The Treatment Enzyme Peel Cleansing Powder from luxury Korean skincare brand AMOREPACIFIC contains both papaya and green tea enzymes which provide gentle, natural exfoliation in order to reveal brighter, smoother skin. It’s a powder-to-foam formula that has an extremely long shelf life and works just as well beside the sink or in the shower, Let’s delve deeper into this deep cleanser.
Price: $60
Find it HERE
Tested May 2020
I first tried the Treatment Enzyme Peel Cleansing Powder (isn’t that a mouthful, more on that later) after receiving a deluxe sample from Sephora in 2018. I loved it so much I bought the full size bottle and then Liz bought another bottle for my birthday last year. That’s all the product I’ve needed to last over 2 years…just 2 bottles! I only use about a nickle size of this powder to effectively foam and cover both my face and neck in the most tiny and luxurious bubbles. But I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s talk about the brand a little because there’s a lot more that’s special about AMOREPACIFIC than just their bubbles.
AMOREPACIFIC is a Korean brand with a long history of sustainable sourcing dating back to the 1930s. It was founded by Suh Sung-Whan with an appreciation of high quality raw materials and Korean tea culture that was passed down from his mother. The brand “began purchasing wasteland in Jeju Island and transforming it into lush tea fields, reviving Korea’s rich history of tea culture, honoring the earth, and re-popularizing Korean green tea.” This means there is an entire island in South Korea dedicated to growing tea that is harvested by “gently plucking the leaves with the less dominant hand, at dawn, only 15 days of the year.” AMOREPACIFIC’s website goes on to claim they’ve completed “228,000 experiments on 4,000 green tea species” in order to come up with the most effective antioxidant that “not only reduces signs of aging but also helps skin to behave younger.” That all sounds a little extreme to me, but I do need both reduced signs of aging and skin that behaves younger, so I’ll bite.
Let’s talk about the name of this product for a second: Treatment Enzyme Peel Cleansing Powder. Is it a treatment peel? An enzyme exfoliant? A powder cleanser? The answer is yes to all. Perhaps AMOREPACIFIC is onto something with their long-winded harvest and manufacturing process? I was originally worried a “treatment enzyme peel” would be much too harsh on my dry and sensitive skin; fortunately, it wasn’t anything of the sort. This gently treats my dry skin by lightly exfoliating any surface debris (the effects are compounded with frequent use) via enzymes that cleanse by way of an easy to use (and travel with) powder.
True to AMOREPACIFIC’s philosophy, this enzyme cleanser doesn’t contain any additional or unnecessary fragrance. I would call the scent almost indiscernible; it just smells clean. The cream colored powder is extremely fine, almost dusty but not grainy at all. This is in no way a physical exfoliant. I typically pour a small amount into my palm and add a few drops of water, which creates enough fine foam to cover my face and neck. Supposedly the bottle is designed to “dispense the perfect amount of product.” I would say I shake a little extra out, but that’s because I try to always include my neck as well. Keep in mind even dispensing more than intended, a single bottle still lasts one full year for me!
Because this is a water activated powder, I’m not worried at all about it expiring or changing over the months it takes me to use up a bottle. The directions also say to use after removing makeup but I’ve definitely cheated and used this as my only cleanser on light makeup days. The only problem with using it on a not-totally-clean face is that all of the exfoliation properties are wasted on removing makeup and not actually removing dull/dead skin cells. At $60/bottle, don’t waste it to remove makeup, use it to remove those dead skin cells. I do see immediately better results when used on a clean face.
Another tip/trick I’ve found is to leave this on for a few minutes. I keep it in the shower and tend to apply it first thing (before my hands are soaked so it doesn’t become overly diluted) and leave it on while I shampoo and condition. This approach has never once left me with red or irritated skin because the formula is so gentle. The perfect night time routine for me is a double cleanse, first using FARMACY’s Green Clean Makeup Removing Cleansing Balm followed by this Treatment Enzyme Peel Cleansing Powder. After this duo, my skin feels squeaky clean but not dry or tight, perfectly ready to absorb whatever serums or moisturizers I’m planning to layer on next, no toner required.
I use this cleansing powder almost daily and while it never irritates my skin, I do find that during winter months or really any time my skin feels congested I need a little something extra. For those times I reach for an AHA/BHA serum. My point is, don’t expect the results of an acid from this gentle exfoliating cleanser, it’s a middle ground between those and simple cleanser.
While I know this is expensive, the cost spread out over the many months of use I get from just one bottle is easily justifiable. Additionally, it’s gentle enough to use regularly and effective enough that I do see results immediately and more so after continued use.
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