Peach Slices: The Esthetician's Second Brand for Breakouts

Most of the brands I trust were started by someone who was annoyed first. Alicia Yoon lived with severe eczema for much of her life, trained and practiced as an esthetician in Korea and New York, then took a long detour through finance, consulting and a Harvard MBA. In 2012 she left that world and started Peach & Lily, a shop for the Korean skincare she could not find at home. Peach Slices came later, in 2018, as the sister line for everyday breakouts, redness and oily skin. I like the division of labor. One brand is the slow, considered shelf, and the other is what you reach for when a flare shows up on a Tuesday. Yoon has described the thinking as holistic: address the breakout, but keep skin hydrated and pay attention to inflammation. That is the brand's philosophy and not a guarantee, and I read it that way. Below are twelve Peach Slices products in three steps, starting with the wash: an acne cleanser, the Acne Clarifying Cleanser with 2% salicylic acid, two more cleansers for oily or easily flushed skin, and an exfoliating toner.

The second grid is three serums and a patch, and each serum has one job. The Super Fade Discoloration Serum is aimed, the brand says, at dark spots and post-blemish marks, and it pairs a tranexamic acid derivative with niacinamide and licorice in an airless pump. The Redness Relief 10% Azelaic Acid Serum carries a universal tint, a clever detail if you dislike a serum that sits visibly on the skin. The Redness Relief Soothing Serum is the quiet one, silky and oil-free with panthenol, cica and allantoin. The Body Breakout Patches are oversized hydrocolloid, made for shoulders and backs where a regular dot gets lost, from a brand whose Acne Spot Dots were reported as the top-selling blemish product on the market in 2022. My tip is boring and useful. Add one active at a time, test it on your inner arm twice a day for seven to ten days, as the American Academy of Dermatology suggests, and wear sunscreen every morning once acids are in the routine.

Grid three is four moisturizers, and I would sort them by skin mood. The Citrus-Honey Aqua Glow is a moisture-gel with grapefruit, orange, honey extract and ceramides, light enough for August. The Oil Control Mattifying Moisturizer leans on zinc PCA and niacinamide for a mattified finish without a powdery feel, which matters because oily skin still wants moisture. The Redness Relief Calming Cream is a silky cream with turmeric root and green algae, the brand's softer option for reactive days. The Acne Oil-Free Moisturizer is step three of the brand's three-step acne system with 0.5% salicylic acid, after the cleanser and toner from the first grid, and it finishes with a satin-matte feel.

What I would skip is running the whole system at full speed from day one, with the salicylic cleanser, the exfoliating toner and the salicylic moisturizer all in the same evening. Start with one step, let your skin answer for a week, then add the next. If you are pregnant or trying to be, the American Academy of Dermatology says to talk with your obstetrician or dermatologist about salicylic acid before using it.

What I keep coming back to is the structure. Yoon began as a curator of other people's products, and Peach Slices reads like the lessons of that job pressed into a mass line: clear steps, plain labels and a hydrating finish on almost everything. She has said she wants real skin talk front and center, and I appreciate a brand that does not pretend skin is always smooth. Pick the one problem you actually have, start there, and let the other eleven wait their turn. If you want to keep browsing, I also put together Laifen, the High-Speed Dryer Brand Built Around Its Own Motor and First Aid Beauty and the Oatmeal Cream That Built a Sensitive Skin Brand.