Mamonde Pore Control Peony Liquid Mask

What is this product?

A quantified sebum formula for oily skin that does not mind fragrance. Niacinamide is printed second at 100,000 ppm and zinc PCA eighth at 5,000 ppm, which is 10 percent and 0.5 percent, and those two numbers sum to the 10.5 percent the brand trademarks as ZINC-NIACIN. That level of disclosure is rare in this category. The peony the product is named for is printed at 9.8 ppm and 0.2 ppm, so the flower is the story rather than the active. Two reasons to skip it: 향료 and 페퍼민트오일 are declared fifteenth and sixteenth, and a 10 percent niacinamide leave-on is a high dose for reactive skin. The brand reports 31.3 percent less in-pore sebum at four weeks on a 32-subject panel with no institution named, and its own footnote calls the pore effect temporary and visual. Sold as a toner in this catalogue, but the brand's own page and the Olive Young record file it as a mask.

What makes it different?

Two things separate it. Actual ppm figures are printed for four of the nineteen ingredients, which lets a reader compute the trademark's 10.5 percent instead of taking it, and the same disclosure exposes the gap between the flower in the name (10 ppm of peony in total) and the active doing the work (100,000 ppm of niacinamide). Second, the brand's own footnote limits its pore claim to visible and temporary, which is the correct limit for a list with no structural pore ingredient on it.

What is in it?

The full ingredient list as the brand publishes it, in the printed order. Each name links to what we know about that ingredient.

This brand publishes its ingredient list in Korean only. Names below are the matching INCI names from the Korean Cosmetic Association ingredient dictionary.

Worth a closer look

• Water
• Niacinamide
• Propylene Glycol
• Butylene Glycol
• Tripropylene Glycol
• 1,2-Hexanediol
• Inositol
• Zinc PCA
• Propanediol
• PPG-13-Decyltetradeceth-24
• Ethylhexylglycerin
• Gluconolactone
• Sphingomonas Ferment Extract
• Tromethamine
• Fragrance
• Mentha Piperita (Peppermint) Oil
• Paeonia Lactiflora Root Extract
• Tocopherol
• Paeonia Albiflora Flower Extract

Ingredients with no mark are ones we found nothing notable about, and when marks overlap on one ingredient we show the caution first.

We could not place these in the list above: 페퍼민트오일, 토코페롤

Did the ad claims hold up?

We checked 11 lines this product advertises against the ingredient list and public documents. One of them holds up. The rest are only partly right or have nothing behind them.

Claims translated from Korean, originals preserved.

Each line is quoted as the brand published it, and each one was read on its own against the ingredient list and the documents the brand publishes.

How we read these lines

What else is worth seeing?

Products we read alongside this one.

• Mamonde Flora Glow Rose Liquid MaskThe gentler one of the two