Lumina is the newest brand in our shop, and in some ways the one that best explains what we look for.
Its founder, cosmetic chemist Yuna Park, spent years at a large Seoul beauty group before leaving in 2019 to make fewer products that each do one thing properly. The lab is two rooms above a former printing workshop in Seongsu-dong. When we visited, there were more test notebooks on the shelves than finished bottles.
Yuna keeps a rule on the wall: a product does not leave the lab until she would give it to her own mother. Several have taken more than a year. One was shelved for good because the texture was never quite right.
The Hydrating Serum is the first Lumina piece we carry. It is built around one idea, keeping water in the skin, with no fragrance and no list of fifteen hero ingredients. It is the kind of product you notice mostly when you stop using it.
We will add more Lumina pieces as Yuna releases them. By her own account, that will not be often.