoes are an entirely different story.  As always, feel free to share your comments...

  After sunscreen, the most important step to better skin is a reliable cleansing system. Contrary to long-standing skincare advice, that excludes toners. Mostly water-based, a toner is a leave-on product and final step in a cleansing routine.  They foretell the inadequacies of the cleansing system – poor cleansing, over-stripping, or improper pH. If you are still using a toner, I will question your choice of cleansers. Here’s 5 reasons to banish toner from your skincare routine: Effective cleansers remove excessive oils and impurities, leaving behind no residual traces. Many highly alkaline and single-step cleansers do not, nor are they doing...