Institut Esthederm’s Photo Reverse

Words by Thomas Lee Brooks — Junior Fash­ion Editor

The sun is out, lock­down is eas­ing, and sum­mer is here! We all get excit­ed for the iced teas and the once a year oppor­tu­ni­ty to tan our bod­ies under the UK heat. How­ev­er, as always, I will be harp­ing on about what mat­ters most for 365 days of the year, espe­cial­ly dur­ing this sea­son: sun protection.

Catch­ing up from the pre­vi­ous arti­cle with Bioderma’s Pig­ment­bio range, it is becom­ing clear that hyper­pig­men­ta­tion is being empha­sised this year. In the UK, we hard­ly have the sea­sons to enjoy any expo­sure to the sun, with Esthederm’s Bronz Repair range, we have been able to tan safe­ly and UVA/B‑free. How­ev­er, Esther­derm has now intro­duced a new line focus­ing on hyper­pig­men­ta­tion: The Pho­to Reverse. It’s hid­den in the name – this prod­uct helps those with sen­si­tive skin not only be safe from sun expo­sure, but from pho­toag­ing. What is pho­toag­ing, you say? Pho­toag­ing is a process where­by one is aging extrin­si­cal­ly. Extrin­sic age­ing is caused by exter­nal fac­tors to your der­mis, whether it is pol­lu­tion, cig­a­rette smoke and most impor­tant­ly ultra-vio­let radi­a­tion. The oppo­site of this is intrin­sic aging, sim­ply the dec­li­na­tion process of your skin that is genet­i­cal­ly deter­mined. You may be inclined to explore Esthederm’s Pho­to Reverse and Bronz Repair range fur­ther if you google the pho­to­graph­ic dif­fer­ences between both intrin­sic and extrin­sic aging.

What makes Pho­to Reverse even more spe­cial is Esthederm’s Glob­al Cel­lu­lar Pro­tec­tion Tech­nol­o­gy. This patent­ed tech­nol­o­gy sits at the heart of every prod­uct that Esthe­d­erm pro­duces, main­tain­ing your skin’s life and qual­i­ties. This is the tech­nol­o­gy that takes the range a step fur­ther to tack­le pho­toag­ing. For fur­ther infor­ma­tion on this, click here.

At OVERDUE, we had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to try their Tint­ed Mois­turis­ers for both Pho­to Reverse and Bronz Repair. Inter­est­ing­ly, hav­ing two prod­ucts with dif­fer­ent aims gave me an idea. My skin type doesn’t suf­fer from hyper­pig­men­ta­tion from sun expo­sure, how­ev­er my moth­er, who is South East Asian does occa­sion­al­ly suf­fer from this. Thus, to play with these prod­ucts fair­ly, my moth­er wore the Pho­to Reverse Tint­ed Mois­turis­er whilst I wore the Bronz Repair Tint­ed Mois­turis­er. This worked per­fect­ly as I had dark­er skin than my moth­er too! Dur­ing the hottest days, it was prime time to take these prod­ucts for a test drive. 

What was my ver­dict for Bronz Repair? The Tint­ed Mois­turis­er was very easy to blend with even cov­er­age, hav­ing spent 6 hours out­side, I had no irri­ta­tion to my skin. I was able to remain sun kissed with­out reap­ing the harsh con­se­quences of UV rays. The most impor­tant ver­dict was my mother’s. The Pho­to Reverse range takes a step fur­ther than Bronz Repair; the range tar­gets those who are very sen­si­tive to the sun. To para­phrase my moth­er, she felt con­fi­dent using the Pho­to Reverse Tint­ed Mois­turis­er, although she isn’t used to wear­ing tint to the skin with such ease – this was a delight for her! Not only could my dear moth­er halt pho­toag­ing and those darn dark spots that appear dur­ing the hot days, she felt more con­fi­dent with a bit of tint to the skin whilst main­tain­ing a nat­ur­al complexion. 

These prod­ucts are avail­able in the UK, such as Look Fantastic.

The per­fect sun pro­tec­tion prod­ucts from Esthe­d­erm and sis­ter brand Bio­der­ma, sug­gest­ed by OVERDUE:

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Esthe­d­erm UK — @esthedermuk

Bio­der­ma UK — @biodermauk