Today I got treated to a yummy lunch at Sevruga with the ridiculously gorgeous Renate, she of le ‘Madonna arms’, who just so happens to be the distributor for !QMS and Acquizhen.

For those who don’t know, Acquizhen is a fairly new organic skin care brand. I wrote a little review on it a few months back when I was working for Beauty South Africa, so if you want to take a look at that, you can check it out here. At the time, I was given their Sunrise Soap, R130, a super-creamy orange blossom scented bar o’ awesomeness. Now, three months later, it’s STILL sitting in my bathroom and isn’t half used yet, despite the fact that I reach for it almost every day.

Anyway, the star of today’s show was !QMS’s new time-fighter, Ion Skin Equaliser, R3 200.

It consists of two products, a serum and cream, that contain zinc and copper gluconates, the basic ingredients needed to create a  ‘battery’. When applied to your skin, they generate a mild micro current that helps drive the cream’s active ingredients deep into your epidermis. (The active ingredients include something called a ‘matrikines complex’, a blend of special peptides that help stimulate hyaluronic acid and collagen production in your skin).

Now, on the subject of collagen… !QMS’s big claim to fame is that their line up includes products that contain a special type of natural collagen that can penetrate your skin. (FYI, most products containing collagen are useless because the molecules are too big to be absorbed.) Still, I didn’t understand why this was relevent. After all, !QMS collagen can’t bind to your own and ‘add to it’ permanently. And thank God for that… if it did, you’d end up with all sorts of lumps and bumps popping up all over your face. So, essentially, I wanted to know why they felt their collagen was relevent… and this is where their super-jacked up facialist, Anel, came in…

Unlike many other vacuous spa poppies I’ve met, Anel really knows her shizz. Like, really. I grilled her with a zillion questions and she could answer every single one and them some. Tres impressive. And, in a nutshell, this is what she had to say: when !QMS’s collagen gets into your skin, it swells up and plumps it up from the inside out, making you look fabulously dewy and lush. It’s also able to do this waaaay more effectively and for longer than other water-binding ingredients, like hyaluronic acid for example. Then, while your skin is in this ‘optimum state’, their products’ other ingredients, those that boost your body’s own natural collagen supply, can do their work more effectively.

Mmm… Naturally, this info sparked a new question; ‘Then why can’t I just use any old (super cheap) moisturiser to add a flush of hydration to my skin and then slap on other known collagen stimulators like vitamin C or retinol?’ According to Anel, I could, but they wouldn’t be as effective. This is because !QMS’s collagen penetrates deeper into your skin than other hydrators and is able to plump it up for longer too, giving their collagen-stimulating ingredients a much longer time frame to work in. Clever…

So, if you’re craving collagen, (it’s the only thing that’ll keep your skin firm as you get older), !QMS might be your best bet aside from hitting up the needles.

A big dankie to Renate, Anel and the Freebees PR chicks – I had a lovely lunch. That carpaccio was delish!

Love, love

Leigh

P.S. I was spoiled further with an Acquizhen Rebalancing Mask (can’t wait to show you how it works) and !QMS Lift-o-Firm body lotion, the perfect partner to my new get-anorexic-for-the-Loerie’s diet. I’m looking forward to giving them a bash and letting you know my thoughts.