Vichy's life saver

It’s a factoid that everything enjoyable in life – eating, drinking, sunbathing partying…eventually leads to skin damage! So, unless you want to live a very, very dull life, you have to look for an antidote.

The skin boffins at Vichy have pinned the acceleration of ageing on lack of sleep, tobacco, too much sun without protection, pollution, stress, hormones and an unbalanced diet. Heck, I’m sure every one of us can tick that check list off bar one or two. Indeed, Vichy highlight that seven out of 10 women will do at least one little excess a day. But before you give up on life beyond the health food store, help is in a bottle with their Idealia Life Serum.

ID-ing four parameters of behavioural ageing: overexposed skin, overstressed skin, polluted skin and skin affected by an unbalanced diet, they have created the first ‘lifeproof’ skin idealizer. What a clever play on words! With a light and opalescent texture – it really does lock in an inner glow on application, its USP is harbouring powerful skin quality correcting molecules. Their role? They act in repairing the visible impact of your life on your skin. Now, that’s not to say a lifestyle lived to the equivalent of Iggy Pop or Ronnie Wood would wipe away deep  wrinkles and sun damage, but for a girl that likes to have a little fun this could be the perfect way of getting your skin to play by the rules – even if you’re not!

Vichy Idealia Life Serum costs £29.50 and is available nationwide from today.

You glow girl!

A self confessed lover of Alpha H concentrated skincare products – concentrated meaning they give more bang for your buck in terms of ingredient percentages , I was recently introduced to their Liquid Gold Perfecting Daywear with Mineral Bronzing Beads. Now, personally I don’t go big on bronzing products beyond a little powder,  as quite honestly I’ve seen so many bronzing disasters, I’d rather steer clear. But this lady is for turning, and I’d thought I’d give it a whirl.

I had no concerns about the Perfecting Daywear part of the formula. Alpha H is based on glycolic acid and mingled with the other key ingredient liquorice, work to brighten, resurface and refine pore size. Peptides help to optically diffuse the appearance of pesky lines. As with all modern thinking anti-ageing products, hyaluronic acid is also in the mix, its USP being it attracts and binds youth inducing moisture. So far, so  good.

As for the built-in glow factor, it couldn’t be more skin savvy. Microencapsulated bronzing spheres burst on application and release a blend of mineral pigments and natural light-reflecting particles. It’s described as a ‘made-to-measure’ glow, and I agree. It just lifts the skin to a higher plane whilst looking beyond natural. It’s a serum, so apply underneath your moisturiser for an extra skin boost. It's a product that's now a staple in my gleam team!

Alpha-H  Liquid Gold Perfecting Daywear, £39
www.alpha-h.com
www.qvcuk.com

Lancome's super serum

There are serums and then there are super serums. Lancome’s new Advanced Genifique serum I would certainly put in a pair of Superman pants! Why? Because it has 40% more active ingredients than the original Genifique and developed using multi-omics. I confess I don’t know what that exactly means beyond working with genome biology, but it sounds impressive! Reading through the press release I got the gist that the rebooted formula is scientifically based on how genes are translated and processed, but to be honest when words such as proteomics and transcriptomics are thrown at me, I may as well be reading the script from Inception in terms of how much sense it made to me. So I decided to cut my losses and just experience it, letting my skin do the talking.

Firstly, it’s easy to apply. The pipette allows just one drop to escape at a time so you don’t end up wasting product. Feeling incredibly light on the skin, as a serum should be, it quickly disappeared preparing the complexion for the next layer of skincare. The advanced new ingredients are Adenosine which stimulates leader genes representative of cellular functions – testing shows it has a very important role in glueing cells together, Yeast extract shown to have an effect on leader involved in skin cell proliferation and Vitamin CG. This was a new one to me, but it's actually just a form of Vitamin C, although much more stable. Vitamin C itself rapidly oxidises. The anecdotal test for me was, upon the first week of using it quite a few people said my skin looked good. And that’s the only science I need!

Launched this month Lancome Advanced Genifique serum costs £58