Beauty bible

The gold standard of face masks

BECAUSE I’M PAID TO KNOW these things, I happened to notice that a large number of tawny-skinned models and actresses have been using the same face mask recently.

OK, I said to the PR – in my best interrogative Woodward and Bernstein voice – how much has 111 Skin been paying Margot Robbie, Kirsten Dunst and co to slap it on and take a selfie?

‘We absolutely don’t pay anyone,’ she said coolly. The Gold mask is popular, she explained, because top makeup artists such as Mary Greenwell (Cate Blanchett won’t leave home without her) and Deanna Hagan have been recommending them to all their clients.

I know Mary, and she doesn’t dole out praise willy-nilly. That, and the fact that Sofia Coppola is a fan (and, as we now know, not paid for her troubles)... Well, the next thing I knew, I was lying in bed wearing a gold face-shaped piece of slime. It’s one of those oval things with holes for nostrils, eyes and mouth that don’t quite tally with anyone’s actual nostrils, eyes and mouth. If the idea was to look like Shirley Eaton in Goldfinger, the reality was a bit off. But my husband had been annoying me so he had it coming.

Twenty minutes is a surprisingly long time when you’re dropping off. Some masks now demand that you wear them for 40 minutes. This is one of three novelty features in the new generation of face packs. The other two are that they are no longer called face packs, and seem to cost the best part of £100.

The latter feature is because, unlike the face packs of my teens – which cost about 8p and basically contained stuff you could find in the garden or kitchen (mud, yeast and clay) and soaked up every last droplet of oil, moisture and anything else you didn’t realise you’d later need – these contain advanced ingredients such as hyaluronic acid, along with 700 unpronounceable plumping compounds.

Hyaluronic acid, as previously discussed in these columns, is a total wonder: a sugar that’s not evil. Naturally occurring in our bodies, it depletes over time, like just about everything else (except hair, where you don’t want it), so you need to apply it topically (and imbibe it) to keep skin juicy – the molecules hold up to 1,000 times their own weight in water.

Anyway, the inevitable happened and I fell asleep. To be honest, I knew I would, and I had strapped my blackout eye mask over the top to stop everything slithering off. But at 3am, having transferred all its nutrients into my dermis, it plopped noisily on to the floor. So, another sleepless night. Except this time, by morning, my face didn’t look as though I’d done five rounds with Floyd Mayweather. It looked really quite amazing.

For a far cheaper but effective skin brightening boost, facialist Alexandra Soveral recommends mashing up strawberries and organic yogurt – although this is not to be allowed anywhere near your pillows.