The Fab Five Week 7
By Gigi Anders
Now is the winter of our discontent. Well, not technically. The winter solstice isn’t until the 21st. But lately the weather, our mood, and our skin have all been been off.
To lighten the darkness, we’ve assembled a fresh beauty quintet sure to boost your spirits and enhance your skincare. Ladies, start polishing your plastic. These products are life-changing.
June Jacobs Rapid Repair Healing Cream ($22.50 - $60). This ultra-rich, greaseless, multipurpose cream protects and relieves rough, chapped, cracked skin, cuticles, nails, and scars. Safe for anyplace but eyes and lips, just a tiny amount calms everything and absorbs instantly. It’s full of goodness -- shea butter; antioxidant white, red, and green tea extracts; and goji berry, pomegranate, and grape seed extracts to neutralize free radicals.
Dermalogica Total Eye Care SPF 15 ($52). For daytime, nothing beats this protective, brightening, smoothing, depuffing, retexturizing, chemical-free eye cream. A tiny drop covers everything with a universally enlightening pinky-peachy tint that disappears into the skin around and under the eyes. Alpha hydroxy acids and optical light diffusers get this party started, while anti-inflammatory plant extracts like bitter orange flower diminish puffs and smell like heaven.
Erasa XEP 30 ($160). I’ll put it this way: If it’s good enough for Linda Evangelista, it’s good enough for us. Vice President and Creative Director of the brand, Miz Linda was too busy traveling to grant us an interview for this story. But that’s okay. Because I have friends. A lot of them. About 5000 of them on Facebook alone. Recently, several women friends of a certain age asked me to look into this “Extreme Line Lifting and Rejuvenation Concentrate,” which they’d heard was supposed to be better than Botox. Okay. Short of a complete face lift, nothing is better than Botox for (semi-permanently) killing frown lines, wrinkles, and deep crow’s feet. However. Erasa XEP 30 is the next best thing. Truly. My Facebook gals were right to have me check it out. It is fabulous. After cleansing and toning, you apply several drops all over, including the eye area, before moving on to the rest of your skincare routine, day and night. You’ll be impressed by how quickly – half a minute, max, maybe? -- your Before becomes an After. My 11’s – those vertical frown lines in between the eyebrows – gone. The fine lines under my eyes – bye, girls. XEP 30 is a biomimetic neuro-peptide (don’t bother Googling it; it’s too complex except for Walter White to fathom) that relaxes deep lines, wrinkles and frown lines. Over time, the brand claims you’ll need less and less Erasa for perfect-looking skin. This a luxury investment. So is Botox. You decide.
SheaMoisture 100% Virgin Coconut Oil Daily Hydration Body Oil ($11.99). I squeeze some squirts into my regular body lotion after a shower – my body skin is ultra-dry – and I am hydrated, grease-free, and glowing all day long. I also smell divine because this oil contains only certified organic, cruelty-free, fairly traded ingredients. Along with coconut, we have these nourishing oils: sunflower seed, apricot kernel, sweet almond, jojoba seed, and olive fruit. In addition, we have shea butter, coconut extract and fruit juice. Sounds heavy but it’s light as water and absorbs instantly.
Vegabrow and Vegalash Voluminizing Serums ($79.95 each). There’s been a lot of hype and controversy over serums that promise to return your brows and lashes to their youthful bounty. These growth products fall into two categories: hormone-based solutions and peptide-driven serums. But the same hormones that cause eyebrows and lashes to flourish can mess with physiology -- they can cause permanent eye color changes and eyelid darkening. Not good. They are also unsafe for use by preteen, pregnant, and menopausal women. Peptide-driven serums have fewer side-effects but there’s no clinical proof they actually work. However, Vegabrow and Vegalash are clinically proven, hormone- and gluten-free, vegan, and all-natural. Even their glycols are plant-based (derived from sugar cane). I tried both products twice a day for 30 days and saw significant improvement. My eyebrows had more volume – though in my case, I over plucked as a teen and nothing will make some of those goners come back. My eyelashes, which are naturally long, became fuller and even longer, creating a crash-into-the-sunglasses situation if I wear mascara, which is just fine by me. You have to incorporate these products into your daily and nightly routines to keep everything copacetic. If you stop, you’ll lose what you gained in about a month. Hey. Nobody ever said aging’s a cake walk. But with these two products in your anti-aging arsenal, you’ve totally got this.
