CHANEL UV Essentiel SPF50 New Formula

[unpaid/sample] If you’ve got five minutes spare, take a look at the CHANEL produced YouTube Beyond The Jar that features their open-sky laboratory in Madagascar. It’s 40 hectares of land used for conducting plant research – vanilla and camellias in particular – and the first of four ‘open-sky’ labs with one in Costa Rica and two more in France. I like the way that CHANEL maintains its independence in researching ingredients – the brand loves individuality and the only way to achieve that is to do it themselves, so they do. As a general rule, I have not found a disappointing CHANEL product – in 2013, the brand introduced a set called Chanel Resynchronizing Skincare with Le Jour, La Nuit, and Le Weekend and it was absolutely the definitive product range that made me realise that this brand is going above and beyond. And somehow, don’t really make a song and dance about it.

I like Asian SPFs for their lightweight gel formula and while Essentiel isn’t quite on that lightness level, it’s immediately comfortable on the skin and in comparison to many facial SPFs would be considered light. It’s more of a cream formula than a gel formula. What’s new about this version is that CHANEL is combining the SPF protection with a skin strengthening complex. Breaking this complexion down, two new ingredients are added – blue ginger extract and Tahitian gardenia extract. The former is to boost skin’s natural defences, the latter to strengthen the skin barrier and what the difference is I don’t know ;-). Blue ginger comes from the open-sky labs in Madagascar so it’s tested and sourced by the brand. It claims 8 hour moisturising, so you probably don’t need anything on the top or underneath, depending upon how you conduct your routine.

Certainly, this SPF50 is more expensive than (many!) others and bear in mind, you don’t need to spend a fortune on SPF these days, but it does have the feel of something special and I would buy it for peace of mind and for the hydration aspect. I hate lots of layers on my complexion so I’d be happy to use this as a two-in-one with just the Water Tint on top. Speaking of, I’m keeping an eye on the new Water Fresh Tints coming in for the summer – it sells out every single year and the bun fight is real when it does land! So, the SPF50 new version is £48 but John Lewis has it for £40.80 HERE, the You Tube video (in French but don’t worry, it’s obviously all visual so you’ll get the gist) is HERE.   The new formula packaging has the silver dot that you can see that differentiates it from the past formula.

Non affiliate is HERE.