WHAT I USE Face masks

When you get paid to test beauty products for a living, what do you actually pay to use? ELLE beauty director Katy Young comes clean

Try as I might to be well versed in all the beauty arts, there are a couple of practices where I have fallen quite spectacularly short: using any kind of heated styling tool, and face masks. I like to think it’s because I’m short on time, but in reality it’s all about the faff factor: I singed my fringe one too many times, and what’s the point in applying good skincare, then taking it off after a few minutes?

It turns out, however, I’m now out of excuses on the face mask front. There’s a new-found hunger for them (Boots reports they’re the second most-searched-for beauty product on its site, while in the US, sales are predicted to climb to an eye-watering $9.78bn by 2025*), and the canniest of beauty companies are now in an arms race to create best-in-show products that even I think are worth my time.

What I mean by that is fast-acting formulas in nifty delivery systems, such as the sheet masks that prevent all those ingredients layered on your face from evaporating into thin air. Good ones should quench your face in 10 minutes, leaving you looking as though you’ve spent a month using Crème de la Mer.

Now, to my mind, when it comes to skincare, consistency still beats the quick fix (stick to that Crème de la Mer if you do happen to own a pot), but masks do have their place. When you need a skin pick-me-up for a one-night-only special event, the kind of emergency boost that regular skincare isn’t going to provide or an added excuse to do nothing for 10 minutes (who doesn’t?), masks are king.

When forced to sit still on an aeroplane, I take advantage by smuggling handfuls of sheet masks on-board to look after my face, whose water reservoirs are otherwise sucked into the air con. When we do start taking those first long-haul flights back to normality, pack Beauty Pie’s Über Youth™ Hyaluronic Sheet Masks (£60 for five, or £23.93 for members), are drenched in hyaluronic acid and visibly plump up an otherwise pruney post-flight face. (The masks themselves are comfortingly biodegradable, unlike all that plastic cutlery you just used.)

Most of us look to masks for hydration, where I think they reign supreme, but there are also brightening peeling masks, which take effect in minutes. Enter Drunk Elephant T.L.C. Sukari Babyfacial. The glycolic and salicylic acids combo works on all skin types, and you’ll feel the gel tingle as it eats away at the top layer of clogging, greying cells. I use it weekly. And if you like a peel as much as I do, chances are your face is in need of a soothing mask. Common ingredients are oatmeal, chamomile, liquorice or centella asiatica – their immediate anti-inflammatory effect takes out heat and irritation from skin.

So there I was, thinking face masks were extra faff, when, in reality, they’re a time-saving hack. And while I do still try to keep up appearances by sticking to a good skincare regime, if I’ve skipped a day or two and let the side down, now I just mask it.

“I smuggle sheet masks on planes to plump an otherwise PRUNEY post-flight face”