From 25 Steps to Skit: How Irene Kim Grew Up With K-Beauty

In the mid-2010s, if you were trying to decipher what "Korean skincare" actually meant, there is a very high chance Irene Kim was the person showing you.

Korean-American—born in Iowa, raised between Seattle and Seoul—she built an empire at Seoul Fashion Week, hosted Get It Beauty, and signed as an Estée Lauder Global Beauty Contributor, Chanel ambassador and a Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia honouree. With her signature rainbow "mood hair" and the iconic handle @ireneisgood, she was the ultimate translator between East Asian beauty culture and Western obsession.

The emblem of that era? A viral Vogue video where she walked viewers through a 25-step routine. Double cleansers, toners, sheet masks, three more serums, then — her "super secret" tool — a refrigerated spoon dragged across the cheeks to de-puff and "scoop out" the jawline, layers of moisturiser, and two distinct SPFs before touching makeup. It was skincare as performance art, cementing the Western narrative that K-beauty was an elaborate, time-intensive ritual required to unlock "glass skin". 

Look closer at that era, though, and the seeds of her current pivot were already planted. Even while layering half a dozen potions on camera, Irene was already talking about barrier health.

"I consider skincare as eating," she noted back then. "So whatever you put into your body will reflect on your energy."

Her go-to stick foundation was picked only after an allergy test at her dermatologist flagged reactive skin. Her elaborate moisturiser stack was born out of frantic attempts to calm early-career breakouts. By 2016, she told Into The Gloss:

"It’s not just what you put on your face. It’s eating right and exercising, it’s a full body thing."

The 25 steps were a byproduct of the mid-2010s hype machine. Her actual instinct was always focused on balance and calm.

A decade later, Irene Kim cuts straight to the point:

"I used to chase trends and stronger treatments for faster results. Now, I focus on recovery and listening to my skin. Skin moves through phases, and beauty is about understanding that rather than trying to control it."

Her updated philosophy boils down to three simple beats: Prep, Correct, Protect. She flatly rejects her earlier maximalism, noting that piling on products only left her skin irritated and sensitised. "I don’t believe in doing more. I believe in doing what works," she says. "I went through a phase thinking that using more products equals better skin. But that only made my skin more irritated and sensitised." 

Her ingredients and products shortlist reads like a sensible barrier-repair manual rather than a viral wishlist: panthenol, centella asiatica, ceramides, and hyaluronic acid. This isn't a celebrity disavowing K-beauty; it's someone who lived inside every corner of the machine distilling the noise down to what reactive skin responds to.

Skit is the brand that came out of that distillation. Launched in summer 2025 with the tagline "Born in Seoul, made to glow everywhere," Skit is Irene Kim's love letter to sensitive skin — gentle enough to be kind, formulated to still do something — born out of years of heavy makeup and skin struggles. Notably, the brand leaned into a slow, limited preorder release model to avoid overproduction—mirroring Irene’s shift from maximalist fast-beauty to intentional care. 

"Skit is a bit playful, a bit unexpected," Kim told CNA. "It represents moments; little scenes in everyday life. Because skincare isn’t just a routine, it’s part of how you live."

The playful half of the brand is real, and it’s the first thing you notice. Skit debuted not with a serum but with clover-shaped hydrogel patches — a shape Irene says the team arrived at by testing options (she cut up paper and toner pads to see what sat best) until the four-petal clover hugged the contours of the face most comfortably, with the visual cue borrowed from sticker-style Instagram filters. She frames the patches less as a treatment than a small accessory: compact, easy to travel with, good on a flight, "as much of a style statement as your bag or shoes." 

Colour-coded by skin concern, the four-petal shape isn't just an Instagram aesthetic

• Green (Calming & Repair): Packed with Cica and Azulene Complex to soothe reactive areas and dial down redness.

• Blue (Hydrating & Moisture): Powered by Hyaluronic Acid, Aqua GG, and micro-spicules. Using microneedle-inspired spicules inside a hydrogel patch to drive hydration deeper is a genuinely clever move in modern K-beauty.

• Pink (Lifting & Glow): Blended with seven distinct types of collagen to temporarily plump smile lines, firm the under-eyes, and boost elasticity.

Since launch, Skit has grown into an actual routine: a three-step "Phase Series" of an Essence Toner, a Serum, and a Barrier Cream that maps almost exactly onto Kim’s stated prep-correct-protect philosophy. The GlutaMilk Essence Toner is a milky hydrating essence built on glutathione, PDRN, and panthenol, positioned for glow and as an absorption primer for what follows. The Tocopherol 5 Serum is a vitamin E serum — no coincidence, given that when asked the one ingredient everyone should use, Irene’s answer is vitamin E. The B5 Barrier Cream is a recovery-and-calming moisturiser with panthenol, PDRN, bakuchiol, and cica. It’s worth noting for anyone inclined to be sceptical of celebrity brands: this is a current, credible K-beauty ingredient stack — PDRN, glutathione, bakuchiol — not vanity filler with a famous name on the tube.

(Note: Skit notes several formulas are "clinically proven" for metrics like 60% sebum control. As always, treat brand-sponsored claims with healthy editorial skepticism.) 

Got hold of the full range — 3-in-1 Phase Series with toner, serum, cream, and all three patches — and used them for a few days. Four days isn’t long enough to rewrite your skin cellular architecture, and I won’t pretend otherwise, but it will tell you how a product feels, wears, how it layers, if a formula pills under makeup, or triggers an emergency breakout. 

The GlutaMilk Essence Toner is as milky as the name promises — less thick than Rhode’s Glazing Milk, and a little more consistent in texture than other Korean milky toners I’ve tried, or The Ordinary’s Saccharomyces Ferment 30% Milky Toner. I applied it straight into my hands and pressed it into the skin rather than using a cotton pad (which happens to be exactly how Irene Kim says she applies essence). It absorbs quickly and generously — skin really drinks it up — and leaves a natural glow with no sticky or heavy film. It gives the right amount of hydration without weight, and my skin looked fresher and plumper, softer and smoother, after.

The Tocopherol 5 Serum is the one with a small caveat. It carries a faint scent — the product is fragrance-free, so it likely comes from the tocopherol and base itself rather than any added perfume, but it’s noticeable at first and might not be for everyone (you get used to it quickly). Texturally it’s denser than you’d expect from something called a serum — richer than most — yet it still sinks in within about a minute, with no greasy residue and, importantly, no pilling. It layers cleanly under moisturiser and makeup. Too soon for me to judge results, but it leaves skin looking healthy.

The B5 Barrier Cream looks rich coming out of the tube — someone with oily or combination skin might hesitate — but that’s a bit of a trick. It applies comfortably and hydrates, then absorbs without greasiness, and a few hours later there was no shiny T-zone rebound. It layered well under sunscreen and makeup, and I wore it under concealer several times with no pilling or patchiness. The finish is soft and comfortable, and it calmed a couple of red spots I’d had over those few days. My one wish: on hot, humid days I preferred saving it for the evening routine and applying a lighter formulation in the morning — so a gel version, or a lighter cream, would be a welcome addition to the line.

The clover patches I liked across the board. The shape is cute but genuinely functional — you put them on and forget about them — and the cooling sensation is consistent and, on a hot summer day, extremely welcome. I used them in the morning before skincare and in the evening as a 30-minute wind-down, and whichever zone I placed one on came away calmer, more hydrated, and softly glowing depending on the version. The fact that you can mix and match across the three — a calming one on the cheeks, a hydrating one where you’re flaky, a lifting one along the smile lines — makes them feel more considered than a novelty.

Overall, four days in: no dramatic transformation, and I wouldn’t trust a review that claimed one on that timeline. What I can say is that the redness settled, there was no T-zone oiliness rebound, and — what actually matters for sensitive, combination skin — everything felt comfortable. My skin looked naturally healthy, a little smoother, with a genuine (not greasy) glow. For a first few days with a sensitive-skin line, comfortable and calm is exactly the result you want.

There’s a bit of irony seeing the woman who once demonstrated a 25-step routine for Vogue now founded a brand based on a three-step one — but calling it a U-turn misses the point. Irene Kim was never really a maximalist at heart; even at the height of it she was talking about sleep, food, sensitivity, and calm. Skit is what happens when someone with reactive skin and a decade inside the industry keeps only what worked. It’s pared-back without being austere — there’s still a two-hour wind-down ritual and a 13-year ultrasound habit behind the scenes — just pointed at comfort rather than step-count.

In a small way, her arc and Skit mirrors the broader maturing of the Korean beauty industry: shifting away from theatrical step counts and toward gentle, barrier-first formulas that respect the skin. As Irene Kim puts it, true glow isn't about perfection; it's about showing up for your skin every day.