Along with everything else you worry about at 35: the relationship, the kids, the job, the weight, I was also worried about my skin.

Worried about how much more makeup I was putting on every single day. About how I dreaded going outside in the heat and humidity with all this makeup. 

And so began my skincare journey.

I'd always used skincare. Just not seriously. 

Sunscreen - only in winter.

Whatever my friend recommended. 

Whatever was on sale at Sephora, buy 2.

I spent more on makeup than I ever did on skincare because makeup covered the problem and skincare was supposed to fix it. Supposed to.

When I turned 35 and decided to take it seriously, I started a $159 a month habit.

After the first year, battling reactions, new breakouts, skin that felt angry all the time, I thought: let me see a dermatologist.

Between the consultations and every tube of cream she prescribed, that came to around $2,500.

Two years in, I turned to Korean skincare. Everyone was raving about it. So for three years I threw myself into a full routine. I did the ten steps.

I bought everything on TikTok, including that green stick that went viral and gave me hard pimples around my chin that took months to shift.

For three years I was my own guinea pig. Masks, serums, ampoules, creams, microneedling tools, things I can't even name anymore.

At the end of five years, my skin and my spirit were battered.

It was that week I tried to calculate what the last five years had actually cost me. Conservative estimate: $12,800.

Last year I hit my wall. My spots were worse than when I started. My skin around my chin looked angrier than it had at 30.

I was now 40-something, staring down the barrel of perimenopausal skin, and every IG post seemed to taunt me.

I had to get this right.

So I started over. Not with a new product - with research.

I started reading about melanin-rich skin specifically. Why I had these spots. Why they kept coming back no matter what I tried. And I began to understand something nobody had ever told me directly.

Korean skincare is extraordinary. Until it isn't made for or tested on Black skin.

I went back and looked at what my dermatologist had prescribed me.

Literally everything was either too strong or completely unnecessary for my skin. She gave me a cream typically used for infections. She gave me 7% benzoyl peroxide - which is aggressive even for lighter skin tones.

The Korean serum I'd been layering on top contained 15% niacinamide and kojic acid.

Looking back with the knowledge I now had - I had been destroying my own skin. And paying for the privilege.

It all clicked at once.

I needed skincare made for melanin-rich skin. Not adjusted for it. Not inspired by it. Actually built for it, from the ground up, by someone who understood it.

I love shea butter. But it was not going to cut it.

Continue reading her story below or click this button to skip ahead to find out what finally worked for her.

I researched. I read ingredients lists. I looked at Black-owned brands and what they were actually formulating with.

And I found something I hadn't expected - a brand made in Korea, built by a woman of colour who had the exact same frustrations I did. Who had gone to Seoul specifically because she couldn't find what we needed anywhere else.

I started using VOUEE about nine months ago.

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Week 1 to Week 7
Dark Spot Serum and Face Wash only

I want to be honest with you the way nobody on TikTok ever was with me. My skin did not immediately glow. My spots did not disappear overnight.

If you have melanin-rich skin over 35 you already know that's not how this works - and if someone is telling you otherwise, they are selling you something your skin will pay for later.

What I noticed was different.

The tightness was gone. That constant strain I'd felt in my skin for years - the feeling I used to mistake for my skin "responding to ingredients" - it disappeared.

My skin just felt like skin. Calm. Not fighting anything.

I didn't know how significant that was until it stopped.

Week 7 to Week 11
Added the Hydrating Serum

They sent me a sample. I added it in. Easy to layer, absorbed immediately. My skin felt softer within days.

But the thing I noticed most in this period….

No new pimples.

No new spots.

Not fewer. Zero. For the first time in years I wasn't waking up to find a new pimple or dark mark had appeared overnight. And the existing ones, they looked softer. Less defined. Were they actually fading? I don’t know.

I was almost afraid to say it out loud.

Week 12 to Week 22
Added the SPF 30

My face was clearing. I started using the face wash on parts of my body too. The SPF - no white cast, absorbed clean - became almost non-negotiable every morning.

I stopped counting new spots because there weren't any to count.

Week 30

I did a side by side.

I pulled up a photo from before I started and held it next to my face in the mirror.

I stared at it for a long time. I genuinely could not believe the before photo was my face. I sent it to my best friend. She didn't believe it either.

I was happy. But I also felt something else.

Shame. Real, quiet shame.

How had I let my skin get to that point? How had I spent $12,800 doing this to myself? How many years had I wasted blaming my own skin for responding exactly the way melanin-rich skin responds to products that were never built for it?

It was never my skin.

It was always the formula.

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What I use now

I am not experimenting anymore. I am not seeing dermatologists for skincare. I get a facial once every few months - when I'm on holiday, when I want to treat myself.

Every morning and every night: the VOUEE face wash. I foam it up and work it in for about a minute. Once a week I use it as a mask and leave it on for longer.

After cleansing: the hydrating serum, then the dark spot serum. SPF moisturiser in the morning - its a 2in1.

For my body: their body toner and wash.

On Sundays, when I want to really take care of myself: the salmon DNA and a mask. That's my hour. Mine.

My skin is not 16 again. I am not going to tell you that.

But when I look in the mirror now, I see my face first. Not my spots. Not the evidence of five years of experiments that cost me $12,800 and years of confidence.

Just my face.

If I could go back and tell myself something five years ago it would be this: stop experimenting on your own skin with products that were never made for it. Stop taking skincare advice from 16 year olds on tiktok. Stop ‘trying everything’. Find something that was actually made for melanin-rich skin

I found VOUEE.

Adaeze tried VOUEE's Dark Spot Serum, Face Wash, Hydrating Serum and SPF 30 Moisturiser. Her results are her own. Individual results vary. Her images are shared with her permission.