Winter is hard on skin. Moisture evaporates from the air as the temperature drops, and blustery winds sweep your face dry. To make matters worse, heating saps humidity indoors.
This is the time of year when top quality moisturizers aren’t just important—they’re sheer bliss.
Treatments Crème de la Mer ($335) and Natura Bissé Diamond Extreme ($375) are the reigning queens of facial treatment creams, and both are sold at Neiman Marcus.
Natura Bissé is not a household name, but this family-owned and -operated Spanish company is serious about skincare and supplies top spas around the world.
Diamond Extreme is its vanguard—richly emollient, packed with potent anti-aging and energizing actives from earth and sea, and delightfully lavender scented. It will keep super dry skin hydrated all day, and that’s saying something. Catherine Zeta-Jones, John Mayer, and Kelly Rowland all swear by it.
With fans from Kim Kardashian West to Jerry Hall, Crème de la Mer is brewed with a signature fermented broth of sea kelp, vitamins, minerals, citrus oil, eucalyptus, sunflower, wheat germ, and alfalfa.
The process is complicated—and includes playing sounds through copper plates inserted into vats of the cream—and effective: Crème de la Mer saturates skin with moisture and an elixir of anti-inflammatory and antioxidant ingredients.
Crème de la Mer is so thick you’ve got to rub it between your fingers before applying. If that’s not your style, try the brand’s Moisturizing Soft Lotion ($285), which glides on and absorbs quickly.
Ultra quenching facial moisturizers that won’t break the bank include Sunday Riley’s rich new Ice Ceramide Moisturizing Cream ($65 at Sephora and Neiman Marcus), L’Occitane’s floral-scented Immortelle Precious Cream ($65 at L’Occitane), and Kiehl’s Since 1851 classic Ultra Facial Moisturizer ($50 at Kiehl’s and Neiman Marcus).
Kiehl’s also creates one of the best all-around body moisturizers in the business: Creme de Corps lotion with cocoa butter and beta-carotene ($18).
It’s so effective that premium fitness chain Equinox affixes bottles of this stuff—as well as Kiehl’s Ultra Facial Moisturizer—throughout its locker rooms to please its picky clientele.