The Zorro in me

The following is the text of this month's Deeply Superficial column in the (sydney) and the (melbourne) magazines:

I’m not quite sure why, but I just love face masks. Maybe it’s the Zorro in me, but there’s something deeply satisfying – and deeply cleansing – about a cup of tea, a good lie down and a layer of mud on your face. I remember a particular favourite from my teenage years. I’m not sure what beauty company produced it – Coty? Revlon? – but it was a thick mud from a tube that came in three or four dazzling metallic shades. I had a molten silver one; my sister preferred metallic blue. I looked like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz and I still remember that when it dried it cracked unattractively – but, gosh, it was fun.

These days, face masks are so technologically superior that they can virtually make the cup of tea themselves. They can infuse your skin with your vitamins; they can balance, calm, revitalise, moisturise, hydrate, firm, lift, clarify, brighten, energise, exfoliate and write your master’s thesis for you. But they also loads more fun – more fun even than the silver robot mask of my teens. The fun quotient improved dramatically with the advent of cloth masks like SK-II’s Facial Treatment Mask and Whitening Source Intensive Mask, Clinique’s Moisture Surge Facial Sheet Mask, Skinvitals G-Energized and C-Brighten masks and ModelCo’s Face Lift Hydrating Face& Neck Mask. What I like most is unravelling the face-shaped cloth cutout and lying down for twenty minutes with it pressed to my skin like a mummy in a shroud. These kinds of masks are also great for scaring the cats. Or Halloween.

Recently, cloth masks have begun to appear in two-zone versions, with separate pieces to account for the different needs of for the eye area and the lower face. I’ve had two sessions with La Mer’s The Radiant Facial, which consists of a primer and a two-zone mask infused with white algae to counteract dullness and hyper pigmentation, and I’ve found the results excellent, particularly for mature skins. This is the ne plus ultra of cloth masks at $720 for a pack of eight treatments.

I’m having lots of fun with foam masks, too. A couple to try are Babor’s effervescent High Skin Refining Lifting Foam Mask, which goes on like shaving cream and then dissolves, or La Prairie’s Cellular Balancing Mask, a two-part treatment which is mixed in a bowl and applied with a brush. Then there are the exfoliating masks that give you a rather naughty tingle, such as Dr. Sebagh’s Deep Exfoliating Mask with azelaic acid, or Yves Saint Laurent’s Lisse Expert Esthetic Peeling Mask, which is a pink emulsion with exfoliating spheres which is left to sit on the skin for five minutes before being massaged in and washed off.

Aromatic masks that give your head some clarity as well as your skin include La Prairie’s juniper, orange and lemon Masque Cellulaire Energisante. If you’re into efficiency, take SK-II’s Skin Rebooster or Ultraceuticals Ultra C Treatment Cream into the shower and leave on while your face steams. And if you love good old deep-cleansing clay masks, try SkinCeuticals Clarifying Clay Masque or Aesop’s heavenly Parsley Seed Cleansing Masque.

But don’t do what I have done on more than one occasion – forget you have a mask on and answer the front door.