Luxury skin care may come in exquisite packaging, with high-end ingredients and intoxicating scents—but is it worth it?
It depends on what you’re looking for. With their proven, science-backed efficacy and storied histories, these three brands offer more than just pricey products; for those with the means to invest in themselves, they elevate everyday skin-care rituals into acts of loving self-care.
Sangre de Fruta Flower Nectar Face Oil & Serum
Let’s get this out of the way first: Sangre de Fruta is not for the antiaging obsessed. This homegrown organic skin-care brand, handcrafted on Bowen Island (and backed by Gwyneth Paltrow’s website Goop), is not about stopping the hands of time with a battalion of hardcore retinoids and retinols.
Think of this all-natural brand as more of an old-world apothecary-style line, with the luxury lying squarely in its unadulterated hedonistic approach to self-care.
Image courtesy of Sangre de Fruta.
The clinking sound of its deliciously weighted glass jars, the scent of fragrant, precious essential oils (rose otto, Egyptian blue chamomile) and 100 per cent plant-based ingredients (such as Salt Spring Island–grown immortelle) are all aimed at elevating everyday hand-and-body rituals into acts of self-love and pure pleasure.
“We live in a culture of denying ourselves things,” founder Allison Audrey Weldon says. “There’s value in rituals, indulgences, the idea of celebrating and enjoying life.”
You’ll only need a few drops of the Flower Nectar Face Oil & Serum collection to do just that. Made in small batches, the Solis serum is for all skin types and offers a healing component that protects skin from the elements but also replenishes and soothes.
Available at Sangredefruta.com
Shiseido Men Ultimune Power Infusing Concentrate
Convincing most men to spend money on basic skin care—let alone high-end skin care with lofty names such as Shiseido’s new Power Infusing Concentrate—can be like getting blood from a stone.
I speak from personal experience: when I recently assigned my husband the role of guinea pig for some upgraded home skin-care experimentation, he grudgingly accepted, even as he assured me that his Trader Joe’s cream serves him just fine, thank you. But with the U.S. border closed and his favourite grocery store variety in scant supply, I pressed my advantage.
I initially introduced him to the Budapest-based Omorovicza line heavy on the healing power of thermal waters and trace minerals. Within one week, he was waxing poetic about how soft his skin was—and by week two, he swore never to return to Trader Joe’s except to stock up on cheap pantry staples and dark chocolate peanut butter cups.
Image courtesy of Shiseido.
He’s now on to Shiseido. At 149 years old, this skin-care brand has enough history behind it to give him peace of mind that he’s not buying into fly-by-night hype. He also likes the idea that it was founded in 1872 by Arinobu Fukuhara, the former head pharmacist in a Japanese navy hospital.
Shiseido’s Men Ultimune Power Infusing Concentrate is a hydrating serum that targets the skin’s inner defences and delivers antioxidants to help with damage recovery. It goes on without being too oily and adds an extra layer of moisture to his now daily skin-cream routine.
Yes, he now has a skin-care routine—although he stops short at calling himself a skin-care junkie.
Available at in-store locally at Nordstrom and online at Shiseido.ca
La Prairie Gold Collection
If the Swiss are known for three things, it’s chocolate, watches, and luxury skin care. With 90 years of history backing the science of its active ingredients such as microalgae extract and ginseng root, La Prairie is pretty much the gold standard of high-end, efficacious skin care the world over.
Still, if it’s possible to improve on perfection, La Prairie’s new Gold Collection might have just pulled it off. Launching this month, the Pure Gold Collection leans into the recyclable container trend in the most elegant of ways (because contributing to overflowing landfills is definitely not elegant).
Image courtesy of La Prairie.
Called “replenishables,” these brushed gold metal containers serve as luxe vessels; just pop in a new refillable glass container whenever you’ve finished with your old one.
Its diffusion system is designed to spread actual gold particles across your skin to infuse it with the active ingredients attached to those particles. Under white light, the gold particles give off a warm tone to give your complexion a constant “golden hour” glow. Invest in this gold stock as a hedge against the ravages of time.
Available in-store and at Holtrenfrew.com
Read more Beauty stories.
