I Put Clinique’s New Line for “Very Sensitive” Skin to the Test

Reported by Harper's Bazaar.

Sensitive skin is no longer a niche concern — it's a near-universal one. An estimated 70 percent of people now believe their skin is sensitive, and dermatologists at the Mount Sinai-Clinique Healthy Skin Dermatology Center can't pin it on a single culprit. Their working theories range from product overload and reactive actives to textile dyes, laundry detergents, and environmental exposures previous generations simply never encountered. The collective takeaway: our skin barriers are compromised, increasingly, and chronically.

Against that backdrop, Clinique's new Daily Calm collection lands at exactly the right moment. According to Harper's Bazaar, the four-piece line — the brand's first to bridge skincare and makeup through the specific lens of sensitivity — was clinically tested on participants who met the "very sensitive" threshold on the Burden of Sensitive Skin (BoSS) scale, a diagnostic tool used by dermatologists. Every product is fragrance-free and built around Uniflavon, a flavonoid that interrupts the skin's irritation cascade for both immediate and long-term soothing. Clinique has always skewed allergy-tested and clean, but Daily Calm takes that commitment further than before.

What's Actually in the Lineup

The Gentle Cream Cleanser functions almost like a cold cream — plush, hydrating, and effective enough to tissue off without rinsing. It pairs Uniflavon and magnolia extract with glycerin and hyaluronic acid, though it won't cut through heavy makeup on its own. The Soothing Repair Cream pulls double duty as both a face and eye moisturizer — ceramides, lipids, and Uniflavon deliver the kind of instant relief that's hard to fake. The clinical data backs it: 97 percent of test panelists reported soothed skin after a single use, and 93 percent felt less sensitive overall at the two-week mark.

On the makeup side, the Makeup Balm — a tinted, skin-forward formula available in eight shades — offers sheer, hydrating coverage that won't exacerbate irritation the way heavier foundations can. (Mineral SPF underneath is non-negotiable.) The Lip + Cheek Color, a sheer tinted balm in six shades, is the kind of low-stakes, high-reward product your worst skin days actually deserve — a swipe of color that reads as effortless rather than effortful, with a glow-from-within finish that doesn't ask your skin to work harder.

If your skin has been staging a full-scale rebellion — or even just quietly struggling — this is the routine worth building around.

Read the original at Harper's Bazaar.