TWELVE Beauty The London Mask

Ultra-gentle detoxifying mask for sensitive, stressed skin, 1.7 oz

TWELVE Beauty’s London Mask is an excellent illustration of just how different this product lineup is. Sure, masks that combine detoxifying, purifying clay with hydrating ingredients are hard to come by, but they’re out there. (We carry a few of them and love them.) But what you’ll notice with this one is that it is arrestingly smooth. No grittiness whatsoever. Which, as formulator Pedro Catalá explained to us, is important: for stressed, sensitive, reactive skin, he believes that grit is not a good thing. Makes sense, right?

Here’s what explains the higher price tag: to get that beautifully smooth, creamy texture, Pedro hand-blends the formula himself over the course of three days to make sure it’s mixed just enough so that it holds together, but not so much that it hardens and becomes gritty. This also ensures that its beneficial ingredients don’t get trapped inside the emulsion and, instead, remain on its surface, where they can come into direct contact with the skin. It’s such a time-consuming process that he can only make 50 jars per month. With TWELVE, the ingredients may be (for the most part) ones you’ve seen elsewhere, but devil’s in the details.

Pedro developed this mask after spending many years as the pharmacist at a famed oncology clinic in London, where he saw a clear need for a detoxifying treatment that would address the effects of air pollution while at the same time soothing and softening stressed skin. Thanks to its masterful blend of kaolin, olive-derived squalene, rice, comfrey, mallow, cucumber, and vitamin B5, it does that beautifully, even on the most sensitive, post-surgical skin.

Like the other items in the TWELVE collection, The London Mask is free from parabens, sulfates, silicones, petrochemicals and glycols. Formulated and produced in Spain.