Author Archives: marc

You may remember that in mid-December I started trialling the Regenerist Luminous Serum and Regenerist Luminous Brightening & Protecting SPF20 Moisturiser, both new products from Olay*. (If they haven’t reached the shelves yet then they will be with you very soon, I’d imagine.) I thought that I’d do a mid-way-ish update and fill you in on what I’ve found out about the Sepiwhite ingredient, lauded as one of the two main actives in the serum, because I wasn’t too sure what it did or how it worked.

So just to recap; I was to use the entire Regenerist Luminous range for 30 days and record my results. No other skincare, though I have been using the Regenerist Skin Perfecting Cleanser because there isn’t a dedicated cleanser for the Luminous range. (If Olay brought out a gorgeous, massagey balm cleanser I would literally be in my element.) Routine: cleanse, serum, eye swirl (see previous Olay post for more details on the range) and then either the Skin Tone Perfecting Day Cream or the SPF Moisturiser, depending on my situation. (I’ll be honest, there haven’t been many opportunities to test out the SPF yet!)

Handy dropper application…

Thoughts so far? A massive hurray for the serum. It’s just lovely. I have always felt that the moisturiser on its own doesn’t give me enough of the hydrated feel that I like – though my skin never seems lacking in moisture, it just doesn’t have that dewy, juicy finish that I always crave. On the one hand, that’s great if it’s a moisturiser designed to suit all skin types (which it is) because it’s a lovely finish for oily and combination skin, but if you want your moisturiser to feel very nourishing and rich then the “dry touch” feel isn’t the most desirable. (Perhaps a version for dry/very dry skin would be a good addition? I’d definitely go in for some of that!) Anyway, all this is kind of irrelevant with the addition of the serum because it is so plumptious and silky to apply and really makes my skin feel hydrated. I can see it being a product that will slip easily into my skincare routine post-trial; I’m a big advocate of serums anyway (see post here for more on serums) but when they have targeted effects like this one it’s a great way to make noticeable changes to your skin without having to buy a heap of new products.

I’m applying my serum – and reading your mind.

Talking of targeted effects, the Regenerist Luminous Serum has been designed to even out skintone, both by managing the production of excess melanin (the pigment that looks dark on the surface of the skin; if there’s an excess then you get darker patches, or dark spots) and tackling the dark spots once they’ve appeared. So, both prevention and a bit of damage control. Hero ingredient for me, as I mentioned in the last post, is Niacinamide, which is a bit of a skincare superstar, doing all kinds of wondrous things. (Read more here.) But since the start of the trial, I’ve been reading up a bit more on this Sepiwhite, otherwise known as Undecylenoyl Phenylalanine. Try saying that after a Christmas Sherry! I had never heard of this ingredient, but when I started researching there seemed to be quite a buzz around it. It’s supposed to be really rather effective at helping to improve skin-tone, especially when combined with our old pal Niacinamide. Good news if you’re tackling a bit of unevenness, and it’s also a brilliant one to apply in the morning before you go in with your SPF, as although it doesn’t provide any UVA/UVB protection, it’s there beavering away to keep your melanin production nice and steady.

Right – onwards with the rest of the trial! You’ll notice that I’m quite considerably over the half-way point; I should tell you that for the first week or so of the trial I was really under the weather and hardly even got out of bed, let alone applied much skincare, so I thought it only fair to start it again properly the week after. Remember that I’ll be giving away a whole shedload of Regenerist Luminous for you to try in the final video post, so keep a lookout for that.

Find the Regenerist Luminous range at Boots.com.

Read the first trial post here…

*this trial and the associated posts are sponsored by Olay.

The post Olay Regenerist Luminous Serum Trial: An Update appeared first on A Model Recommends.

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Oh, oh, OH! This little purse spray came through the letterbox and I couldn’t believe how cute it was with its dolly bottle and cool packaging and then, as if things could get any better, I caught a whiff of the fragrance and it was MARNI ROSE! One of my favourite fragrances of the year; beautifully delicate and old fashioned but at the same time slightly masculine and dangerous. You know, if you read regularly, that I love a “dangerous rose” fragrance – that fruitiness and spiciness that you get when you mix warm, woody and musky notes with true, fresh rose. It can be exotic and heady or surprisingly feminine, but it’s always interesting.

War of the Roses: Marni vs Jo Malone… 

You can read more about my thoughts on Marni’s Rose eau de parfum if you click here, but I do think that it’s a winner if you love a fruity, full-bodied rose. This has raspberry and cassis as well as the Rose Absolute and Bulgarian Rose, and there’s a gorgeous musky undertone with a sexy hint of cedarwood and patchouli. This little purse spray version would make a wonderful Christmas present with its Bambolina doll styling and cardboard outer tubes – there’s something rather playful and childlike about it and it’s very different to most of the usual Christmas offerings. I’m not sure how long this version is going to be about for, but it has 10% off at Escentual.com until tomorrow, making it £22.50 instead of £25, with free delivery. Full details here – use the code ESCENTUAL10 to claim the discount.

More fragrance posts…

The post Marni Rose: The Dolly Purse Spray appeared first on A Model Recommends.

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Kicking off the new week with some brilliant, powerful face masks. These are the kind of masks that you can rely on to give your skin a proper overhaul in a very short amount of time; brightening, smoothing and plumping, brilliant for erasing signs of fatigue or over-indulgence. (Basically, what I am getting at here, without being too direct, is that they are all GREAT if you have a hangover and need to look normal.)

So, my Supersonic face Masks from left to right:

The Meso Mask from Filorga, £38 at Marks and Spencer. I discovered this last year and it instantly became one of my favourite skin treatments – I am on pot number 3 already. It feels incredibly gentle and soothing, but it somehow leaves the skin looking as though it’s been very thoroughly exfoliated. You don’t have to worry about leaving it on for too long – I fell asleep with it on and woke up two hours later to baby soft skin and not a patch of redness. I really rate Filorga products; I have quite a few different treatments (including the amazing overnight exfoliant, Sleep and Peel) and nothing has ever disappointed me.

The 3 Minute Facial from SUPER has unfortunately been discontinued. In fact I can’t find anything from SUPER, which was Perricone’s more affordable skincare line, so I’m assuming that it folded in its entirety? A shame, as there were a couple of products that I really enjoyed using. The 3 Minute Facial was one of them – it was a great moisturising mask. Probably not amazing enough to be in my “Supersonic” line-up, if I’m being completely honest, but I liked the way it said SUPER on the label and the retro mustard-yellow styling really floated my boat.

Read more face mask reviews….

The Transformer mask from Zelens is something of a miracle worker; it exfoliates, lifts, tightens, plumps, brightens and pretty much anything else you can think of, providing a one-stop solution to most beauty woes. It’s also very expensive – at £95 a pot it’s not the kind of product you’d want to make a mistake with – but I’ve had absolutely shocking facials that have cost more than that. So I’d rather have multiple applications of a brilliant mask at home than some useless namby-pambying about in a salon that’s playing whale music. I reckon that you would get around ten very generous applications from one pot – many, many more if you spread it on in a frugal manner. (Question: does it make a difference if you apply things in a “thick layer”? Or is that just marketing to make you use up your masks faster? I wonder if there’s ever a good reason to apply something thickly… I shall have to research!) You can find Transformer at Cult Beauty – they currently have a stepped discount going on. If you spend £40 you get £5 off (use code CHOOSE5), £60 and you get £10 off (CHOOSE10) and if you hit the £100 mark it’s £20 off (CHOOSE20).

Ah, my old friend Liquid Gold. The ultimate exfoliant and one that has a special place in my beauty cabinet. (Read about it here.) The original exfoliant is a liquid containing glycolic acid that you sweep over your skin and leave overnight; the Liquid Gold Smoothing and Perfecting Mask needs to be left on for just ten minutes to get brighter, tighter skin. If you’re feeling battered and rough, this gets your skin back into shape in the shortest amount of time possible. It’s great for clarifying if your skin feels clogged up and greasy, but it also works wonders on dry, dull skin too. Just an all-round superhero. You get a whopping 100ml for £46 (Cult Beauty) making it one of the best value masks on the market if you’re looking for something incredibly effective and fast-working.

What’s your favourite face mask? Do you tend to opt for a moisturising mask, a deep cleansing one? Overnight masks seem to be the new “thing”, but I haven’t really used any that have blown my socks off… Let me know, I always like to add things to my research list!

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Not only did I draft this review at the beginning of the year and then forget to edit and publish it, I went to a load of trouble trying to obtain an old version of Dior’s Diorskin Forever foundation so that I could do a comparison with this new one and then – about ten minutes ago in fact – realised that I had done a whole post on that three years ago. Complete with before-and-after pictures. What a div. But it’s a good one, so worth the effort – if you love a full coverage base with a flawless, slightly luminescent finish then keep on reading…

So, the new Forever; what’s changed? Shall we start with what was so brilliant about the original version? You can read the full review and see before-and-after photos here, but to recap: it’s a full-coverage foundation with a velvety finish that manages to nicely illuminate the skin whilst giving that even, photoshoot-perfection sort of finish.

Sound good? It was. So much so that I put it into my (now apparently defunct) “favourite things” category. (Honestly, the online filing systems I start and then forget about. Do you remember Moneybags Monday?! Or, So You Want To Be A Model?!) But I do think that Dior have managed to improve on the original with the “new” (it came out earlier this year) formula. In a direct comparison, I found that the new formula is ever so slightly more fresh and hydrating in feel and a smidgen, smidgen more glowy.

When I say “fresh and hydrating in feel”, I really do mean in comparison to the older Forever version. If you put it on alongside, say, Becca’s Aqua Luminous, it would feel like applying cake topping. It’s not a lightweight, glide-it-on sort of foundation by any stretch of the imagination – I like to prep with a serum, few drops of oil and then a moisturiser before going on in with this – and you really need to make sure that everything is properly blended in.

But the finish! Ooh, it takes me back to my peak modelling days when I’d look in the studio mirror and see a totally different person staring back – not the one who’d had three hours’ sleep and battled through a Milanese rush-hour, not the one who’d (perhaps) been the last one to bed, playing Tiny Dancer on the hotel piano… There’s a perfected, airbrushed feel to the finish without any hint of that flat, deathmask look that high-coverage foundations so often give.

In summary, there’s no denying that the Forever has a gorgeous finish – the same sort of “not-quite-matte” as Chanel’s Perfection Lumiere Velvet, a similar coverage and glow to YSL’s Touche Eclat Le Teint and the staying power of Estée Lauder’s hero base, Double Wear. (For full coverage with a bouncier, dewier finish, take a look at my Lancome cushion review.)

The formula’s shine control abilities are exemplary; I think actually better than the original, despite the fluid feeling more comfortable and fresh on the skin. As someone who very often wears “sheer” or “barely there” foundations when off-duty, I’m always taken aback by just how long some of these full-coverage bases last for, but Diorskin Forever really does stick around. After twelve hours (it boasts 16 hour wear, but I reckon it would be longer) I needed a very thorough cleanse, twice, to remove all of the makeup from my face and there was not even the barest hint of oiliness across my t-zone.

A great one for those who need longevity and high coverage – especially those with oilier skin – and who want that smooth, perfected finish. Diorskin Forever comes in nineteen shades and costs £33, you can find it online at Escentual.com and John Lewis.

*note that there’s a primer in the top photo; I liked this, but haven’t tested it enough yet to do a review. In all honesty, I can’t have loved it that much because it seems to have been relegated to the “test at some point in the future” drawer. I wasn’t wearing any primer, Dior or otherwise, in any of the face photos.

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I have never had incredibly oily skin but once a month, for just a few days, my face decides to produce more grease than is either necessary or particularly polite. (It’s around the same time of the month that I have to resist the urge to batter people around the head with a frying pan – you get the drift.) In that time of Great Rage and Completely Irrational Behaviour, I like to try out stuff that has been formulated specifically for oily and blemish-prone skin. Just to give me something to do with my hands as I stare venomously out of the window and think dark and evil thoughts…

But seriously, “oily skin” issues are pretty huge, and some of the most frequently asked questions here on the website and on Youtube concern how to banish oil slicks at the centre of the face without drying all the life and soul out of the rest of it. The key here, I always feel, is balance. You want a little less oil in the T Zone (forehead, nose area, chin) but you want to retain your natural oils in the rest of your face, which is, if it’s anything like mine, completely unaffected by the Facial Armageddon that is going on in the middle. I often feel that dealing with my PMT skin is like having to care for a garden that is suffering two completely different climates; half of the plants are in this arid, sunny spot and half of them are in shadow with big stormy rainclouds hanging over them. Same plants, totally different requirements. (Worst analogy ever? Vote now.)

So with this “Jekyll and Hyde” skin behaviour in mind, the products that I like to test in my Week of Many Tantrums are ones that are sympathetic to my plight; balancing, reasonably gentle creams and lotions and washes that will help keep the central T Zone clear without aggravating the rest of my face. Nothing should be harsh anyway, really; just because an area of your face is oily it doesn’t mean that you can wade on in there with the skincare equivalent of a flame-thrower and a bucket of white spirit! Oily skin still needs a gentle touch and, more often than not, a fair bit of soothing to take down any redness and inflammation and bumpy soreness.

Latest little range to be tested, the T Zone Control range from Skin Doctors*. I had tried the Oil Control Cleanser before (read that post here) and had found it to be surprisingly gentle and non-stripping. I say “surprisingly” because so many products targeting “oiliness” are so drying and tightening that I feel as though my whole face has been turned inside out. Not so with this one, and Skin Doctors asked whether I might like to give the rest of the range a whirl. It’s only small – three products – with the cleanser, a light moisturiser and something called a “night refiner”. A quick glance through the blurb I was sent on the range told me that the moisturiser was exactly the type of thing I like to use pre-Personal Apocolypse – light, soothing, slightly mattifying – and that the “night refiner”, an overnight cream, was formulated with Salicylic, Glycolic and Lactic acids to gently exfoliate and clear the pores. Well. You know how I feel about gentle acid exfoliants – bring it on!

The wash is light and refreshing – it cleanses well, doesn’t sting my eyes and doesn’t leave my skin feeling too tight. The moisturiser – No More Oil  – does a fair job of mattifying, especially beneath makeup. It feels a little sticky for the first few minutes, so I have been letting it settle in before popping anything over the top, but apart from that it’s a nice option for hydrating your skin on oil-slick days. The effects seem to last a good while – no real need to powder throughout the day – and the anti-inflammatory ingredients really do seem to help soothe and calm the skin. The No More Pores night refiner is something of a little gem; it says to apply it over the T Zone but I have been using it all over my face and it hasn’t had any kind of adverse effect! The three different acids do seem to work nicely to exfoliate overnight and give a fresh, glowy look and I’m pretty sure that they had something to do with the fact that I didn’t have any monstrous PMT blemishes last month. (Though there could be another good reason for that particular boon – stay tuned!)

Overall, a nice little comprehensive range that works well if you have oily T Zone problems but would be equally good for those with all-round oily skin. It’s gentle and simple and barely fragranced, so great for men and women and the three products are easy to slip into an existing skincare routine, especially if you just need something to wheel out once a month as a bit of a problem-solver. I should really do a big old “round up” post of my favourite PMT skincare – I’ll add that to the list!

You can find the T Zone Control range at LookFantastic.com and on their website, but everything appears to be a little cheaper on Amazon: the cleanser is £11.31, the No More Oil moisturiser is £19.56 here and the No More Pores is £23.86. Very reasonably priced, I think. For those looking for a more grown-up solution to breakouts – ie, don’t want to resort to trawling the teen skincare aisles! – but don’t want to bankrupt themselves, it’s a solid option.

*Skin Doctors approached me to review this range and have kindly sponsored this post. For more info on sponsored posts, please click here.

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