Beauty Review: It’s time to rewild our skin at Esse!

It was a real treat to try out the proudly South African probiotic skincare range Esse at the range’s fi rst concept store with a relaxing facial last week.

The Esse salon opened this month at the Ballito Lifestyle Centre in a bold but natural next step for the probiotic skincare range.

So if you are a fan of the range you can now have the complete experience.

I met the owner, Trevor Steyn, at the launch last Wednesday.

He’s a organic chemist from Richmond who beat international brands like Estee Lauder to the breakthrough that enabled him to deliver live probiotics in his products.

Esse is now very popular in the skincare markets abroad, boasting to be the third most popular product in Sweden. Not bad for a guy from Richmond, as he himself joked.

The premise behind the range is that skin diseases like eczema and acne are apparently almost nonexistent in hunter-gatherer communities but they have now become very common in modern ‘germaphobe’ society.

The overuse of antibiotics and chemicals in cosmetic product all contribute to damaging the skin’s natural healthy bio-me. Esse poducts contain microbes and prebiotic nutrients to combat this. But back to my facial. . . Walking into the fresh and ultra modern storefront you immediately know you are going to have a luxurious time.

Seated on their plush couches I filled in a quick form to inform my therapist, Vicky Maharaj, of my skin’s history and preferences. Vicky chatted to me briefly before deciding that the ‘Sensitive Facial’, a gentle, probiotic treatment used to restore the barrier function of the skin, was my best fit for my first treatment.

The experience was heavenly. Vicky was professional and pleasant and her fingers, oh so talented.

The treatment room was very comfortable and, covered with a blanket as I was, I was so relaxed by the end that I nearly dozed off .

Vicky performed a very accurate skin analysis as part of the treatment and gave me some great advice on how to take care of my skin.

A regular exfoliation was something that was sorely missing from my beauty routine. After the treatment she recommended products from the Esse range that would suit my skin type and help with the dark circles around my eyes and my dry lips.

• Treatment: Sensitive Facial
• Therapist: Vicky Maharaj
• Cost: R850
• Stand out: Esse is the first skincare brand in the world to offer genetic sequencing of the skin microbiome. Therapists are trained to take skin swabs for analysis that will let the client know which bacteria are dominant on the skin surface and what the diversity of their skin microbiome is.

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