If you’re concerned with dull skin, uneven skin tone or fine lines, vitamin C is definitely an ingredient to add in your skincare routine.
As you know, this antioxidant helps to prevent and treat sun damage by brightening the skin and stimulating collagen production. Not all vitamin C products are created equal however. The ingredient that has been researched the most is L-Ascorbic acid but it’s highly unstable and thus hard to formulate. You can find it in powder form to mix daily fresh batches, in serums, creams etc. Today I’m going to talk bout one of the more stable Vitamin C derivative, namely ascorbyl tetraisopalmitate.
When you browse The Ordinary’s website, there’s a whole category of products dedicated to vitamin C. Among the plethora of options, I went for this gentle oil-soluble derivative, Ascorbyl tetraisopalmitate solution 20% in vitamin F. (You can see why I shortened it to “vitamin C serum” in my title…) Renée from the Gothamista channel convinced me with her video when she said that this particular derivative had shown great results for brightening the skin.
Here, the product is formulated in an oily base (vitamin F is actually a fancy way of saying essential fatty acids) with coconut alkanes, jojoba seed oil and squalane. The texture however is not greasy but more like a runny, watery oil that’s easy to spread and massage into the skin. It doesn’t have any added fragrance, so you only get the scent of the ingredients which – to me – smells slightly chemical. I don’t mind it since it means that there is less potential for irritation.
I’ve had good results with this antioxidant serum. It was easy to incorporate into my AM and PM routines in between my hydrating serum and my moisturizer/oil. After a few weeks, I noticed that my skin looked brighter and my hyperpigmentation was diminished. Plus, my skin reacts well to this form of vitamin C and I haven’t experienced any irritation whatsoever.
I won’t repurchase it for now because I’m testing another vitamin C serum at the moment but it’s definitely a good product that I’ve enjoyed using. As with most of the products from The Ordinary, it’s affordable and makes it easier to try new ingredients without breaking the bank. It retails for 17,8$, 14,9£/30ml.
