27 skin-restoring ingredients in one 50ml pot?
Yes and M.E. SkinLab founder and pharmacist Michele Evrard’s Baume 27 is without a shadow of a doubt one of the most exciting balms on the market in my opinion.
Priced at £112, Baume 27 definitely sits in the luxury niche bracket – so not surprisingly, it’s part of Selfridges’ high end beauty edit – but gosh I was impressed when I tried this. I normally test skincare for at least 28 days (that’s how long it takes to really see what a product is doing – or NOT! – to your skin) and I’ve seen a difference in under a week. In fact I could already tell this was a promising product within 2-3 days.
Alright then, but what’s it like?
It’s one of the new breed of cream-meets-balms (rather like Danish brand Tromborg’s 10 Below moisturiser, not dissimilar in texture) – firm, rich, white, glossy, creamy and it melts into skin but here’s the good bit – without the oily glaze that the oil-based balms leave on your skin.
Centenella Asiatica we ❤ you
A New Generation Balm
Baume 27 is what I’d call one of the “new generation balms” which, if you’re 40+ should be an essential part of your skin toolkit.
Among the 27 ingredients are MA2 Complex which is made up of 3 natural extracts of the Centenella Asiatica plant (also called gotu kola) which is big in Ayurvedic medicine, used for the treatment of skin conditions, to stimulate microcirculation and it’s famed for its anti-free radical properties too. Now there are oils in this formula, but it doesn’t feel oily – it’s more glowy, for lack of a better description, so for more mature skin which tends to become a bit more papery and lose its sheen, this would be a really good cell-energising repair balm to try.
I’ve been applying a layer at night and have really seen an improvement on my face first thing in the morning, this balm’s hydrating effect seems to be particularly long-lasting.
Shea butter, sesame and need oils, peptides (lysine and arginine), white birch and hibiscus seed extract as well as kudzu and aloe vera are all in this cool white pot – so you’re paying for a lot of energizing, moisture-boosting factors in there. Peptides are tiny and can penetrate the skin, encouraging skin to produce more collagen which is *vital* the older you get, to help slow any sagging.
If your skin is mature or mature-ish, dry or sun-damaged, hand on heart I think this is one of the best cutting edge balms I’ve come across – I’ll report back at the end of a full 28 days.
Our favourite new cell repairer. No parabens, no phenoxyethanol, mineral oils or silicone
It’s also worth checking out the rest of the range, including the Bio-Vitalizing Cell Cleansing Balm and Bio-Vitalizing Cell Hydrating Fluid but I can’t comment on them as I haven’t tried them yet. If you have, definitely let us know what you think! x