Ahead, Ffrench shares the skin products she uses to heal and balance her skin for Glamour‘s Drop the Routine.
My cleanser
I only wash my face at night. I never wash it in the morning, and I just rinse it with water. Eve Lom is the best. It’s for makeup removal and it’s a little mild exfoliator. It’s really oily and smells incredible. It’s a big pot of it. That’s definitely a really good one. I feel like it doesn’t strip your skin, and I’m into things that keep the pH levels of your skin nice and balanced.
My toner
I’ll use a bit of toner around my nose, just because there is an accumulation of grease overnight. So I’ll just use a light toner on my nose. The Biologique Recherche is a really good toner.
My serums
I love SkinCeuticals, so I use their vitamin C serums every single day. It’s my first step after just rinsing my face in the morning. I also love the SkinCeuticals Phyto Corrective serum. It’s a green liquid and it contains hyaluronic acid, and it helps to rebalance your skin. It focuses on redness and controlling overactive skin problems and inflammation.
My retinol
I use a retinol and azelaic acid. Azelaic acid has totally changed my life. [Finacea] is prescription, but you can also get products that contain azelaic acid, and basically it totally gets rid of bacteria and encourages cell turnover. It’s a little bit like maybe a retinol. I prefer it to a retinol because I put it on my nose and wake up in the morning and my pores are half the size. So, azelaic acid is probably my favorite thing. It’s really good.
My eye cream
111SKIN under eye patches are incredible for reducing lines before you go out. Whether that’s a long term or temporary fix, I don’t know, but I do think the Black Diamond Eye Patches are amazing. Under my eyes, I just go hard on the old heavy lip lanolin-based thing, like Dr. Lipp or Laneige.
My moisturizer
In the morning, I really love U Beauty Barrier BioActive Repair Cream. I feel like oils and creams often react in a funky way. if I want to look glowy, I’ll use my Skinlacq [instead of a face oil]. Because that has the triple hyaluronic acid in and it’s essentially a skincare product as much as a makeup product. If I’m going to do an oily thing, I’ll just stick to the oils. But if I’m every day doing my skincare thing, I’ll use the Skinlacq. You can mix it with your foundation because it has the different weights of hyaluronic acid. Everything is more hydrated and lubricated, if you know what I mean.
My mask
The SkinCeuticals Phyto Corrective Mask is great. It’s like a gel, and it feels really refreshing. Every now and again I’ll do a clay mask like Tatcha. They have a Clarifying Clay Mask, so every now and again I’ll do that in the problematic areas.
My treatments
I’m pretty loyal to two people for facials. I go to Jasmina Vico and I go to Dr. Brian Fu in London, and they do laser treatments and I get micro-needling. What else? I had Morpheus 8 in a couple of sessions recently. But I am more into the hardcore stuff. I think being a beauty person, actually, I can kind of do it myself. So I’m more invested in the tools that I don’t have.
My sunscreen
Sunscreen? God, I go through so much of it. It’s called UV, Ultra Violette—I love that brand. And I love their body sun cream as well because it has really minute shimmering particles in it, so you look really glowy. And it smells amazing. It’s so nice. Also Barbara Sturm, the Sun Drops I use as well.
My moisturizer
It’s the most basic cream that you can get for eczema or very, very dry skin conditions. It almost just acts as a barrier. But if you use it long enough, hopefully your skin will just begin to restore its own natural balance. At least that’s what happened to me, and I used it for months. I didn’t put anything else on my skin. And you can wash with it. So I would use it in the shower instead of body wash, and I’d use it to wash my face with. It’s great for taking makeup off because it’s a little bit greasy, and I still actually use that quite frequently as my main moisturizer if I feel like I have been overdoing it.
My scrub
One thing I do use is the Barbara Sturm Enzyme Cleanser. That’s quite good.
My body care
The Wild Star collection Dazzle Up Highlighter because that does have skincare benefits in it. The idea behind it was to have ingredients that mimic the effects of retinol, like reducing the appearance of lines. It has shea and the oils in it. And especially around like décolletage and your neck, where women classically do have wrinkly skin from sun damage, you want a product that helps to support skin softness and hide any evidence of that. And that’s what this product does.
