Where I got it
I have been seeing personalised skincare articles, reviews, and people talking about them online, but most of the brands that I have heard of so far are overseas – Skin & Me (UK) and Software (AU). They both do not ship to New Zealand so I googled to see what is available here. Then I came across Mutual Skincare. From the Mutual Skincare website – “Mutual is a collaboration between us and you, between science and nature and between New Zealanders working with talented people from around the world. This collaboration allows us to create unique skincare experiences for you. It means we can work with you to make the best possible product for your skin and the best possible product for nature.”
You go through an online skin assessment that asks you questions about your skin concern, your age, and gender and their very advanced AI technology utilizes 70,000 dermatological data points to customise a concoction of ingredients to tailor specifically to your skin needs. I went through the skin assessment with a background of combination/oily skin with blemish concerns, dehydration and fine lines. Currently, there are 220 individual formulas available and each answer you give takes you to a different set of questions. Obviously, I went to do the skin assessment again with dry skin concerns with wrinkles, pigmentation, and dehydration concerns. This resulted in an entirely different formula with a rich base cream as well as a peptide solution and vitamin C.
A bottle of the Mutual Skincare moisturiser starts at $174.06 depending on your skin concerns. My formula came to a total of $231.72 before the sign-up discount. After the discount, it came down to $162.20 including free shipping. It exceeded my expectation, the product arrived the following day!
Mutual Personalised Skincare
What I got
My Mutual Skincare personalised formula is called “Oily Skin Cream base with Oxygenation Serum 1.6ml, Advanced Baker’s Yeast Extract 2.6ml and Niacinamide PLus 2.2g“. A bottle of this cream is 50ml and would last me 3 months. You are able to purchase these as a single product or go for a subscription for a discount. In this case, I went for a single product because upon signing up for their newsletter, you get a 30% discount code to use on your first purchase and that does not work on subscriptions.
The description for my formula is “A refreshing and ultra-lightweight purifying lotion, formulated with a combination of mattifying and moisturizing ingredients that don’t block pores. All blended with additional ingredients specific to your needs.”
Mutual Personalised Skincare
Packaging
How I find it
The bottle of moisturiser was presented in a hard cardboard box with card inserts and then another cardboard box with the product inside. Whilst I do appreciate the nice presentation, I thought the excessive paper packaging a little unnecessary. Anyway, the plastic bottle looked clinical and sleek, but not luxurious. It came with a personalised leaflet of my moisturiser, the ingredients, and its skincare benefits. The moisturiser is in an airless pump bottle with a black cap. It feels quite small to be 50mls to be honest, but it looks like I only need two pumps for the entire face and neck area. There is a little slit on the side of the bottle where you can see how much product is left in the bottle.
So in the meantime, I have ditched my existing moisturiser, which was a deluxe sample size of the Tatcha Dewy Face Cream and the Rohto UV White Gel with SPF50 for the morning. I kept using my Clarins Bright Plus Dark-Spot serum as well as my Tretinoin at night. I would use this as my day and night moisturiser and use an SPF50 during the day. The lotion-like moisturiser feels light, but still hydrating and lightly moisturising. The lotion is absorbed quickly, leaving skin semi-matte to the touch. In other words, it doesn’t leave my skin dewy and you can feel that slight oil-control texture if you know what I mean.
Bottle
As we can see there is aloe vera in the formula to provide hydration, also bentonite to absorb excess oil and sebum. The Advanced Baker’s Yeast Extract helps to maintain skin hydration and barrier function. Niacinamide Plus has all kinds of skin benefits from promoting skin collagen production, fight against acne, antioxidant, etc. The Oxygenation serum reduce appears of pores and blemishes and helps to decrease the oiliness of the skin.
Ingredients of my formula
Texture
Overall
This has been a long overdue review as I have already finished the bottle of moisturiser about a week ago and it has taken me a little over 3 months to finish. I was on and off using this because I was also sent a lot of new products from other brands and to be honest this moisturiser was not very appealing for me to use every day. However, this moisturiser is a decent moisturiser. When I did my skin analysis for this moisturiser, my skin profile and needs were focused on breakouts and fine lines. I really did see improvements in my breakouts, but the base of the moisturise was a little light. I would prefer something a little more moisturising. I alternated this with another moisturiser in the morning because the other one I was using had SPF50 so out of laziness, I used that instead of applying another layer of SPF over the Mutual one.
I wouldn’t go and order another bottle right away because this product did not really wow me and I do have a lot of other products to try. It is actually quite an expensive moisturiser that would probably last me under 2 months if I use it on a daily basis. I feel like it didn’t target a lot of my skin issues except improvements on my breakouts (not that it cleared it as well). If it totally cleared up my acne/bumps, it would’ve been 100% worth the money.
I would consider purchasing again with a different formula, maybe something for brightening or anti-aging, which is something that I would like to focus on as well.
