Though the Southern Hemisphere is inching its way towards its trademark warmer temperatures, we’re not completely out of the woods when it comes to our skin. Winter, for all its bunkered-down cosiness, has a habit of wreaking havoc on our complexions – from dryness to irritation to an erasure of that covetable glow, our winter skin inevitably requires slightly more TLC than its summer counterpart.

Emma Lewisham, Founder and CEO of her namesake New Zealand-based natural skincare brand, knows the struggle all too well. “Our skin is the interface between our internal and external environments (our body and the world around us), which is a really tough job!” she explains. “When these environments change, our skin is quite literally caught in the middle.”

A bitter cocktail of decreased temperatures and humidity, muddled with air conditioner overreliance and scalding showers provide the perfect canvas for dehydrated, irritated, and inflamed skin

 

Enter: Supernatural Sleeping Face Mask. The first mask in Emma Lewisham’s cult favourite range, and the gateway to radiant skin both in winter and in warmer seasons beyond. “It’s designed to deliver a triple-action effect; optimising the skin’s own nocturnal behaviour, strengthening its structure, and deeply conditioning,” says Lewisham of the concentrated, at-home treatment, blended to plump, firm, and deeply nourish your skin before the sun rises. “By understanding and working with the skin’s own physiology to first optimise its own activity, then enhance, we’ve been able to push the bounds of what can be achieved with an overnight treatment.”

‘Overnight’ being the operative word. Dubbed ‘beauty sleep in a bottle’, Lewisham and her team set out to harness the skin’s innate nightly reparative and regenerative capabilities in the product’s silky, elegantly scented formulation. “Understanding and harnessing this nocturnal behaviour is one of the ways that we’ve been able to deliver profound results from our Supernatural Sleeping Mask,” shares Lewisham of the product’s genesis.

“The incredible advances in skin science have revealed that melatonin has a wider action on the body than just driving sleep – it actually triggers a cascade of beneficial behaviour in the skin,” she explains. “We use a unique and scientifically researched extract from the Gardenia Jasminoides that’s been shown to convert to a melatonin-like signalling molecule on the skin to enhance this activity. This is how we help to optimise the skin’s own overnight behaviour … to really create some powerful enhancements.”

 

Ingredients-wise, Lewisham prioritises organic wherever possible. From a skin health standpoint, “we believe in only putting the most pure and natural ingredients into our formulations,” and from a social and environmental standpoint, “the chemicals used in conventional farming can be incredibly damaging to the people farming the crops, their local communities and to the health of our precious soil. Our intention is to help restore our Earth, not just sustain its current state, and organic, regenerative farming has a key role to play.”

The Supernatural Sleeping Face Mask is the (moisturising, lifting, radiant) sum of its 22 active parts – a blend of Gardenia Jasminoides, collagen-boosting bioactives, a conditioning hydrate complex and a gentle, plant-sourced AHA to delicately liberate dead skin cells. Formulated for all ages, life stages and complexions, Lewisham’s products (Sleep Mask included), transcend generations, with mothers and daughters using the same products from the range. “It’s so wonderful that we get to be part of those special relationships,” she shares.

 

Respect for the skin, respect for the planet - the founding ethos that Lewisham’s products are built upon (and they’ve got the eco-credentials to prove it). In 2021, they became the world’s first certified Climate Positive and 100% circularly designed beauty brand, and through the company’s complimentary global takeback programme ‘Emma Lewisham Beauty Circle’, they reclaim all used packaging for refills (their innovative pod and pouch system spans all products) or recycling. “This industry-first initiative not only helps to eliminate waste but has been certified to reduce carbon emissions per product by up to 74%,” says Lewisham.

“Since launching the Emma Lewisham Beauty Circle in 2020, refills are now between 45-50% of our sales each month. This has resulted in a saving of over 22,000kg of carbon emissions in the last 12 months (the equivalent of driving the length of NZ nearly 50 times). All our products are also certified Climate Positive at a product level by Toitū Envirocare, meaning for each product produced, we sequester more carbon than we emit.”

Fittingly, the Emma Lewisham range exists at the nexus of science and nature. An alchemy the Founder insists co-exists “beautifully”. “The most powerful way to interact with the skin is by harnessing nature, therefore we only use natural ingredients, harnessing both bio-identical ingredients found within the skin as well as the specialised, scientifically proven natural plant extracts,” she says. “This synergistic ingredient system is how we can deliver efficacy and tolerability in a formulation – we don’t need to compromise.”

Explore the Emma Lewisham range >