Let’s start with the irony. Go-To is a brand that puts fragrance in things on purpose, loudly, and with zero remorse. So naturally, its next move is a whole collection with none. Sit down, have some water; it’s fine.
The reason is a good one. Sensitive skin has spent years being shunted to the back of the pharmacy shelf, handed a tub of something that looks like it was designed by a committee of accountants, and told to be grateful it didn’t sting. Gentle, apparently, was meant to be the entire personality.
Go-To, now 13 years in and physically unable to walk past a gap in the market, agrees. Today the brand launches Sensitive by Go-To, a five-piece collection built on one cheeky premise: gentle skincare can still be gorgeous, and it can still work.
The last piece of the puzzle
To understand why this range exists, you have to understand how Go-To feels about fragrance. Go-To formulates with it, on purpose and without apology. Chief Marketing Officer Leonie Faddy is upfront about it: “We formulate proudly with fragrance.”
But the market has moved. “Five or six years ago, fragrance free was an exception,” Faddy explains. “Whereas now it’s expected.” Add the rise of the pharmacy heavyweights and a cohort of customers who simply couldn’t use the core range, and the gap got hard to ignore.
Founder Zoe Foster Blake puts it plainly: “Our core range is dermatologically safe for sensitive skin. But whether it was certain ingredients, formula strengths or fragrances, some people couldn’t-wouldn’t-use it. We get it! And we love a challenge.”
Not just taking things out
The most interesting idea here is how Go-To approached the brief. Faddy is diplomatic about the pharmacy stalwarts, since there’s “definitely a space for them” and they “sell very well”, but she isn’t shy about the tradeoff. “The pharmacy brands are very much focused on taking the ingredients out,” she says. “We wanted to take the approach of, sure, we want to strip out the irritants, but we want to add ingredients that are safe for sensitive skin to use.”
The result is a range that’s fragrance-free, essential oil free and dermatologically tested. The three-step daily routine and the sheet mask are approved by the Eczema Association of Australasia.
Inside the lab (the tidied-up version)
Go-To has an in-house lab, which is rare for an Australian skin care brand. The team walks five minutes to it, and the feedback loop is short enough to be almost comical. Senior Formulations Chemist Ingrid Vogels says: “Sometimes before I even pick up a spatula, I can just sort of bounce some ideas off.”
Every formula answered to what Vogels calls a north star: it “must contain excellent hydrators, it must replenish and reinforce the skin barrier as well as contain ingredients proven to soothe and calm skin.”
The daily three
Mellow Milk is a low-lather cleansing milk with colloidal oatmeal. It does contain proper cleansing agents, which some milk cleansers skip, so it can handle makeup and SPF. Vogels recommends a pump on dry skin, a wipe with a damp cloth, then a second cleanse if you’re wearing heavy or long-wear makeup. The final formula was version six, though Vogels says, “It was my second iteration but Leonie’s first sample. Approved.”
Much Calmer Skin is a lightweight, milky serum aimed at redness, reactivity and discomfort. Vogels has field-tested it personally. While pregnant, she had “some patches that were a little bit itchy”, and “I would put this on and I’m like, oh, phew, it works.”
Supremely Soothing Moisturiser is loaded with ceramides, oat lipids and centella. Vogels describes it as ointment-like, with a balmy first touch that then “glides in, it sinks in but it doesn’t disappear”. It’s “lightweight but you do feel like you have sealed everything in.”
The once-a-weekers
Putting an exfoliator in a sensitive range sounds like a dare. Go-To’s answer is the Gentle Exfoliator, which pairs 5% lactic acid with a slow-releasing PHA and aloe. “As much as they’re acids that dissolve things,” says Vogels, “they’re also very, very good at bringing water into the skin.”
Then there’s Soothe Operator, the calm big sister of Go-To’s cult sheet masks, which Vogels calls “a bit of a rescue mask”. It’s milky rather than gel-like, packed with oat ceramides and bacillus ferment, and it took some work to get a cream-style serum to penetrate the sheet properly. Faddy says the point was to make sure “the sensitive skin customer doesn’t miss out” on a proper ritual.
Dear Sensitive Skin …
… Go-To sees you. You flush at fragrance, sulk at strong acids, and have been fobbed off with skin care that treats “bland” as a selling point. You deserve better. You deserve a moisturiser you actually look forward to.
The new Sensitive by Go-To range delivers, with proof that “you can be functional in your skin care” and still have something beautiful to use,” says Faddy.
Whether it lives up to that is for your own skin to decide. As always, Go-To reminds anyone with serious skin concerns to see a medical practitioner before starting a new routine.
Sensitive by Go-To is available at gotoskincare.com from 22 September and at Mecca from 29 September.
