Contrary to what my skincare shelf may suggest, my skin prefers minimalism. Combination skin means I’m constantly negotiating between dry patches that drink up moisturiser and a T-zone that can make an otherwise tasteful glow look slightly too enthusiastic. I also like my makeup with some slip and a healthy amount of glow (a woman of contradictions, clearly). So when Kay Beauty launched its first skincare products, the Hydra Glaze Essence and Hydra Base Water Crème, I was interested in one promise more than the headline hydration claims: both had been developed to create a smooth, makeup-ready base. Could I skip my usual dewy primer altogether?
For actor Katrina Kaif, who co-founded Kay Beauty with Nykaa, that crossover comes from years of wearing makeup through long shoots, travel, harsh lighting and changing climates. “Skincare and makeup have always worked hand in hand,” she tells me. “When your skin is feeling calm, hydrated, balanced and well cared for, that creates the perfect environment for makeup to sit smoothly, last longer and feel comfortable throughout the day.”
I’m a committed skincare user, but my routine is fairly basic: give me a few soothing products over a complicated rotation of actives any day. I started with the Hydra Glaze Essence, a lightweight milky formula containing lactic acid, amino acids and a prebiotic saccharide. Over that came the Hydra Base Water Crème, a lightweight gel moisturiser containing Centella asiatica, ceramides and skin-mimetic lipids. Together, they sat squarely within my skincare comfort zone: lightweight, hydrating and decidedly unaggressive. Kaif understands the impulse. “Having sensitive skin has definitely made me appreciate the value of a more simplistic routine,” she says. “Sometimes adding more products isn’t always the answer.”
Then came the real test: makeup. I gave the skincare a few minutes to settle and deliberately left my dewy primer in the drawer. Over it, I applied the sort of base I normally wear: sheer liquid foundation, concealer where needed and cream blush, followed by a small amount of powder around my nose and under my eyes rather than across my entire face.
The combination gave me what I normally use primer to achieve: enough slip for foundation to glide over my drier patches without tipping the rest of my face into excessive shine. More importantly, my base still looked like skin. This wasn’t incidental, Kaif tells me. “I would always be personally testing all the different iterations of our formulas—on their own and how they performed under makeup. I wear makeup for long hours and wanted to understand how they performed in a very real and everyday way.” She specifically wanted the Kay Beauty skincare products to feel “lightweight, hydrating, calming but never heavy”, adding that the two formulas were created to help makeup “sit more smoothly and glide onto the skin”.