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The beauty secrets of aFRENCH WOMAN With respect

to growing old, ‘Attitude – that’s the magic pill’

of the Channel. (According to Debbie Lewis, Clarins UK MD, Super Restorative is one of Clarins’s most successful ‘word of mouth’ ranges, with women sharing its wonders with their closest friends.)

The organic plant extracts powering the new Clarins Super Restorative creams are pretty interesting, actually. Take harungana, which is used in Madagascan traditional medicine to heal wounds, and has been shown to work 40 per cent more effectively than the far better-known retinol. Harungana’s action in skincare is to turn those droopy fibroblasts back into mini-Eiffel Towers.

Then there’s Montepellier rock-rose, researched in partnership with the National Institute for Health & Medical Research, which targets the dark spots linked to ageing, especially following hormonal changes. Result? A reduction of 48.9 per cent in age spots, after two months of using Clarins Super Restorative Night Cream.

What else Clarins determined in their real-life tests on 300 women was that skin hydration was also boosted by 42 per cent, with women immediately reporting that their skin felt ‘smoothed, more beautiful and moisturised’. These, meanwhile, are just two cornerstones of the Super Restorative

range (showcased left).Fundamentally, though, to quote Mireille

Guiliano again, the biggest difference between French women and British women is ‘attitude – that’s the magic pill’.

So perhaps it’s time to take a leaf out of a French woman’s book (literally, in this case) and start to love the age you are. And (with a little help from Clarins), finally to feel comfortable in the skin you’re in, too…

WHO doesn’t admire the French woman: elegant, groomed, poised…? But it’s more than that: the French have a phrase, ‘être bien

dans sa peau’ – ‘feeling comfortable in your skin’. It really means a sense of being at ease with yourself (and who you are, generally) – but it could equally be taken to mean: loving the skin you’re in, and the age you are.

Mireille Guiliano, author of the recent French Women Don’t Get Facelifts (which comes hot on the heels of her bestseller French Women Don’t Get Fat), gives an insider’s perspective. As she explains, ‘Gravity works just the same in France as it does in the rest of the world… But French women approach ageing with a different mindset to most cultures. With respect to growing old, the biggest difference between French women and most others is not grooming or clothing or nutrition or face and skincare; it’s an attitude.’ Mireille continues: ‘Certainly in France, a woman in her 40s and 50s is still alluring and still seen as an object of desire – but she doesn’t pretend she is ageless. She is comfortable in herself…but she doesn’t attempt to look like her 20-year-old self.’

All the same, we should be thanking our lucky stars for being around at a time when we can not only feel great for our age – but take full advantage of the advances in age-defying skincare technology. Because our skin does face challenges at midlife. Hormonal changes, in particular, can lead to loss of density – skin’s ‘bounce-back’ factor – and age spots. In the five years following menopause, skin loses around 50 per cent of firmness and collagen production dips by 35 per cent.

In terms of sagging and loss of skin ‘resilience’, it’s a drop-off in the activity of fibroblasts that’s to blame. Fibroblasts are cells controlled by hormones – especially oestrogen, production of which drops by up to 50 per cent around menopause. Less

Just 22 miles separate us from France – but, beauty wise, there are huge ‘cultural’ differences. Here’s what we can all learn…

oestrogen = less fibroblast activity = less collagen and elastin production = looking in the mirror one day, and your face just doesn’t look as firm as it once did.

Hormone-powered fibroblasts are star-shaped – appropriately, they’re almost Eiffel Tower-shaped. Depleted fibroblasts are elongated and flatter – hence the loss of firmness, because you haven’t got those microscopic supportive Eiffel Towers.

What to do..? It perhaps shouldn’t come as a surprise that Clarins – the most French of skincare names – have been exploring this subject, in order to come up with solutions that marry the latest in skincare technology with the plant wisdom on which they have built their reputation.

The Super Restorative range has been born out of that, created to enable skin to continue to function at optimum capacity – and has become a Clarins bestseller, a ‘beauty cupboard saviour’, as they put it, for skins approaching or going through menopause. This autumn sees a makeover for two of the bestsellers in the Clarins Super Restorative collection, harnessing Clarins’s latest research into skin ageing – but offering all the sensual pleasure in terms of luxurious texture and heavenly smell which has already earned the range a place in the skincare rituals of women of un certain age, on both sides

FRENCH BEAUTY SECRETSAsk a Frenchwoman, and she refers to her beauty ‘ritual’. Ask a British woman, and it’s a ‘regime’. Which has a higher pleasure factor…? So do as Frenchwomen do, thinking of cleansing, toning, moisturising – and super-repairing – as a pleasure, and some precious, well-earned ‘me-time’.

SUPER RESTORATIVE DAY CREAM, £69 for 50ml. In trials on women using this for three months, wrinkle depth was reduced by 20 per cent, and the volume of wrinkles by 41 per cent

Download the Blippar app to your phone or device. Hold it over this panel to watch a video on the benefits of the Clarins Super Restorative range. You will also be directed to the competition for a chance to win a Clarins YOU Beauty Discovery Box.

Win a Clarins YOU Beauty Discovery Box

T O E N T E R , P L E A S E V I S I T

youbeautydiscovery.co.uk/clarinsPick up a copy of 5 October YOU Magazine to be in with a chance to win more Clarins Beauty Boxes, and follow your Clarins journey.

SUPER RESTORATIVE NIGHT CREAM, £73 for 50ml. Powered by harungana and Montpellier rock-rose, to capitalise on skin’s ‘repair mode’, overnight

Clarins and YOU Beauty Discovery are giving away 80 Beauty Boxes containing a selection of Clarins products worth £120.