Every Finnish Person I Know Uses This Supermarket Moisturizer
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This first appeared on theStrategist U.K., our recently launched, Brit-specific shopping-recommendation site. Since thismoisturizeris also available to buy here, we are publishing it for our readers on this side of the pond.
When I moved to Helsinki from London last year, I was wildly unprepared for just how cold -13°F feels. There are so many annoying things that happen in really cold weather (phones just … don’t work?), but one of the worst side effects was that, almost overnight, my skin became extremely dry and patchy. I’ve never really hadproblematic skin— if anything, it’s more prone to being oily than dry — so I had no idea what I was supposed to do.
All the Finnish people I talked to told me that the worst thing you can do in cold weather is to use a moisturizer with an oil or gel base, which is what I had been doing (I was usingClinique’s Dramatically Different Moisturizing Gel). Face oils don’t hydrate the skin, so you need acream-based moisturizerinstead. Luckily I didn’t need to look for long because everyone recommended the exact same product: Lumene’s Sisu Moisture Remedy.
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Lumene istheFinnish skin-care brand: Most Finnish women will have at least one Lumene product in their makeup bags. They’ve been around since the ’70s, and their products are on sale in every Finnish supermarket. It’s basically the Finnish equivalent of Simple, or No.7. At $21 per 50ml tub, Lumene’s face cream is a mid-range Finnishskin-care product: more expensive that Apo Base ($6 for 100ml) and cheaper thanHeuna Organics($170 for 30ml). Considering winters reach -40°F in the north of Finland, it makes sense that Lumene has developed a really good winter moisturizer.
Within a few days of starting to use it, the dry patches on my face had begun to disappear, and within a week they’d gone. Even though it’s a cream-based moisturizer, I didn’t find ittoo greasyand I was able to apply bothSPFunderneath it and makeup on top of it. Regarding the scent: I’m not a huge fan of overly fragrant moisturizers, so the fact that this one is only mildly scented with natural pine and spruce appealed to me.
On particularly cold and windy days, following the advice of my Finnish friends, I got into the habit of applying a pea-size blob to my face half an hour before leaving the house for extra protection. A small blob of this face cream goes a long way, so one tub should easily see you through an entire winter. Few places feel as frigid as Helsinki, but when February hits, and the bitter cold settles in, this cream will easily keep your skin protected.
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