why is your skin so good
By Asia Milia Ware, beauty editor at the Cut who also writes the column “Why Is Your Skin So Good.” She has covered fashion and beauty for eight years with bylines in InStyle, Teen Vogue, Paper, and Essence.
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Jordyn Woods shaved the side of her head when she was 13 years old because, well, it was the “trendy thing to do.” At 27 years old, she’s not chasing trends anymore. Her beauty routines and wellness rituals include sauna detoxing, spending her mornings doing lymphatic-drainage massages, and indulging in skin care like Biologique Recherche face creams and Summer Fridays eye patches.
“I love skin care, and I found what works for me,” she says. Though she’s always testing products, she has sensitive skin, so she’s particular about what she puts on. Her esthetician, New York City–based Cynthia Rivas, has put her onto a lot of her favorite and most efficacious products.
Since moving to New York, Woods’s skin has had to adjust. “My skin was unrecognizable,” she says about the period when she first moved here seven months ago, when her longtime boyfriend, Karl-Anthony Towns, was traded to the Knicks. She just returned from Detroit less than 24 hours ago, and her nails are decked out in blue and orange Knicks nail art adorned with Towns’s number, 32. She hasn’t had a chance to unpack her bag yet and travels a lot, so everything in her beauty bag is what goes on the road with her. Here, Woods’s 11-step routine from her favorite mist to her combo of moisturizers.
Step 1: Double cleanse (sometimes triple)
Woods starts her routine with iS Clinical’s cream cleanser. It’s a silky texture that melts right onto her skin for a gentle cleanse. “It doesn’t get too soapy. I like mild cleansers because my skin gets super dry easily, but not with this.” It’s easy for a double cleanse and also works great as a makeup remover. She’s replaced her makeup wipes with this.
iS Clinical’s cleansing complex is a cult favorite, a non-stripping, clarifying gel cleanser. Jordyn uses this to double cleanse (mostly in the shower) andoften uses it with her gua sha. She performs her lymphatic drainage technique every day to prevent inflammation and swelling on her face and to drain her lymph nodes.
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Whether she’s traveling or at home, she uses Clean Skin Club’s disposable face towels. They’re soft, biodegradable towels that are less harsh than wash cloths. Sometimes she just puts micellar water on them to remove eye makeup.
Step 2: Mist, mist, mist
When she’s done cleansing, she uses a refresher mist, May Lindstrom’s garden mist. It’s made with antioxidant-rich botanicals to refresh and calm the skin. “It’s just so refreshing to me. I used it on Karl and he said it smells like a garden, but I liked it.”
Step 3: Apply an eye cream before anything else
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Before doing anything else in her routine, Woods applies eye cream so that the product can go straight to her eye area without any barriers. She doesn’t like to clog that area up with too many products. MBR’s cytoline cream is lightweight and quickly absorbs. It claims to have vessel-toning properties that help reduce puffy eyes and dark circles. “We don’t sleep,” Woods says.
Step 4: Exfoliate, only on days she really needs it
“For a while I was using a toner that exfoliates, but I was stripping my skin too much and then I was getting a lot more texture,” she says. Since then, she’s started to exfoliate only once a week with ZO Skin Health’s skin polish. Woods describes the magnesium oxide crystal polish as “intense.” It gets the dead skin gone with its fine particles, but definitely not something she needs every day.
Step 5: Apply a vitamin-C serum
Woods uses one serum, iS Clinical’s pro-heal serum. With vitamin C and copper tripeptide growth factors, it helps repair and brighten the skin. This isn’t the serum Woods is turning to for an immediate glow; it penetrates a deeper layer of the skin to help make it more radiant over time.
Step 6: Apply Biologique Recherche’s PIGM 400 face cream
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During the day she uses two moisturizers. She uses Biologique Recherche’s PIGM 400 face cream. The toner is a cult classic for Black women treating pigmentation with hopes to brighten their skin. This cream acts in the same way, using active ingredients to target dark spots.
At night, she opts for another Biologique Recherche cream, one she almost returned because of the smell (their products are notoriously known for their unpleasant smell, but their real results). This cream is a bit richer than the PIGM 400 and the active ingredients work to renew skin cells throughout the night, leaving Woods to wake up with hydrated and healthy-looking skin.
Step 7: Apply May Lindstrom Skin Blue Cocoon Moisturizer
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This ocean blue balm-to-oil formula nourishes the skin with its blend of oils. It’s the moisturizer Woods mixes with her PIGM 400 cream when her skin is dry and craving extra nourishment. The Blue Cocoon is also said to also be beneficial for skin conditions like rosacea, acne, and eczema. “I like to layer it because it’s a facial-oil concentrate.” It also leaves the skin with a beautiful glasslike finish.
Step 8: Apply sunscreen
Woods has been trying to be better about wearing her sunscreen, so lately she’s been wearing Elta MD’s tinted SPF, and she loves how hydrating the finish is. It has a hint of pigment and doesn’t leave her with a white cast.
Step 9: Apply an eye patch
They feel cooling on her eyes and are non-slip because Woods loves “an eye patch that stays.” Some of her other favorite masks are Topicals hydrogel eye masks and Rare Beauty’s cooling eye masks.
Step 10: Use something cold
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You may see Woods on Instagram doing game-day GRWM videos using her cryosticks — a daily tool in her routine. Today she is using them over her eye masks, but she usually just uses them on her skin to reduce puffiness and enhance circulation in her skin. She keeps them in the fridge and the cooling sensation lasts hours after taking them out.
Step 11: Apply a lip scrub and mask
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The scrub gets rid of dead skin and softens the lips with its signature miracle broth ingredient. “It tastes like sugar or something, but I don’t think we should consume it,” Woods says. “I probably use this once a week. I try to exfoliate when I feel I need it rather than saying I have to do this once a week. If I need it three times, sure or if I don’t need it at all, I won’t use it. That’s how you put your lips in a worse spot. Your lips will tell you when they need to be exfoliated. You could tell it’s getting a little crusty.”
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Laneige’s lip sleeping mask is a tried-and-true favorite. “I feel like everyone tried to copy this product after they made it,” Woods says. They were the OG lip mask before everyone had a lip product. The rich K-beauty overnight mask blends shea butter and coconut oil with a berry-mix complex for an ultranourishing mask that leaves the lips soft and plump throughout the night.
On less-is-more skin care:
“Less is more and has always been,” she says. She credits some of her great skin to being “partially genetics,” because both her mom and grandmother have the best skin she’s seen. When she asks them what they do they have one answer: soap and water. “My grandma has never had a skin-care routine and she’s never gotten Botox but doesn’t have any wrinkles. But, her number-one thing is that she doesn’t go in the sun. She stays out of the sun. I can’t say the same about me,” Woods says, but she believes in having a routine that’s catered to her skin. Though the one thing she is interested in trying is a salmon-sperm DNA facial (us too).
Her courtside must-haves:
Her game-day glow comes courtesy of Rhode. “Game day typically means I’m putting makeup on. Before makeup, the glazing milk gives my skin such a nice glow and everything glides on, too. I don’t even use a primer, just this.”
“I’m not going to be courtside without a lip gloss and I probably keep about five in my bag,” she says. A good lip liner and lip gloss are never far when Woods is cheering on Towns, specifically Aquaphor because it’s multi-use. “Aquaphor is my holy grail. You can use it on everything. Your skin, your lips, your hands, your elbows, and even if you need a little cheekbone highlight.”
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On her wellness rituals:
If there’s one thing Woods is committed to outside of her skin-care routine, it’s her wellness routine, starting with the gym. “The gym has been my therapy. I feel like it’s my mental health, just one thing I do for myself a day. Obviously, you start looking better, but you start feeling better, and that was the number-one thing for me. When my dad passed, I was 19, I was in a very weird stage in my life, and that’s when I really found wellness and the gym. I think it saved my life, truly,” she says. She also loves anything infrared, whether that’s red-light therapy or the sauna. “We’re exposed to so much daily, I believe in sweating it out.” Her sauna routine, as with many Black women, depends on her hair. “If I’m wearing a protective style, I’m going four to five times a week, but with other styles only once or twice a week. I hate falling victim to my hairstyle.”
On confidence:
“When you’re a kid, you think being different is your weakness, and I think being different becomes your strength as you get older. God gave us this body for a reason and for me, I always say my individuality is my greatest gift. I wouldn’t say I’m the most confident person, but what makes me confident is that I have this body for a reason and if I don’t like something, I can change it.”
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