If you like the buzz around the raw-food diet but find it too challenging to follow during a Canadian winter — it’s hard to turn down hot soup in the middle of snowmageddon — then you might want to try applying some ripe produce to your face.
Salt Lake City–based Livia Pure Skin Care is inspired by the same philosophy that fuels the various living foods movements; namely, that naturally occurring plant enzymes are most powerful and beneficial when not compromised by high heat. The organic product line offers an impressively broad range of cleansers, toners, masques, moisturizers, serums and treatments formulated to address common concerns from acne to aging.
The most striking feature about these products is how intensely fresh they smell. Made with fruit, vegetables and herbs in small batches from wildcrafted plants, free of parabens, sulfates and urea, they smell good enough to eat, and I mean that literally. (The Cucumber Spirulina Gel Masque, US$38 at www.liviaskincare.com, I’m wearing as I write this is making me crave a glass of water with cucumber slices.) At first I worried that my skin might react to the scent, but probably since it’s derived from natural raw ingredients rather than the synthetic fragrances lacing so many pricey night creams, I’ve had no problems at all.
In fact, I loved everything I tried — the invigorating Fresh Peppermint Exfoliating Cleanser, US$27, the super-fruity Perfecting Toner, US$24, the rich Apricot Enzyme Moisture, US$44, and the aforementioned masque. Plus, Livia is an eco-friendly manufacturer, so the products are vegan, biodegradable and the packaging, shipping and marketing materials are all recycled.
SPRING PREVIEW
Leave it to the French to create botanical-based makeup that doesn’t suck. Yves Rocher (www.yvesrocher.ca, 1-800-361-2746) will launch 29 new products in its Couleurs Nature line in April in over 200 shades inspired from the great outdoors — and we’re not talking early-’90s earth tones, but a wide array featuring shiny metallics, pastels and bright floral tones.
I haven’t had great luck with some of the sparkly mineral makeup lines I’ve sampled, but the Couleurs Nature products perform comparably to conventional cosmetics, which is undoubtedly due to the fact that they do use some conventional ingredients along with the plant extracts.
On New Year’s Eve, I tarted up with Flawless Finish Fluid Foundation, $25, with phyto-pigments, an opalescent Pastel Cream Eyeshadow, $19, with soy-grain extract, Single Eyeshadow in Bleu Volubilis, $18, with bamboo silica extract, Moisturizing Cream Lipstick in Mauve Pensée, $18, with organic sesame oil and even painted my nails blood red with their formaldehyde-free, balsam resin–enhanced Nail Laquer, $9. (Don’t let my male name fool you — I’m a fancy lady when I feel like it.)
Everything worked great and held on through morning, and though I noted some of the usual suspects in the ingredients lists (like parabens and fragrance), I appreciate that they never test on animals and all the complexion products are packaged in cardboard produced from managed forests. Yves Rocher has been making plant-based beauty products since 1959; they grow their own plants in La Gacilly, France, and have secured more than 50 patents on plant actives. They’ve been doing this a long time and they’re good at it. If you can’t wait for spring, they have lots of stuff currently on sale on their website.