Setting Powders A Revolution in Particle Geometry
Kim Soo-yeon's lab is in Seongsu-dong, up a narrow staircase behind a coffee roaster. She spent six years at Amorepacific before leaving to work on one thing: particle geometry in setting powders.
The standard formulation hasn't changed much. Talc base, sometimes silica, mica for soft-focus. Rice powder if the brand wants a clean beauty angle. Kim's argument is that the particles themselves are the problem. Under microscopy, conventional powder looks like crushed glass. Jagged. Random sizes. The industry has known this forever but nobody seemed to care enough to fix it.
She borrowed manufacturing tolerances from semiconductor production. Spherical particles. Uniform diameter. Conventional powders have particle sizes ranging from 5 to 50 microns in a single jar. Kim's holds to 2 microns variance. Whether this matters in actual use took a while to figure out.
Baek Ji-young tested an early batch. Editorial makeup, Vogue Korea credits, the usual. Her Instagram story from March 2023: "Tried the new powder from that Seongsu lab everyone's talking about. Applies weird. Doesn't set my usual Armani foundation. Probably overhyped."
She deleted it two weeks later and posted a correction. Her technique was wrong.
The spheres roll instead of gripping. Pressing with a puff—which is how everyone applies setting powder—makes them slip around instead of staying put. Light buffing with a loose brush works. Baek had to unlearn fifteen years of muscle memory.
The technique requires adaptation from traditional methods
Lee Min-ji had different problems. She does broadcast makeup for K-dramas. Twelve-hour shooting days under studio lights. The powder was sweating off actors' faces by hour two.
Kim reformulated the binding system. Took about four months. The fix involved a hydrophobic coating that activates when it contacts sebum. Oily skin makes it grip harder. This was not the intended design—Kim was trying to solve the adhesion issue generally—but the formula ended up working better on oily skin than dry. Makeup artists now put facial oil on dry-skinned clients before applying. Try that with regular setting powder and it breaks down immediately.
The hydrophobic coating technology represents a paradigm shift in how setting powders interact with skin chemistry.
Park Sung-ho has a small supply shop in Apgujeong. He started stocking the powder October 2023.
"First month, twelve units. Artists tested it, didn't come back. Second month the same. Third month the reorders started. The ones who figured out the technique bought three, four at a time. I ran out in November and couldn't get more until January because Kim's production is slow."
The Shade Collection
Global Shade Development
Four shades. Colorless has a white cast on deeper skin, which limits its use. Pale yellow is the main seller. Warm beige was added after requests from artists in Thailand and the Philippines. Deep translucent came in 2024—Black makeup artists in New York gave feedback through someone who knew someone at the lab.
Forty-eight thousand won for 15 grams. Three times the Korean market average. Laura Mercier pricing.
Kim won't do a larger jar. She says the spheres crush under their own weight above 15 grams. Maybe true. Maybe also convenient for her margins.
Western Distribution Challenges
Western distribution hasn't gone well. Soko Glam in LA carried it for a few months, dropped it after complaints. Too many returns from customers who couldn't get it to work. Kim refused to write detailed instructions for the US market.
Written instructions don't transfer the muscle memory. I'd rather sell fewer units to artists who take time to learn.Kim Soo-yeon — K-Beauty Forum, 2024
"Written instructions don't transfer the muscle memory." That's what she said at a K-Beauty Forum thing last year. "I'd rather sell fewer units to artists who take time to learn." Whether this is principle or just rationalization for not wanting to deal with American customer service expectations is hard to say.
A Facebook group for New York makeup artists has a 400-comment thread on technique. Common advice: fluffy brush not dense, thin layers, wait thirty seconds between layers. Someone posted that it took her a full month of daily practice before she could use it reliably on clients.
Two Netflix K-drama productions switched over completely last year. Touch-up frequency went from every 45 minutes to every two hours. The head of one makeup department mentioned this at a Naver interview but didn't go into detail.
Product Timeline
Patents filed in Korea, US, EU. The core technology is probably not protectable though. Amorepacific has a competing application. Shiseido Yokohama has been working on something similar since 2023, according to someone who used to work there.
The Future: Compact Version in Development
Travel size launches next month. 7 grams, 28,000 won. The pressed compact version keeps getting delayed. Kim mentioned at some event that she's skeptical spherical particles can survive compression. The R&D continues.
