The influencer who can make or break your skin care brand
St. Ives was all the rage when Letizia Timoni was in middle school. Letizia, now 16, and most of her friends used its exfoliating face scrub that smells like apricots and sloughs off the topmost layers of skin with ground walnut shells. As recently as February, St. Ives face masks and face washes were a part of her skin care regimen.
A month later she found Hyram Yarbro and threw it all out.
Yarbro, the purplehaired creator of Skincare by Hyram, a YouTube channel turned TikTok account, has captivated teenagers like Letizia during the pandemic with pointed product reviews, ingredient tutorials and quippy videos reacting to skin care routines of celebrities and influencers like Bella Thorne, Skai Jackson and Madison Beer. For the record, Yarbro, 24, does not approve of any of their skin care routines.
His mantra is “ingredients don’t lie,” no matter the size or popularity of a brand or how famous the founder. He takes price into consideration and is uncompromising in his views on fragrance in skin care products, chemical sunscreens and face scrubs — especially St. Ives ones.
“The moment Hyram came out and was so adamant about how terrible they are — he just annihilated this brand,” said Letizia.
Yarbro believes that the St. Ives scrubs are harsh on skin. They give instant gratification, leaving skin feeling smooth, he said, but ultimately cause inflammation, redness and sensitivity. (“Face scrubs in general are just trash,” he said in a May TikTok video.)
In an email statement, St. Ives said: “Our St. Ives scrubs are beloved by millions.
“While we appreciate Hyram’s opinion,” the statement added, “we respectfully disagree.”
Ava Michael, 13, said she stopped using scrubs because of Yarbro. So has Chloe Ramsey, 14, and her friend Devon Blum, 12.
None of them had heard of Skincare by Hyram until March. Now they’re all fans of serums and peels by the Ordinary, which cost about $7, and CeraVe, a drugstore brand — two of the influencer’s go-tos. Yarbro has a business relationship with CeraVe but not with the Ordinary.
“I saw companies profiting off customers’ ignorance,” Yarbro said. “At the very minimum, I started telling people that you didn’t have to pay that much money for good skin care.”
Yarbro’s ascent to skinfluencer fame began right when people started to quarantine. In early
March, Skincare by Hyram had just 100,000 TikTok followers. Today he has more than 6 million.
He is the authority in teenage skin care (ask anyone under 24), yet he’s not a dermatologist, chemist or aesthetician. He’s a former Saks Fifth Avenue makeup artist turned skin care fanatic who spent the last four years studying what, according to him, has amounted to thousands of ingredients. He followed dermatologists, aestheticians and chemists on social media, rabidly consuming their content and reaching out with questions.
It turns out that Gen Z is sick of traditional, PRfriendly beauty sponcon, easily identifiable by magic-hour light, expensive hair and flawless makeup.
It may have worked on millennials, but Skincare by Hyram fans are not interested in learning how to contour or buying whatever new palette an influencer is selling. They want Yarbro’s opinion.
But most important, he’s not beholden to brands, especially the very ones paying him for publicity. Labels like CeraVe, Kosas, Purito, Foreo and Curology have all worked with Yarbro, knowing there was a chance he would talk negatively about their products. Once, he made a sponsored Dermalogica video, “bashing them pretty hard,” he said, but “they weren’t salty about it.”
“I’m surprised no big brand has come after him or a celebrity,” Timoni said. “He says it in a very lighthearted way, but he is also putting down a product. Yet somehow people still love him.”