I absolutely love the Function of Beauty hair product line, so when I found out about their new range of customized skin care I was pretty keen to try it out. Here’s what happened.
For anyone wondering what Function of Beauty is, it’s a brand of hair and body care that customize formulas based on each individual’s unique preferences. Everything is vegan and cruelty-free, and I loved the shampoo and conditioner and have just ordered the larger bottles (read my review here), and I really do think they’ve enhanced the health of my hair.
Queue skin range.
Before
I have been using the NueBar face wash bar as a cleanser and regular organic coconut oil as a moisturizer at night. I only wash my face once a day - because I think twice is too much for your skin - but I do rinse it with water in the morning and use either sunscreen (Ultra Violette is my fave at the moment), or a Vitamin C cream that I once got as a sample and haven’t used up yet. So my skin regimen is pretty low-key, but effective. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again - coconut oil is an excellent moisturizer.
I am quite pasty and I live in a hot country. Try as I might to protect my skin from the rays, you can’t shield yourself completely so I have quite a few freckles, some redness around my nose, and small amounts of sun damage here and there.
My skin often gets sick of products, which means I can use something great and it’ll work for a month, before it stops working and my face feels horrid - coconut oil is the only moisturizer I have used that my skin hasn’t suddenly rejected. My skin is quite smooth in texture, so when I cover it up with makeup, you can’t really see any uneven texture.
Function of Beauty Skin Care Review
Much like the hair products, I was asked to complete a skin quiz prior to my purchase to ensure the products would match my skin and that I would get the results I wanted. As with the hair quiz, there were visual aids so I understood how to answer each question, with little info boxes to spell it out for you if you don’t know what any of it means. It was all very quick, easy, and visually pleasing.
I was first asked whether I had dry, balanced, oily or combination skin, how much makeup I use daily and whether my skin is sensitive. I’ve never really had issues with dryness or sensitivity and I do wear makeup, so that is what I selected.
I was then asked what my #skingoals were from a reasonably extensive list. You can only pick three, but really they were all my #skingoals so it was a struggle. I opted to minimize redness, and brighten my aging facade with a touch of ‘anti-aging’ - whatever that means. I liked this section because, based on what you choose, up pops the active ingredient they will use to help you achieve your #skingoals. Mine said ‘Southern magnolia bark extract’. How fancy and exotic.
I then decided what name I wanted on all the bottles (I chose Charlotte…though the desire to have something ridiculous was real. And it really bothers me that I can’t capitalize my name. It’s a proper noun. I am a writer <screams on top of a mountain>). I also opted for no fragrance, sadly, because a main cause of irritation with skin products is scents (though I was curious to know what ‘dew’ smelled like. Apparently the aromas are reminiscent of cucumber. Who knew).
That question signified the end of my quiz experience and I was asked to choose what products I which products I would like, and in what form I would like them to arrive.
Of course, the company recommends you buy all three products.
But upon closer inspection, I saw they all claim to do very different things. I had the choice of a cleanser, which was a no-brainer - you need one of those - along with a serum and a moisturizer. If anything were to be eliminated for me, it would have been the serum because that’s one more step than I usually take when cleaning and hydrating my face, and there’s a moisturizer so serum seemed a bit redundant.
But they really sell it to you.
Not only is the serum the most expensive item on the list at $79.99 a bottle, it apparently has the highest concentration of #skingoal ingredients. So skipping out on the serum potentially means your skin won’t reap all the benefits of the customized range. Who wouldn’t get the serum after that? Nicely played, Function of Beauty.
With the cleanser I opted for a gel, I opted for the fragrance-free serum, and I chose a lotion moisturizer rather than a gel or a cream. I feel like the serum will probably be something of a gel and I feel like lotion hydrates your skin in a way cream doesn’t. Throughout this process, I had visuals on what my product bottles would look like when I selected the different options.
The whole bundle came to $189.99 (which is, frankly, outrageous), and I confirmed my purchase.
The Products
The products came in beautiful bottles. They were a nice weight, smooth, matte and pleasing to hold, and in colors that ombréd towards the top. I was pretty blown away by them, actually. The serum came with an eye dropper that fills itself every time you place it back in the bottle and screw the lid shut. Pretty nifty. The cleanser had a pump device, as did the moisturizer. The cleanser was the largest bottle, which indicates to me that you need to use more of it than the other two products.
Left to right: Moisturizer, cleanser (it did come with a lid, I just misplaced mine), and serum.
Cleansing
The instructions said to use the cleasner first. Because I said I wear makeup, my cleanser was supposed to strip the products off without stripping the skin of its natural oils.
I used one pump to start with and moved the cleanser in small circles over my skin with my fingers, as per the instructions. I quickly realized one pump would not be enough and had to use a second. To be honest, a third would probably have been the better option but it’s so expensive I couldn’t justify using three pumps on my face every day. Two did the job, and my face appeared makeup-free.
The thing I didn’t like about the cleanser was it looked like more of a cream, but it didn’t go the distance. There’s a watery texture to it which kind of makes it feel like it’s not doing very much. It doesn’t foam or anything and basically feels like washing your face with lotion. I wondered whether it was only getting rid of surface makeup and leaving remaining product in my pores. From experience, my skin needs something a bit grittier to be clean.
The Serum
The eye dropper thing is pretty nifty. The instructions say to use half a dropper per application, but first off it’s quite hard to control how much comes out, so I used a whole dropper to begin with. Second time around I learned to control it better and ended up with exactly half a dropper, and it was a good amount.
The serum is much more satisfying to use than the cleanser. It’s a touch milky in color, but feels thicker and like everything you imagine a serum might be. The instructions say to use it after the cleanser, and to literally press it in to your face instead of rubbing it in. So that’s what I did. Half an eye dropper does go the distance and it spread nicely over my skin. It felt hydrating and absorbed nicely over about a minute.
Moisturizing
I waited until the serum was all absorbed and dry before using one pump of the moisturizer on my face. I rubbed it in small circular motions, like the instructions said, without dragging it ‘down’ over my face. It’s supposed to lock in the serum and make sure it does the thing it’s supposed to do. Again, they’ve really made it so the serum feels like a vital step that you just can’t miss.
One pump was enough to coat my face, and it felt like it did what a moisturizer is meant to do. My skin definitely felt hydrated.
Results
My skin felt nice and smooth and moisturized the following day. It didn’t look any different, but the #skingoals changes happens over time so I didn’t read too much. But I will say that some products leave your face looking brighter, and this one did not.
I used the Function of Beauty skin care range consistently for a few weeks and I still didn’t see much of a difference. I continued to question whether the cleanser was cleansing properly and continued to resent that I really should have been using three pumps of the stuff instead of two. Having said that, because the cleanser feels strangely watery, I do not believe a third pump would have cleansed my face any better than two pumps did - it just would have spread a little easier.
I went back to my NueBar and coconut oil combination a couple of times for contrast, and I think coconut tones my skin quite a lot in ways I didn’t notice before. So my skin looked better after that than it did with Function of Beauty. The redness stayed the same (I think that’s genetic - a little like shadows under the eye or something, there’s not much that can realistically be done about that externally), anti-aging I guess it all about hydration, and it did feel hydrated, but no noticeable ‘brightness’.
Verdict
Would I buy it again? No.
For the astounding $189 price tag I expected the products to do quite a lot more than what I saw in the results. I did like the serum and perhaps I would get that again on its own, though I’m still not convinced it did what it’s supposed to do. The cleanser was the biggest let down, which is a real shame because what is a beauty range without a good cleanser? The moisturizer was fine, but for that price, it has to be more than fine. I do wonder how I would feel about these had I not tried coconut oil as a moisturizer, because compared with regular moisturizers, I guess Function of Beauty is better.
I still use the products from time to time because they do leave my face feeling smooth, and sometimes it’s nice to break up the routine, but I won’t be devastated when they run out. I think Function of Beauty managed their hair line so well that I did wonder how they could replicate something so successful. I know there are a lot of amazing reviews for these products, and everyone has a different experience, but I didn’t think they were all they were cracked up to be.
