If you watch enough 15-second Instagram video of beauty vloggers doing their thing, whether for over-the-top Halloween makeup #inspo or as a type of social experiment, you’ll soon discover that the question of how the products truly function is secondary to how they seem on camera. That’s simple for shimmery shadows and brilliant highlighters, which are always aesthetically pleasant, but it’s far more difficult to find skin care with the same level of visual appeal.
Enter Farsali’s cult-favorite Unicorn Essence, or “that hot oil thing,” as one Reddit user put it.

This serum was nearly born to be an immediate smash on the unicorn-obsessed internet when it arrived late last year, from the name to the shimmering, rose-tinted fluid itself. (At some point, the under-the-radar brand dropped the initial reference to unicorn tears – after all, who wants to see a unicorn cry?) The Unicorn Essence with its stylish glass vial dropper can be seen in innumerable videos from the top beauty vloggers on the internet, where it’s most typically used as a cosmetics primer or as the second-to-last step in a skin-care routine before moisturizer. Many times, it’s dripped straight into the face rather than brushed on with the hands, which makes for a fantastic screenshot but is definitely not suggested in real life.

But, if you get beneath the surface, what exactly is the Unicorn Essence? A water-based solution including superfruit extracts (acai, blueberry, goji berry, elderberry) and essential oils (bergamot, grapefruit), which make it smell and look nice. It’s great for Instagram, but if you’re a true skin-care aficionado who’d rather buy in something that works independent of how it looks in a Boomerang, it might not be worth $55. For all the dewiness plus major hydrating benefits, keep mixing your favorite oil or serum with a little bit of a pinky liquid highlighter (the Cover FX Custom Enhancer Drops in Blossom are perfect for this) — it won’t make you feel like a unicorn or give you a million followers overnight, but it will make you glow more than the average human.