The Skin-Care Ingredient Kaia Gerber Is Really Into These Days

At 17 years old, our most memorable beauty moments included over-tweezing our eyebrows before senior prom and blowing our allowance on kohl eyeliner from the drugstore. But Kaia Gerber isn't your average teenager. The model has walked miles on the world's biggest runways and was recently named a makeup ambassador for YSL Beauty. So when it comes to all things beauty, she's experienced far beyond her years.

Refinery29 caught up with the model at the Coachella Music Festival, where Gerber was visiting the YSL Beauty Station. There, she explained her "less is more" approach to beauty relies on a few essentials. The iconic Touche Éclat brightening pen is to thank for her ever-present glow. "I carry it with me all of the time because it fits right in my bag," she says. And in her bag you'll also find the YSL Rouge Volupté Shine lipstick, which gives your lips a sheer coat of colour and lots of hydration (which is necessary in the desert heat).

But her beauty trademark is one she inherited from her supermodel mom, Cindy Crawford: her eyebrows. "My eyebrows and I have been through a lot this past year," she says. "They've been bleached about seven times now, but I've learned to not touch them when I don't have to." So, when she's not backstage at Alexander Wang getting her arches painted blonde, Gerber avoids tweezing and waxing altogether.

The model also strips her hair, body, and skin-care routine down to the basics when she's not working. "When I'm off duty, I try to limit using heat on my hair," she shares. "My skin-care routine is also fairly simple. I always wash my face, use moisturizer or a retinol," she says. "I also just started using niacinamide, and my mom always stresses the importance of sunscreen."

While her beauty routine is fairly simple, Gerber is more spirited when it comes to her tattoos. So far, the model has four pieces of ink (that we know of), and each one has special meaning. Recently, she got an angel inked on her ribcage by celebrity-favourite Jon Boy. She also has her middle name, Jordan, painted on her inner arm, and there's a teeny spaceship on her thigh. "Each one is a memory and means something important to me," she says. "I try not to take them too seriously because each one represents a time in my life that I can look back on and remember." Only Gerber knows what the future holds in terms of more ink, but with an exciting career ahead of her, we bet there are more cool pieces on the horizon.