A Korean Beauty Guru Just Opened a ‘Facial Bar’ Uptown

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

Cindy Kim thinks you should get facials as frequently as you pay your Netflix bill. "We want you to incorporate facials into your routine every four to six weeks," she told Racked during a visit to Silver Mirror, her brand new six-chair facial bar on the Upper East Side. "What women don't understand is that your skin is very much a work in progress. Much like going to the gym, you have to put the effort in." Hopefully, you're going to the gym more than once a month, though.

Kim is well-versed in all things beauty as a co-founder of Peach and Lily, an online Korean beauty destination that's made waves in New York with a sample sale last month and its first IRL shop in Flushing. She and her Silver Mirror co-founder Matt Maroone — a former music exec who also founded Pickfit — saw a need in the city for affordable facials that clients can indulge in on a monthly, bi-monthly, or even weekly basis. (Heyday fills a similar need, but doesn't have an uptown location).

"We want to teach you about your skin," Kim continued. "Most consumers have no understanding about their skin and end up buying the wrong products and it's just this bad vicious cycle that they get into. It's frustrating." The estheticians have gone through a really intense training process to do such teaching, recommending products and appointment frequency to every client.

Facials are priced from $75 to $130, and services offered combine deep cleansing with different variations of light peels, advance LED therapy, hydropeels, microdermabrasion, microcurrent, micro-needling, specialty masks, and intense serums that result in what Kim calls "happy skin." You won't find hand and arm massages here, but you will find the latest skin care gadgets and machinery from Korea.

And after your services, you're welcome to touch up at the silver mirror at the back of the store — though it's recommended that you just bask in your own post-facial glow.