The Bay Area: Korean Fashion & Beauty Stores

I spent a weekend in the Bay Area, mostly to shop and fangirl. There were three shops that I was dying to visit: YesStyle, SkinFood (both in Stonestown Mall, SF) and The Face Shop (one in Milpitas, San Jose and Santa Clara).

Stonestown Galleria Center
595 Buckingham Way, San Francisco, CA 94132, USA

YesStyle
[UPDATE: Both YesStyle locations (San Francisco and San Jose) have closed down, but the online store still exists.]
YesStyle is an online Asian store that sells clothing, accessory, shoe and beauty brands from mainly Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China and Japan. Their only store, located in Stonestown Mall in San Francisco, offers a small selection of clothing, accessories and shoes, as well as Kpop posters of Big Bang, CNBlue, SHINee, Girls' Generation, Sistar, IU, etc. (from their partner site, YesAsia). Though this store is quite small, their selection of clothing is packed with a selection of Asia's latest fashion trends. They also have great clearance deals (50%), as well as the latest Kpop playing in the background (including recent hits "Classic" and "Loving U"). Check it out!

SkinFood
In the same mall is one of Korea's popular beauty stores, SkinFood. This is one of the six stores in the US, with all of their six stores in California.

SkinFood's products and design are all simplistically, yet elegantly packaged. Though they are a bit pricy (my first trip to this store, I easily spent $50), the quality is definitely well worth the price. They focus on natural ingredients that make their products almost seem edible...truly food for the skin.

Not all of the products on SkinFood's website is in their stores, however. The only BB cream currently in the US stores is the Peach Sake BB Cream because the others have yet to be approved for sale.

This store offers testers for all of their products, including nail polish and nail polish remover (with cotton pads). This was definitely handy because their items are pricy and I want to be 100% positive I love the product before I invest so much,

If the cashier doesn't mention it, don't forget to ask for a stamp card! With each purchase of at least $10, you get one stamp (the stamp is their Cupid logo-so cute!) and with ten stamps you can redeem your card for a free nail polish (worth $3)! With each purchase also comes numerous samples of face masks, also in cute packaging. I'll have a more detailed post about this brand and the products I bought from them here!

Grand Century Mall
1111 Story Road, San Jose, CA 95122

The Face Shop
The Face Shop has used Kim Hyun Joong as their endorser for a couple of years now. Just this fact urged me to drive an hour away from San Francisco, to San Jose, to visit this store in the Vietnamese mall, Grand Century Mall.

This store isn't very glamorous compared to other Face Shops I've seen online, but it's decked out with KHJ,which is perfect compensation. I am not a big fan of this beauty brand, but this store sells some exclusive The Face Shop KHJ endorsement merchandise, like his poster, journal and postcards.

I had my moment of fangirling-the closest I will ever get to KHJ <3 I purposely came to this store just to get a close up with his cardboard cutout! Here is a review of the goodies I bought at The Face Shop.

Hope this brief list of stores helps any fangirl heading to the Bay Area :)