Face masks in their current ever-surging popularity have spawned their very own verb — to mask. Masking itself implies, even more than the act of cleaning and caring for skin, a devotion to self-care and reflection, a meditation that does not always go hand in hand with the mask in question.
Some masks require complicated multi-step routines, others have bells and whistles that just beg for Instagram posts or an audience.
The Vichy’s Clarifying Charcoal Mask is the answer to the respite-seeking maskers dilemma. It is applied with one’s fingers from a small jar and colours the face an opaque graphite gray as it is layered, so after painting all around the lips and eyes, a chiaroscuro version of yourself is reflected back from the mirror. This is a do-not-bother-me,-I-am-masking mask. Not a foaming or sparkling, take-my-picture mask, but a please-try-not-to-flinch-even-though-you’ve-come-upon-me-doing-something-private mask.
The creamy, highly pigmented clay and charcoal product smooths on easily and slightly tingles as it sits on skin as if to remind you to sit still and not touch it as it does its work, a clearing and tightening of your pores. The mask asks for only five minutes to get to it as it ever so slightly begins to tighten and dry, five minutes where you don’t do much except sit and feel the cooling sensation on your face before it’s splashed off with warm water revealing a clearer, brighter complexion to be moisturised before bed.
A creamy, highly pigmented clay and charcoal mask that deep-cleans clogged pores.
Vichy Clarifying Charcoal Mask, £15.
The pot is palm-sized, but just a few fingertip-fulls are required for a fully painted face, which means the tub contains at least several weeks worth of masking opportunities. That’s five minutes, twice a week, where you are given permission, nay, expected, to close the door without a phone and just look at yourself in the mirror, rendered in gray, and that’s all, letting the charcoal and kaolin clay do their skin-cleaning and pore-minimising work, while all you do is mask and breathe.