We Don’t Talk About 2016 Skincare Enough

Mid-2010s nostalgia is pretty powerful stuff. It's far enough in the rearview mirror to give the whole period a warm, fuzzy glow, but not so distant that it feels like ancient history. As we officially marked a decade from 2016 this year, nostalgia for the time period has hit an all-time high—remember that week when every celeb was posting #2106 throwback photos? There have been plenty of memes about Kylie Lip Kits and the golden days of Beauty Youtube, but why do we never talk about what a distinct and downright bananas time it was for skin care?  What's so often missed in those rose-colored retrospectives is what, exactly, the mainstream skin care landscape looked like circa 2016—and just how radically it all transformed in less than a decade. 

The 2016 Skincare Landscape

We may be in the era of " performative eye patches ," but this phenomenon can actually be traced back to the mid 2010s— many top-selling products of the time were so popular simply because of how cool they looked on the user. The YouTube beautysphere made makeup its marquee niche, but screen-friendly skin care was starting to gain some serious ground—and the more eye-catching it looked in a thumbnail or a Snapchat story, the better. You can probably picture it clearly: that black Boscia peel-off mask, GlamGlow mud masks with vibey names, patterned sheet masks, glitter-laced serums, primers that looked like unicorn blood patted into the skin with an oversized silicone egg at double speed while a Chainsmokers song pulsed in the background.

For many, skin care wasn't about diagnosing a problem and prescribing the perfect active. It was an aesthetic pursuit—a form of personal taste cultivation, really—and it all felt more than a little predicated on vibes. Of course, it wasn't exactly a coincidence that this all unfolded at the height of the don't-date-a-Gemini era, when astrology, manifestation, and metaphysics all went startlingly mainstream (who wasn't carrying around a loose rose quartz in their purse back then?)

The Information Boom

The funny thing is, though, at the time, we young, burgeoning beauty fans thought we were on the cutting edge of sophisticated self-care as we sandblasted our skin with a Clarisonic, may she rest in peace. We probably would have stayed emotionally attached to our utterly useless rose-scented face mists and metallic purple "glow jellies" had it not been for the information explosion at the tail end of the decade. I'll tell you when it all changed for me : Rio Viera-Newton' s mega-viral skin care Google Doc , which coincided with K-Beauty's rise from niche obsession to the gold standard of skin care—and, crucially, its newfound accessibility to the average American shopper. It was the first time I had heard of snail mucin, that's for sure—and I wasn't the only one taking notes. "2016 was when, ironically, I first heard about K-Beauty and double cleansing from SoKo Glam founder Charlotte Cho," shares Charlotte Palermino , co-founder of cult brand Dieux Skin and a celebrated skin care resource in her own right. "2012 was when Gwyneth Paltrow in her newsletter Goop made French Beauty trend so I was fascinated by this first wave of Korean Beauty in America." 

Rather than trickling down from magazines and hyper-polished influencers, skin care knowledge was spreading sideways, through Reddit threads, YouTube comment sections, and eventually TikTok, which made everyday consumers surprisingly savvy. In 2019, Reddit publicly celebrated the subforum r/SkincareAddiction hitting 1 million users. Today, it boasts more than 5 million, and that's not counting the dozens of other increasingly niche subreddits about skin, too, dedicated to everything from specific brands to individual ingredients and personal identity, like r/30PlusSkincare and r/IndianBeautyTalks . Makeup itself changed, too. As the glamorous full beat wave crested at the tail end of the decade, hyperminimalist "clean girl" makeup took its place—suddenly, there was no choice but to address whatever was happening beneath the full-coverage foundation. Glossier spent its heyday preaching a "skin first, makeup second" philosophy, but by the early 2020s, the rest of the industry had caught up.

2016 to 2026

Brands and retailers didn't lead this shift so much as respond to it. As consumers became increasingly fluent in ingredients, packaging followed suit. Mystical marketing copy gave way to percentages, active ingredients, and minimalist bottles that looked more at home in a laboratory than on a vanity. "Volcanic ash" and "dragon's blood" were out; niacinamide , tranexamic acid, and ectoin were in. In Palermino's opinion, it was really TikTok that supercharged the beauty and skin care consumption cycle, fueled in large part by just how long and often we now stare at ourselves over Zoom and other front-facing cameras post-pandemic. 

If anything, the obsession has only become more sophisticated. Carolyn Bojanowski, EVP of Merchandising with Sephora US, says the retail giant is noting the category's evolution toward a more science-driven space, with clientele prioritizing long-term skin health, repair, and barrier resilience. "We're seeing growing interest in skin longevity, cutting-edge ingredients and biotech with mindful formulation to protect skin barrier health, personalized routines, and more conscious approaches to beauty, including streamlined routines and packaging innovations that help minimize waste," Bojanowski tells Byrdie. It feels like a natural progression, following the shift from "it tingles so it's working" of 10 years ago to the "it's working because the formula combines azelaic acid and ceramides to target breakouts without compromising my skin barrier."

It's kind of wild how much the average person knows about different injectables and in-office aesthetic treatments. My 60-year-old father asked me what I thought of him getting PRP treatments, an unthinkable dinner conversation back when Kim K was making headlines for her infamous "vampire facial." Of course, that's partly what happens when an entire generation spends a decade crowdsourcing skin care knowledge online. Knowledge might be power, but ignorance is also bliss. It's nice to know that you can dial up a six-product lineup tailored to quell a forehead breakout by next weekend, but there is something kind of freeing and alchemic about not knowing what the hell you're doing—even if it gets you nowhere. Before tretinoin, before skin cycling, before the average 20-something knew what a moisture barrier was, it was just you and a jar of Urban Outfitters-purchased Disco Kitten glitter face mask against the world.  

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