REN Plumping Essence: Your Skin Barrier’s New Best Friend

Every Laura Ingalls Wilder fan knows that Farmer Boy is the superior book in every way (The ice cream scene! The endless pies!) but The Long Winter is more appropriate right now. We made it through February, yet here we have March to contend with.

Winter storms are back, and as much as I want to bury myself in books and tea (what a friend calls ‘the Jane Austen cure’) we all have to leave the house eventually. So before heading out, it is prudent (such a good Jane Austen word) to use a an essence to protect your skin from the wind and ice demons lurking just outside your door.

Essence can seem like a superfluous skincare step until you try it. A super hydrator with a ‘water, but thicker’ texture, REN Smooth, Prep & Plump Essence, ($70, Sephora) applied right after you wash your face, gives your skin much-needed moisture while cannily sneaking in skin barrier-protecting ingredients like hyaluronic acid and polyglutamic acid that will help your skin’s top layers retain moisture. It also helps your skin better absorb the active ingredients in serums you use afterwards.

And it makes your skin feel like actual skin, not crêpe paper. That alone should be all the motivation you need to try it.

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And how old is my copy of The Long Winter? Not only did it cost a mere $2.10, but WH Smith hasn’t existed in Canada since 1989.

Worth It: Biologique Recherche Masque Vernix

When it’s minus 10 degrees outside and the air inside is as dry as a space station airlock you have to bring out the big skincare guns. I wouldn’t waste an expensive gem like Biologique Recherche Creme Masque Vernix, $210, (biologique-recherche.com for stockists) on my face when it’s warm out, but come endless January, you do what you gotta do.

The name is something of a metaphor. Masque Vernix is meant to mimic the vernix caseosa, the waxy protective layer coating the skin of newborns. This mask takes your winter-beaten, sad, ashy face and replaces it with the glowy untroubled visage of someone who just returned from a month at a beach shack in Trancoso.

The ingredients are a greatest hits package of nurturing elements like ceramides (the fatty ‘grout’ between the tiles that are your skin cells) cholesterol (bad for the blood vessels, excellent for your skin) and ‘amniotic fluid’, an extract that replicates the protein and lipid-rich amniotic fluid bathing fetuses in the womb, because they need cosseting and protecting and so do we.

Skip this if you are squeamish: A colleague once whispered to me that her former surgical nurse-slash-crazy aunt, now in her 80s, claimed that back in the day she and her fellow nurses would save the vernix from c-section newborns to use as skin cream. I am pretty certain this is wildly unethical and breaks any number of rules and probably not even true, so you did’t it from me.

Heavenly-Smelling Weleda Sheer Hydration Moisture Mist Fights Inescapable January

I love Tiktoks of men showing off the beer fridges built into the sides of their man-cave couches. I want tricked-out seating too, but I’d prefer a Montauk 'Scarlett' armchair, with a hidden fridge stash of Weleda Sheer Hydration Moisture Mist, bottled water and some cubed watermelon.

New from Weleda (and perfect timed to counteract January’s moisture-free air and general awfulness) Sheer Hydration Moisture Mist, $19.99, contains prickly pear cactus extract which helps winter-ravaged skin retain water. Prickly pear cactus leaves are full of mucilage, (the same ingredient in kindergarten glue), which is loaded with water-bonding polysaccharides. Add aloe vera juice, skin-plumping betaine and water-attracting glycerine and you have a near-perfect moisture delivery system.

It smells wonderful, its green mandarin and palmarosa scent providing an olfactory jolt of happy along with the moisture surge. Palmarosa smells like a field of roses took a beach vacation: lightly rosy, sunny and energizing.

The range also includes moisturizing lotion, cream and unscented eye gel that could live in your couchfridge™ to soothe Zoom-weary eyes. But for instant gratification, the hydrating mist is it. When you are too lethargic to open tubes and moisturize, you can always manage to lift an arm and spritz.

Your New Ritual: The Morning Mask

I once read that Martha Stewart does a hydrating mask every single morning, but I filed that knowledge under ‘excessive celebrity beauty rituals designed to appease magazine advertisers and sell product.’ Then I got older and watched helplessly as Mother Nature vacuumed every last trace of collagen and moisture from my face. Winter only exacerbates this devastation, so a daily mask is actually a painless way to combat dry air and prevent my face from looking like a crumpled ball of parchment paper.

I don’t much care for sleep masks because I prefer to go in hard with “serious” ingredients at night. Why waste those valuable skin-regenerating hours just moisturizing? But come morning, after I stare grimly into the bathroom mirror assessing the damage wrought overnight, I splash on some water and then apply a mask. After coffee and some random puttering, I rinse the residue off in the shower. It’s easy enough to do and the results are gratifyingly instant.

Currently in rotation: the Embryolisse Masque Hydratant ($32, Shoppers Dug Mart) is a French pharmacy miracle loaded with plant oils, vitamins and moisture-bestowing hyaluronic acid while Nudestix’ Nudeskin Citrus-C mask ($48, Sephora) from their new and surprisingly excellent skincare line, contains antioxidant-rich yuzu, soothing turmeric and has a faintly Creamsicle-ish, mood altering scent. And sure, Sisley’s Velvet Sleeping Mask ($175, Holt Renfrew) is intended for overnight wear, but 30 minutes in the morning is enough for its saffron flower and kokum butter formula to do its thing, while the very French orange blossom scent will make you feel suitably fancy as you sip the first of many dehydrating coffees that day.

Aveeno Restorative Skin Therapy Soothes Itchy “Dragon Shins”

Aveeno Restorative Skin Therapy Itch Relief Balm is a descriptive, but not terribly fun, name.

In Through the Looking Glass, the Red Queen famously tells Alice “it takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place.” Which, in menopause terms, means that after 50 you spend a lot more time moisturizing skin that now feels like it shrunk in the wash. Estrogen loss thins the skin at the same time as you’re losing collagen, losing moisture (thank you, slowed down lipid production) and losing all that juicy, subcutaneous fat.

Throw in the moisture-free, super-dry air of a classic Canadian winter and you have the recipe for the itchy skin that comes from a disrupted skin barrier made worse by scratching. This is dramatically visible on one’s shins - once gleamingly smooth and reflective, they are now rather scaly and dragon-ish.

You can’t just slap on thick cream and hope for the best. You need something that will strengthen your skin barrier and calm the itch, while feeling nice (otherwise you won’t actually use it.)

Right now, Aveeno Restorative Skin Therapy Itch Relief Balm, $9.77, Walmart, is the only thing preventing me from relentlessly clawing away at my itchy, dry shins. If I were in their marketing department, I would change the name to Aveeno Anti-Dragon Shin Balm, complete with a menacing dragon graphic wrapped around the tube.

This balm contains colloidal oatmeal, which not only “possesses antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties” to soothe inflammation, but oats are also a prebiotic, encouraging the proliferation of good, protective bacteria in your skin’s microbiome. Plus, for immediate itch relief, it also has the topical analgesic Pramoxine Hydrochloride, a light anesthetic (NOT a steroid) that effectively soothes your skin so you don’t scratch. Because it’s that wretched scratching that keeps the cycle of disruption going and prevents your skin from healing.

I’m not done with the dragon simile though. I’m going to hunt down a sticker of a dragon to put on my tube. My Covid lockdown-awakened obsession with childhood things continues apace.

The Best Balm for Your Poor Cuticles

When you love something, always buy two.

Twice now, during lockdown, I’ve squeezed some Lanolips Golden Dry Skin Salve into a tiny pot and run it over to a friend whose cuticles were in dire need. Apparently our desire to treat friends during these tough times is called ‘caremongering’ — which is a play on ‘scare-mongering’ and I love it.

Lanolin, the heavy, natural coating on sheep’s wool makes the best occlusive protectant for cuticles that, because of repeated washing or nervous picking, are raggedy and cracked. Lanolin on its own it can be rather sticky, which is fine for lips, but rather unpleasant on fingers. This salve blends it with honey, beeswax and vitamin e, making it more lightweight but no less effective at mending what anxiety and dryness have done to your fingertips.

It also makes an excellent lip balm (I mean, c’mon. It has honey in it) and the 50 gram tube is very generous and will last you forever.