I’ve been on a mask mission lately, trying out everything from Tracie Martyn’s Enzyme Exfoliant (brilliant, but at $98 for a jar the size of a salt shaker, probably not the wisest purchase) to Shiseido White Lucent Intensive Brightening Mask – one that actually adheres to your face like a scary ski mask (lovely and, again, expensive) to a homemade oatmeal mask that turned out to be an oily, sloppy disaster.
In my “travels” from supermarket to Sephora, I came across Korres Wild Rose Instant Brightening Mask, perhaps the antithesis to Tracie Martyn’s more intense and expensive – though not necessarily …read more

Why do so many great products, such as Shiseido White Lucent Intensive Brightening Mask, cost more than $60 ($68 for six masks, to be precise)?
Doesn’t Shiseido understand how addicted I am to its unbelievably luxurious formula, the same one that leaves my face petal-soft and somehow feeling protected from the outside elements for hours – HOURS – after I’ve applied the mask? Don’t the good people there understand that $68 is like a few hundred dollars in this economy?
I digress. All of the White Lucent products, which contain Spot Deacti-Complexes, Vitamin C and Asian plant extracts, target dark spots and …read more