Hi, I'm Steph from IFeelShiny. I blog about beauty, food and London but I have a current and ongoing obsession with skincare.
I had been hearing rave reviews about Riley's "Good Genes" serum for months, but its hefty price tag (£85 - eek!) made me hesitate. I finally took the plunge last month.
The serum is described as a "multi-tasking under moisturiser treatment and mask that smooths, refines, clarifies and brightens, whilst improving your skin's thickness and elasticity." Essentially this baby is meant to do everything and more for your skin and is targeted at all age groups (although I would exclude teens from this as teenage skin is elastic and bright enough without needing an £85 serum!).
At 26 I'm not hugely concerned about wrinkles but I do want to start looking after my skin so that I don't resemble a crocodile when I'm 50. I have quite strange combination skin that is very oily in patches and very dry and flaky in others, so it's incredibly difficult to find skincare that suits me. I also have quite a bit of redness around my nose and chin and am prone to quite dull, grey/yellowy tinged skin if my immune system is down. I don't suffer from acne (only of the occasional hormonal variety) and I don't have sensitive skin at all.
"Good Genes" is a serum, so you use it after your cleanser/toner and before your moisturiser. The packaging recommends 1-2 pumps which I thought was way too much - I actually use half a pump and that's more than enough to cover my face.
It doesn't smell great - it smells almost spicy and a tiny bit funky if I'm completely honest. I feel if you used it as a mask that this smell would be a bit overwhelming. On application there is a gentle tingling feeling. This feeling is more intense if I've exfoliated or gone in hard with my face flannel during cleansing. For me the tingling is quite pleasant and it feels as if it's really working away at your skin, but for very sensitive skin I think the tingling could be too much and you might be quite irritated.
I apply all over my face and then pat it in, rather than rubbing, then I wait for it to dry a little bit before applying my moisturiser over the top.
Funky smell and tingly feeling aside, the results have been wonderful. As I said before, I don’t have any serious skin problems that necessarily need heavy duty attention, but it has really worked wonders on the redness around my nose. I would say that there's been about a 50% noticeable reduction of redness, which is fantastic considering that I was convinced the only thing that would fix it would be laser treatment. I don't think this serum will ever achieve 100% redness reduction, but I'm very impressed with the result it's given me. My skin also generally seems brighter and perkier.
I haven't used it as a mask and I don't really intend to. It feels effective enough as a serum and part of me does die a little inside thinking of expending 10+ pumps of the £85 bottle for one mask. If I had a special event coming up and my skin wasn't cooperating or I had been ill recently, I would absolutely use it as a mask to give my skin a quick supercharge, but otherwise I don't think it's necessary.
Overall I've enjoyed using "Good Genes" and would recommend it if you have redness or generally dull and tired skin. I'm not sure I could recommend it for blemish prone skin or sensitive skin. If you have sensitive skin and are desperate to try this, I would urge getting a tester first.
I can't say that this will be a re-puchase item for me. I have loved the results but I don't think it's had such a life changing effect as to warrant a regular £85 outlay.
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