Skincare obsessed though I am, I’m sick of reading about the ‘delicate’ nature of the skin around my eyes. The skin around my eyes: crinkles when I smile, has started to stop de-crinkling when I’m not smiling and gets dry during summer months. The final point is the only one I’m really interested in tackling. Does this seem odd to you? Let me explain: while I don’t exactly covet wrinkles, I accept that struggling against them is futile – I look after my skin, eat well and stay out the sun. Short of surgery, I can’t do any more and am currently disinclined to; my aversion to needles aside, I think wrinkles look rather charming on a healthy face.
That said, I choose my eye gels/serums/creams carefully and consider myself something of an eye product connoisseur, working my way through the lauded and lesser-known assiduously. I know all too well (thanks to the slew of articles and studies telling me so) that the skin around my eyes contains very few sebaceous glands and is more prone to wrinkles due to the thin nature of the skin and constant crinkling and de-crinkling when emoting. So: eye product = a must.
While I am always a little suspicious when products claim to fill/reduce the depth of/entirely erase(!) wrinkles, I am nonetheless devoted to the pursuit of finding one which hydrates properly. Without such a product, my eyes are not only feel tight and dry but also de-crinkle decidedly more slowly. I consider the lessened appearance of wrinkles a byproduct of a good moisture-bearing eye product: hydrated skin is less likely to prematurely wrinkle and wrinkles once hydrated less likely to look as deep. My sister has twice the impetus to keep her eyes well hydrated – as an eczema-sufferer, the area under her eyes becomes red and angry without daily attention. For her, an eye moisturiser is less about vanity than it is about comfort.
On occasion, we are both bowled over by a product. When this happens, I am always excited to have had a skincare eureka moment. When the cost of said potion is under a tenner, I want to sing about it from the rooftops (or at least devote a post in its entirety to it).
Our most recent love is rather prosaically called Dry Eye Gel (£6.95 here). Free of parabens, SLS and perfumes and rich with cardiospermum (a plant extract which has been proven to act as an anti-inflammatory and antipruritic in more than twelve research trials), it is instantly refreshing, non-greasy, doesn’t irritate either of our skins and packs in moisture without leaving a slippery residue. I use it as a primer prior to putting on eye make-up and it doesn’t make it slide all over the place. My sister pats it on over her make-up when her eyes become itchy or stung during the day and it relieves symptoms instantly.
Until the weather cools, my tube is in the fridge to reduce puffiness while it hydrates (also, the sensation of a cooling gel in the morning is delightful). My sister has tried to steal mine. I’ve advised her to keep her hands to herself and buy one pronto. This is my advice for you, too: eye gels of this quality at this price point are as rare as the rather humble claim to rehydrate without any baloney about entirely erasing wrinkles.