Alix Earle’s skincare brand, Reale Actives, has added a fifth product: Go Calm, a serum built on azelaic acid and niacinamide. It is the brand’s first new product since it launched in late March, and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit’s launch coverage quotes Earle promising skin that looks “calmer, clearer and more confidently unbothered.”

The ingredient is the story. Reale Actives opened in March with four products, including a mandelic acid serum, and mandelic acid is what the line’s critics argued about. Go Calm moves to azelaic acid, an ingredient that exists in FDA-approved prescription form. That does not make the bottle a drug. It does change what the brand can defend.

What Go Calm is, and what it is not

According to SI Swimsuit, Go Calm went on sale at 9 a.m. PT on September 22 and is described as a “10% Azelaic Acid Anti-Redness Calming Serum.” The formula adds niacinamide, betaine and a proprietary “Calm Signal Complex.” Earle said she always felt her skin had a “pinky tone” and wanted a product for it, and that the team tested several formulations before settling on this one. E! Online, covering the launch, says azelaic acid is “known for calming the appearance of redness” and can help fade dark spots.

Notice the verbs. The copy talks about how skin looks, not what it treats. That fits the regulatory line. The prescription versions of azelaic acid are Finacea, a 15% gel and foam approved for rosacea, and Azelex, a 20% cream approved for mild to moderate acne, according to GoodRx and Medical News Today. Over-the-counter azelaic acid, typically around 10%, sits at a lower concentration and is not approved to treat rosacea. A 10% serum can be a perfectly good skincare product. It cannot claim to be a rosacea treatment, and Reale Actives does not claim it is.

The one independent verdict published so far is positive. Bustle’s Emma Stout gave Go Calm 4.7 out of 5 and wrote that it “did the job without irritating my finicky skin.” She reported smoother texture around the chin and nose within a week and calmer forehead redness after six weeks. She also flagged a catch: the serum needs about five minutes to absorb, and moisturizer applied too soon leaves “a slightly sticky white cast.” That is one reviewer with one skin type, not a trial, and Bustle itself frames Earle as “the GRWM queen” whose brand “has been all over my TikTok.”

The credibility problem Go Calm inherits

The first Reale Actives line launched into an argument about Earle’s own skin. On March 26, ahead of the launch, she answered critics on TikTok who pointed to her earlier use of Accutane and spironolactone. “I can’t be launching a skincare company because I’ve done Accutane three times, so I’m just a big fat liar,” she said, as quoted by AOL, adding: “If you believe me, you believe me. If you don’t, whatever.” She said her four-step routine, developed with dermatologist Dr. Kiran Mian in April 2025, is what finally stabilized her skin.

The next day, Yahoo published objections from celebrity aesthetician Renee Rouleau, who sells her own acne products. Rouleau questioned the “built for acne, made for everyone” positioning (“Your grandmother is not going to use this skincare line, and she is part of everyone”) and the hero ingredient: “If mandelic was so good for acne, surely it would be on the monograph and FDA approved.” She noted that salicylic acid is the only oil-soluble acid with that approval, and added: “I can assure you this line certainly wasn’t the cure-all for her breakouts, especially her cystic breakouts.”

Refinery29’s Karina Hoshikawa, reviewing the line on April 16, was more measured. She found the brand “not overpromising anything” and the cleanser “a standout,” but nothing “groundbreaking,” and called the pitch of making acne “fun, sexy” something that “feels disconnected from reality at best, tone deaf at worst.” Cosmetic chemist Ramón Pagán told her the moisturizer contained ingredients he “wouldn’t consider necessary.”

None of it slowed sales. TIME, in its July 14 TIME100 Creators profile of Earle by Eliana Dockterman, reports that Reale Actives took $1 million in its first five minutes and sold out on launch day. TIME lists CEO Andrea Blieden and venture backer Imaginary Ventures behind the brand, and puts Earle’s TikTok following at 8.5 million. The brand also survived a joke at its own expense: Ashley Dupré, Earle’s stepmother, posted a satirical “Un-Get Ready with Me” video calling the cleansing balm “horrible” because it “takes my makeup off way too quick,” and Earle commented “Hahhaahahha” and appeared laughing in the background, per AOL.

Why the swap to azelaic acid matters

Read against that record, Go Calm is a quieter product. It is aimed at redness, a visible, cosmetic concern Earle describes in personal terms, not at cystic acne, the claim Rouleau said the first line could not carry. Its hero ingredient has decades of prescription-grade use behind it, so a skeptic has less to argue with. That is our reading, not the brand’s stated strategy, and the launch coverage does not say the choice was a response to the critics.

It also means the product will be judged on smaller things: whether 10% is enough for a visible difference, whether the texture holds up under makeup, whether it stings. Azelaic acid is known for mild, temporary irritation in the prescription studies, and anyone with rosacea or persistent redness is better served asking a dermatologist about the 15% prescription gel than expecting a $39 serum to stand in for it.

The magazine that covers the serum also put her on its cover

One detail sits in the sourcing. The launch story for Go Calm ran on SI Swimsuit’s own site, and earlier Reale Actives sellout and restock stories ran in Sports Illustrated’s lifestyle section. SI Swimsuit made Earle its first digital cover star in June 2024, shot her in Jamaica in 2025 with photographer Yu Tsai, and named her one of four 2026 cover stars, alongside Hilary Duff, Tiffany Haddish and Nicole Williams English. Her 2026 cover was photographed by Ruven Afanador in Botswana and announced on TODAY on May 11. On September 24, two days after the serum launched, SI Swimsuit ran a throwback gallery of the Jamaica shoot, quoting Earle on crying in the changing tent: “What, like, is my life?”

Nothing in the coverage suggests a paid arrangement, and we are not claiming one. The point is narrower. When the outlet describing a product has a continuing relationship with the person selling it, the outlet’s description is a starting point, not a verdict. Bustle’s review is the more useful check because the reviewer has no such tie in the sources we found, and even that is a single test.

The brand’s reach is not confined to beauty shelves either. Earle’s Netflix reality series, Earle Meets World, arrived on Netflix on September 4, about two and a half weeks before Go Calm, and TIME described her as a creator whose recommendations move products, the “Alix Earle effect.” A serum launched into that attention needs less proof to sell than it needs to keep customers.

What is verified, and what is still open

Verified: Go Calm costs $39, went on sale September 22, and contains 10% azelaic acid and niacinamide. Prescription azelaic acid exists at 15% (rosacea) and 20% (acne). TIME reports $1 million in first-five-minute sales and a launch-day sellout for the brand. Earle has described her own history with Accutane and spironolactone in her own words.
Disputed: whether the first Reale Actives line did much for acne. Earle and her dermatologist say the routine is what worked. Rouleau says it cannot have been the cure for cystic breakouts. Refinery29 found it solid but not groundbreaking.
Not yet shown: that Go Calm delivers a measurable change in redness. The coverage we found cites one reviewer’s six weeks, not a controlled test of the formula.
Our interpretation: the move to azelaic acid and a cosmetic redness claim gives Reale Actives a more defensible product than its first launch did.

For a shopper, the practical test is modest. Patch-test it, give it the five minutes it needs to absorb, and judge it at six weeks, not six days. For Reale Actives, the test is larger: whether an audience that bought out four products in a day will buy a fifth on the strength of an ingredient instead of a story.

Tags: Alix Earle, Azelaic acid, Go Calm, Reale Actives, Skincare, Sports Illustrated Swimsuit