The 92-year-old beauty legend
This classic cream is a multitasking marvel that I always keep close to hand – or lips or eyelids
OUR BEAUTY DIRECTOR CELEBRATES A SKINCARE ORIGINAL
Authenticity. It’s a word that I keep hearing and being told it’s what everyone is searching for. Well, apart from the fact that I hope you find it here on these pages – and in this magazine – every week, when it comes to beauty products you really can’t get more authentic than Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream Skin
Protectant (€35, boots.ie). It’s an original, a classic, a trusty stalwart, and it has weathered close to a century in an industry that is driven by the new, the exciting and the well publicised. And all the while its formula has remained unchanged. Yes, there it continues to stand: proud and distinguished and confident in its own abilities. I think it deserves a little ode of sorts.
Those abilities are rather wide ranging, too. I love using Eight Hour Cream as a lip balm and also to add a little shine to skin when desired, whether that’s on eyelids – either bare or over the top of eyeshadow, which is a much-loved trick of make-up artists – shoulders, or even down the front of shins. But it has many other uses, too, from taming eyebrows and helping to calm burns (dedicated followers swear it takes away redness and helps prevent blistering and scarring), to softening cuticles, as a hand treatment and helping to heal cuts and grazes. Many mothers carry it in their baby’s nappy bag. I’ve even heard that some use it as an intensive night treatment on their face. It’s just one of those multi-use marvels. Indeed, legend has it that the cream got its name after a mother said it took just eight hours after applying to heal her son’s skinned knee.
Of course, the even bigger legend surrounding it is that the cream was originally created to help soothe the shins of Arden’s own racehorses before it was discovered that it worked on humans, too – though in reality I think which came first seems to have been lost in the mists of time. However, it was certainly used and loved by both.
In the past two years the cream – as well as the range of skincare that has been created around it, including hand cream and lip balm – has seen doubledigit growth. Perhaps this is the result of a rise in beauty nostalgia as we spent so much time at home and because of its reputation in caring for skin.
As any regular user knows, Eight Hour Cream has potent powers, but now these have been clinically proven by the brand. In fact, tests have shown that its name is actually inaccurate, as it repairs the skin barrier in less than one hour. Not bad going for a 92-year-old – or should that be 92-years-young? @edwinaingschambers
Eight Hour Cream’s potent powers have been clinically proven