Hi, I'm Marie.
I’m 23, a medical student with a growing obsession with dermatology — and for years, I approached my own skin like a problem I could outsmart.
I tried everything. Not casually. Competitively.
I tried a gentler cleanser. Then a stronger one.
Fewer actives. Then more actives.
I simplified my routine. Then somehow ended up with nine steps again.
Every launch. Every rising star. Every product a stranger at 2 a.m. swore had changed her life. I built routines out of hope, abandoned them out of panic, and layered actives that had absolutely no business meeting each other on the same night.
Looking back, I wasn’t really caring for my skin.
I was negotiating with it.
One more serum. One stronger active. One perfect routine — and then, surely, we’d finally be done.
We were never done.
Eventually I stopped asking “what should I put on this?” and started asking better questions:
What actually happened? What changed? What does the evidence support — and what am I only assuming?
That changed the way I looked at skincare.
And Ask Rierie grew out of everything I wish I’d known before I learned to ask those questions.
start reading
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stop guessing
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start reading ☆ stop guessing ☆
The part where it gets interesting
I read studies. A lot of them.
I go past the headline, past the abstract when I can, and past the ingredient everyone is talking about. I want to know what was actually tested, on whom, for how long, at what concentration — and whether the conclusion people repeat online is even the conclusion the paper reached.
Then there are ingredient lists.
The whole list.
Not because every unfamiliar ingredient is secretly a problem, but because a formula is more than the three glamorous actives printed on the front.
And yes, I experiment on my own skin too: slowly, one variable at a time, sometimes split-face, with notes on what happens.
But that’s an experiment on one face. Mine.
Personal experience can give me a question worth investigating. It doesn’t turn that answer into clinical evidence.
That’s where Ask Rierie lives:
somewhere between “TikTok says this changed my life” and a 14-page paper nobody wants to read over breakfast.
I look at ingredients, formulations, routines and skincare claims and ask:
What do we actually know?
How strong is the evidence?
What are we assuming?
And does any of this matter outside a laboratory?
Sometimes the boring ingredient matters.
Sometimes the famous active really is the problem.
Sometimes the expensive cream is perfectly fine.
And sometimes the most accurate answer is:
we don’t know yet.
I like that answer more than pretending.
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nutrition
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barrier-first
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sleep
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formulations
☆ nutrition ☆ barrier-first ☆ sleep ☆ formulations
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science
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evidence
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holistic wellness
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gut-skin-axis
☆ science ☆ evidence ☆ holistic wellness ☆ gut-skin-axis
What I actually believe
Skincare gets easier when you stop treating every problem like a shopping problem.
Three rules I wish I’d learned before my bathroom became a tiny, badly managed laboratory.
01
Hype is not evidence.
A beautiful bottle, a viral before-and-after and a convincing founder story can make a product interesting.
They can’t make the mechanism true.
I care about what was tested, how it was tested and whether the evidence deserves the confidence of the claim.
02
Soft beats chaotic.
One change at a time.
Not because slow skincare is aesthetically pleasing, but because changing six things at once makes it almost impossible to know what helped — or what made things worse.
Boring methodology. Surprisingly useful skin.
03
Skin doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
Sleep, stress, hormones, environment, medication, habits and health can all interact with skin.
That doesn’t mean every breakout needs a lifestyle overhaul.
It means a serum isn’t the only variable in the room.
Context matters. So I don’t ignore it.
You didn’t find this page because everything was going well.
You’ve probably already tried being patient.
You’ve probably bought the thing everyone recommended, simplified your routine, complicated it again, sworn off actives, gone back to actives — and somehow ended up googling another ingredient at an unreasonable hour.
I know the loop.
I lived in it.
And the thing that finally made skincare less chaotic wasn’t finding the product.
It was learning how to tell a better question from a more expensive guess.
That’s what I want to give you here.
Not a perfect routine.
Not a blacklist of “toxic” ingredients.
Not another person on the internet telling you she has finally cracked skin.
Just the research, the reasoning, the uncertainty where it exists — and a much better way to decide what deserves a place on your face.
You don’t need another skincare rabbit hole.
You need a map.
guides
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journals
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recomendations
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well kept secret
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myth debunking
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guides ☆ journals ☆ pinterest ☆ recomendations ☆ well kept secret ☆ myth debunking ☆
studies
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evidence
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holistic wellness
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nutriton
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red light
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gut-skin-axis
studies ☆ evidence ☆ holistic wellness ☆ nutriton ☆ red light ☆ gut-skin-axis
Dig deeper!
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Start by figuring out what your skin might actually be telling you — then change one thing at a time and watch what happens.
It's less exciting than buying a new serum. It's also how you stop ending up with twelve products and no idea which one is helping.
Start with the question that sounds most like your skin. One of them usually explains more than you'd expect.
Start with whichever post describes your skin. It'll make more sense than it has in years.
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Because “it worked” and “my skin changed” aren't always the same thing.
A routine can make your skin feel calmer, smoother or less irritated pretty quickly — while the thing contributing to the problem may still be there. And sometimes what looks like a product “stopping” has a completely different explanation.
That's why I care less about the first few good days and more about the pattern that shows up over time.
And if your skin keeps reacting despite changing products? That's where things get interesting. ↓
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The ingredient everyone blames isn't automatically the culprit.
When skin reacts, it's tempting to point at the loudest ingredient on the label — retinol, an acid, vitamin C. Sometimes that's right. Sometimes it isn't.
The full formula matters: concentration, vehicle, frequency, combinations, your skin barrier and the kind of reaction you're actually having.
That's why ingredient lists become much more useful once you stop asking “Is this ingredient bad?” and start asking “Does this pattern make sense for my skin?”
That's the rabbit hole I keep going down in the journal.
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I'm not here to give every new launch a personality.
I read the research, look at the mechanism, check what was actually studied — and I'm perfectly happy when the answer is “we don't really know yet.”
I also experiment carefully on my own skin and document what happens. That's personal experience, not clinical evidence — and you'll always know which one you're reading.
No ingredient villains. No miracle bottles. No recommendation just because something is having a moment.
If it's interesting enough to change my mind, it usually ends up in the journal.
That's personal experience, not clinical evidence — and you'll always know which one you're reading.
Start with whatever your skin has been making you Google at 1 a.m.