Clear Turn Sorry Bare Skin Face Mask

For the weeks when your skin has had enough of you.

Late nights, a flight, a change of season, three new products introduced at once. Skin has a way of registering all of it at the surface, and the sensible response is not another active. It is a pause.

Clear Turn built this mask for that pause. The formula is deliberately short and mildly acidic, with the usual suspects left out: no fragrance, no colourants, no mineral oil, no ethyl alcohol, no parabens, no UV absorbers, no silicones. What remains is a quiet blend of plum, pomegranate peel, white tremella mushroom and cherry blossom leaf, sitting on a soft cotton-textured sheet.

The sheet itself is worth mentioning. It is so thin and transparent that you can see your skin through it, and it grips closely enough that you can move around while wearing it. Seven in a box, so it can be a run of good nights rather than a single one.

Why You'll Love It

• Genuinely minimal. A short, readable formula with nothing extraneous in it.
• Seven free-from claims. Fragrance, colourants, mineral oil, ethyl alcohol, parabens, UV absorbers and silicones are all absent.
• Mildly acidic. Formulated close to skin's natural pH rather than pushing it somewhere else.
• Botanicals that calm rather than stimulate. Plum fruit, pomegranate peel, tremella mushroom and Yoshino cherry leaf.
• A remarkable sheet. Cotton-textured, highly transparent and closely adhering, with a soft surface that smooths as it sits.
• Seven masks per box. Enough for a proper recovery week.
• Illustrated by NAPPY. A collaboration design, and one of the nicer boxes to have on a shelf.

What's Inside

Tremella fuciformis extract, the white mushroom that holds a great deal of water and is often described as hyaluronic acid's botanical cousin. It sits alongside sodium hyaluronate for straightforward, uncomplicated hydration.

Plum fruit extract and pomegranate peel extract bring antioxidant support without any of the sting that fruit acids can carry.

Prunus yedoensis leaf extract, from the Yoshino cherry, is a quiet staple of Japanese formulation for skin that looks red and unsettled.

Nothing here is trying to resurface, brighten or renew. The point is to stop doing things to your skin for eight minutes.

Who It's For

• Skin that has gone reactive after a run of late nights or travel
• The transition between seasons, when everything suddenly behaves differently
• Anyone who has introduced too many actives too quickly and is paying for it
• Fragrance-free routines
• Recovery weeks after a course of acids or retinoids
• Anyone who would like their skincare to ask less of them occasionally

If You're New to Masking

This is a sensible first sheet mask. There are no acids in it, nothing that tingles, and nothing that will make your skin worse if you use it on a night when it's already annoyed.

A few things worth knowing. Eight minutes is the whole thing, and longer genuinely isn't better. You don't rinse afterwards, you just press the leftover essence in with your hands. And the step people skip, which matters more than the mask itself, is putting a moisturiser on top once you're done.

Good for the week before something you care about, or the week after you've been sleeping badly and your skin has decided to mention it.

Product Details

• Brand: Clear Turn (Kose Cosmeport)
• Product: Sorry Bare Skin Face Mask
• Contents: 7 sheets
• Sheet: Cotton-textured, high transparency, close adhesion
• Formulated without: Fragrance, colourants, mineral oil, ethyl alcohol, parabens, UV absorbers, silicones
• pH: Mildly acidic
• Design: Collaboration with illustrator NAPPY
• Origin: Japan

Moisturising claims relate to the skin's moisture environment. References to external stress relate to dryness-related irritation.