Beat #winterface with Weleda Smoothing Eye Cream & La Roche-Posay Cicaplast Spray

Maybe it’s because of the viciously dry air, or my skin getting thinner by the minute, but I’ve taken to applying lightweight eye cream in the middle of the day with the same fervour that I swipe on lip balm.

Eye cream is such Goldilocks skincare. Many are so rich you look freshly buttered and constant reapplication can leave you with under-eye bumps (milia) that need to be lanced by a dermatologist with a very sharp blade. Or they’re so lightweight they feel great but don’t do anything. Weleda’s new Smoothing Eye Cream, $45, well.ca) has caffeine to depuff and rosa moschata oil (rosehip) which is loaded with fatty acids and vitamins, to calm redness and strengthen the skin barrier. It’s perfect when you need to fight the ridiculous seasonal chill and low ambient moisture air. Damn you, winterface! (Shakes fist at sky.)

My latest ‘get home after being frozen solid outdoors’ routine is to plug in the kettle (obviously, that’s before anything) and then spray my face with La Roche-Posay Cicaplast B5 spray for a dose of soothing and skin barrier protecting madecassoside and panthenol. (Full disclosure: the spray is available in Europe and the US. Not Canada. In the meantime, just slather on Cicaplast B5 Soothing Relieving Balm.)

Then I dab dab dab a few drops of the Weleda Smoothing Eye Cream on my upper cheekbones and the outer corners of my eyes. I’m not in an office with other people, so I could conceivably spend my days unmoisturized and wizened, but why would I do that? This combo gives me a midday lift and makes me feel less desiccated which is my favourite word and so apt this time of year.

Weleda Skin Food Face Conquers #winterface

The air is so dry right now that my skin feels like I’ve been tumbling for days in a dryer set on high.

Into the teeth of this low-ambient-moisture, gloomy time of year, Weleda has mercifully launched a trio of new Skin Food face products that are both lanolin-free (ergo, vegan) and lighter-weight than the original Skin Food Ultra Rich Cream. Loaded with soothing ingredients like plant-based squalane, skin-calming tiger grass and fatty-acid rich sacha inch oil, they will help your poor, weather-beaten skin recover from seasonal moisture suck. Angry and red or ashy and drawn, #winterface is real.

There’s also a new cleanser that drew raves at the launch event: a Neosporin thick, oil-to-milk cleanser that transforms into a light milk when you add water. With sunflower seed oil that is high in unsaturated fatty acids, it leaves skin clean and hydrated, not taut and drawn. The face you see in the mirror will be your old, non-wintery face: a happy augury of spring.

Skin Food, which launched 97 years ago and now sells one tube every 11 seconds, inspires crazy devotion. I have sung its praises here. Celebrity makeup artist Pati Dubroff, who has kept a tube in her kit for 30 years, uses it on her makeup clients as pre-makeup skincare and ad hoc highlighter. She also applies it liberally on her own face when she flies. “For some it may be too heavy,” she says, laughing, “but for me, no way.” If you do fall into that other camp, the day cream is just what you’ll want to protect your skin on flights.

And I have a message for Weleda HQ: a dear friend fervently wishes that Skin Food lotion was available in a giant pump bottle for both maximum ease and the comfort of having an extravagant amount of Skin Food at one’s disposal. For real fans, a solitary tube or jar is never enough.