If we’re talking facial skincare, I guess I’m something of a vampire: I don’t like to look at it in the mirror, and I won’t cross your threshold unless asked. How else to explain the fact that Kiehl’s opened their largest European store in the old Lush building on Buchanan Street just over a year ago – a building that I was not exactly a stranger to – but it took a personal invite to get me inside?

And that’s despite the fact that the place looks like an Instagrammers’ dream.

If you read a lot of Glasgow-based lifestyle blogs you’re probably sick to death of Kiehl’s: the company put on a pretty amazing blogger event at the start of the Merchant City Festival, and unsurprisingly a lot of people were talking about it. Since it was on my 5th wedding anniversary, I would have felt a bit shitty if I had gone – so when lovely Fay, the assistant store manager, invited me down to their festival pop-up in a camper van on Candleriggs I jumped at the chance. Pinterest worthy, right? Unfortunately when the appointed day dawned, they’d been rained out of town and we had to reschedule an in-store visit for the following week.

If it was looking as though Kiehl’s and I were just not meant to be, the fact that when I arrived at their Buchanan Street store poor Fay was run off her feet dealing with a flooding ceiling should have hammered the point home – but I was handed over to Margaret, one of the in-store consultants, and we improvised downstairs rather than upstairs where they have proper salon-style chairs for facial consultations. Margaret explained a little about the history of the brand to me: Kiehl’s was founded as an old-world apothecary in the East Village, New York in 1851 and although the brand was purchased by L’Oreal in 2000, has tried to stay true to its roots as a family business. That’s why you’ll find certain elements in every store: vintage motorcycles, models of WW2 fighter planes and the company’s skeletal mascot, Mr Bones.

Margaret began by asking me some questions about my skin: what I currently use, what concerns I had, what I was looking for in a skincare routine. She then gently cleansed what little makeup I was wearing that day away with my choice of cleanser: I went for the Calendula Deep Foaming Facewash. Instantly making her way into my heart, Margaret told me that my skin was “like porcelain” – not bad for a 33-year-old who at least takes her makeup off with a cleansing wipe every night and slaps on a little moisturiser, but that’s about it. I told her she should meet my mother.

Kiehl’s consultants wear white lab coats in another nod to the company’s roots as an apothecary, and Margaret told me – as somebody who had worked for other brands before – that the training was particularly intensive. It meant that she was able to explain the purpose of each of the multitude of lotions, serums and creams she tried on me was in a way that even somebody as naturally cynical of a beauty industry that encourages women to spend hundreds of pounds on such products regularly as myself could understand – even to the point of explaining the purpose of the “tone” step in the traditional “cleanse-tone-moisturise” routine. It opens and then closes the pores, apparently. I still can’t see myself spending money on it, but at least I’ll now be doing so from an informed position.

Of all the products I tried, the creamy eye treatment was my favourite: I spend such a huge proportion of my day staring at screens that I’m really interested in products that refresh and moisturise that bit of my face in particular. I also love the sound of the company’s #1 selling product in Scotland, the Midnight Recovery Concentrate, and I very gratefully received a bottle of it away with me to try. That porcelain skin o’mine has been suffering from a bit of redness this summer, so the more intensive the moisturiser the better. Margaret tried a little of the company’s daytime equivalent, what she called the “Powerful Strength“, on me as part of my facial – and I could not get over how healthy my skin looked afterwards, with the redness all-but vanished.

I was incredibly impressed by my Kiehl’s consultation: it provided me with a great all-round introduction to a brand that really seems to care about its customers, and I left with armfuls of samples of everything I had tried and an open invitation to come back any time rather than a “hard-sell”. Would I shop the brand? Well, right now I’m almost exclusively a Lush girl when it comes to skincare because I trust that the products are 100% natural and not tested on animals – being owned by L’Oreal means that Kiehl’s can make no such claim. But if anybody’s going to manage to talk me into spending £36 on a single product, it would be somebody as patient and as knowledgeable as Margaret.

Have you tried any Kiehl’s skincare products? Do you have any favourites?

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