There is a particular genus of San Francisco skincare establishment — you know the one — where the lighting is gallery-dim, the product line is "curated," and the esthetician regards your medicine cabinet the way a sommelier regards a bottle of Barefoot Merlot. The space is beautiful. The branding is immaculate. The facial leaves you feeling… fine.
Per chatter in a certain local subreddit devoted to discerning taste, a well-known neighborhood facial studio and skincare brand has been catching strays from the very clientele it courts. One commenter describes being "caught by surprise by how militant the esthetician was about seeing the products I use," adding that the experience left them feeling "on the spot and chastised." Another — clearly someone who wanted to be converted — writes that they had "high expectations" and "was contemplating switching to their product line," only to walk out the door feeling "meh." A third puts it more bluntly: "The tech I had was inexperienced and ruined my skin, won't ever go back."
The vibe is immaculate. The results, per the congregation, are optional.
What emerges from the threads isn't a single bad review — it's a pattern, and the pattern is revealing. Multiple commenters describe a place that excels at atmosphere and falters at outcome. "Super relaxing and boujee," one visitor concedes, which is the polite way of saying you're paying north of two hundred dollars to lie in a dark room while someone disapproves of your CeraVe. The consensus, such as it is, seems to be that competing studios — a Hayes Valley spa here, a medical-grade outfit there — deliver more actual skin results for comparable or lesser sums. One onlooker notes that the studio's much-touted "no tips" policy comes with its own asterisk at checkout, a detail left tantalizingly unfinished but suggestive enough.
None of this is unusual in isolation. San Francisco has always loved a beautiful room that sells you a philosophy alongside a service — the city practically invented the concept of paying a premium to be lightly scolded about your lifestyle choices. But there's something especially of-the-moment about a skincare brand that has perfected the aesthetic of expertise — the moody interiors, the ingredient-shaming, the sense that you are entering a space more enlightened than your bathroom — while the facials themselves apparently land somewhere between forgettable and regrettable.
The read, then, seems to be this: in 2024's San Francisco, brand conviction and spatial design can carry you remarkably far, but eventually someone on a subreddit called something like "bitches with taste" is going to ask whether the emperor's serum has any active ingredients. The city's clean-beauty-industrial complex has produced a lot of gorgeous storefronts. What it hasn't always produced is results you can see in the mirror the next morning.
One starts to wonder whether the real product was never the facial at all — it was the permission to feel virtuous about your skincare for an hour, in a room that photographs beautifully, before going home and quietly reordering your Skinceuticals.