UrbanUpdate

In my line of work, I’m constantly surrounded by newness—the latest, the greatest, the most expensive, the most exclusive—and so my own skin-care routine is constantly in flux, with products constantly being swapped out so I can stay up to date. Over the past ten or so years testing, unboxing, and tossing, I’ve learned to evaluate products based not on what’s new and exciting, but the exact opposite: those rare treasures I’ve actually finished down to the last drop, the lotions and potions I will go out of my way to purchase over and over again. There are very few products that actually meet these criteria, but there is this one face oil that is always my answer whenever somebody asks: “How do you get such great skin?”

Lina Hanson worked as a makeup artist in New York for over seven years before deciding to launch her own line in 2012. Her approach to her first product, a face serum, was relatively straightforward: She wanted the kind of moisturizer that, much like makeup, would instantly make your skin look better. But, unlike so much of the skin-care and cosmetics on the market at the time, she wanted it to be made with natural, fair-trade ingredients.

After much cocktailing and hand mixing, Hanson eventually settled on a blend of 11 oils—baobab, marula, argan, camellia, pumpkin seed, and vitamin E among them. The result was a small-batch, super-rich product—pale gold in color, with a texture like silken honey. She carried around her testers in small, discreet black bottles, using a few drops on each of her celebrity clients before red carpet events. It was during this process that she refined her formula, intimately getting to know its texture and performance, hearing clients' feedback on everything from the smell to the feeling.

After two years of research, blending, and world travel to find the right ingredients, Hanson launched her cult-favorite oil as Global Face Serum.

Lina Hanson global face serum$85

Lina Hanson

Ewan McGregor became an instant fan—in fact, he’s been using it since its official launch. After snatching a bottle from Hanson during an appointment, Gillian Anderson sang its praises (prematurely) to Harper’s Bazaar, causing the makeup artist to frantically figure out how to build and launch an e-commerce business before the issue went to press. Her fellow makeup-artist friends came knocking—both for themselves and for their clients. In fact, Matin, a fixture of the beauty industry, was handed a bottle by his client and friend Morena Baccarin, who was singing its praises. “I loved the immediate calm it gave my skin,” he says. “I used it in the morning after shaving my face, and the smell and feel was absolutely heavenly.”

The secret to the miracle texture, she tells me, is using “dry oils.” “It’s an interesting term, but all it means is that they’re lightweight and quickly absorb into the skin,” she says. (This is notable, because plenty of face oils on the market seem to sit on the surface of your face and take a long time to absorb, which actually makes you look less glowy and more, well, greasy.) “The marula and camellia go straight into the skin and sort of give you a nice sheen and moisture.”

Hanson has been hand-blending the products in small batches ever since her launch—which, she points out, is a part of the product’s magic. “What’s been really good about being a small indie business is that we can control the quality. We never have a whole inventory of oils sitting around,” she says. “We find out when our producers get a new batch of ingredients, and then we make the product in small batches.” In that sense, it’s kind of like shopping at the farmer’s market—just for your face.

I have been using Hanson’s serum every morning since I was first told of its virtues by a makeup-artist friend—she recommended it after assessing a dry patch of skin on my forehead. At that time, my skin was absolute chaos: I was shaving almost every single day, with frequent ingrown hairs and irritation, and my 22-year-old hormones were causing frequent breakouts to rage across my forehead. The thought of using an oil was, frankly, ludicrous: I thought it would only make things worse.

Instead, what I eventually came to realize was that my skin was aggravated precisely because I was over-treating and drying it with salicylic acid and retinol, trying desperately to keep my ingrowns and acne at bay. Meanwhile, what I actually needed was a whole lot of moisture to help accelerate its repair—moisture that could very effectively come from, say, a luxurious face oil.

I usually use one to two full pumps of the serum, placing it in between my hands and rubbing it aggressively between my palms before pressing both of them firmly onto my cheeks, forehead, and neck, using sweeping motions until it is fully absorbed into my skin. If you do the same, you’ll notice a nice and gentle sheen along your cheekbones and the corners of your forehead—not to be confused with shine that comes from oil buildup. (It should be a healthy, moisturized kind of effect, not an oil slick.)

I’ve gotten very accustomed to complete strangers commenting on “what beautiful skin” I have and asking what I’m using. It is the kind of product that instantly makes you look better, healthier, and hydrated—and then lasts throughout the day without causing too much shine. Now that I have a beard, I sometimes use an extra drop judiciously on my facial hair, combing it through for an even application with a boar-bristle brush to tame frizz and any rogue curly hairs.

You might think that over the past seven years, I would have tested a product that could dethrone Lina Hanson’s Global Face Serum—removing it from its permanent status in my medicine cabinet. But here I am, still spreading its gospel, hiding three emergency bottles from my fiancé under mountains of mouthwash in our bathroom sink, and keeping extras in every suitcase I own. They say you can have too much of a good thing—but in this case, I’ll take all I can get.

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