Stink Tank – Biologique Recherché Masque Vivant

This is the grossest-smelling skin care product in the world. It must be, because I eat durian and stinky tofu like they’re ice cream and I CANNOT stand the smell of this mask. But oh, this mask, it is a miracle product. Read this link about it. I concur with her review:

Angela got me this sample with a warning that it smells like feet. She lied; it smells waaaay worse.  I wasn’t initially fazed because I opened the lid and sniffed what seemed to be a nutty innocuous scent. Mmmmkay.

And THEN today I squeezed a bit onto my fingers to review:

It smells like fermented soy sauce mixed with fermented bean curd mixed with pork fur (pork floss / rousong.) It’s this sort of sweet sticky scent that shoots up your nostrils and refuses to leave. You know this is smelly cuz my cat was allllll over it. And look at how ugly the texture is: it’s like sticky dark soy sauce all over your face.

But IT WORKS DAMNIT. After hanging in there for 10 minutes and wheezing as I wash it off the sink, making my whole house smell like the bottom of a burnt soy vat, I noticed that my skin was soooooooooo silky. As I rinsed, the mask became almost rough with granules, as if something dried up. It took layers of dead skin. My face appeared brighter, softer, silkier, and even whiter. I’m still touching my face because it’s sooo soft.

Although it’s really an effective mask, I don’t know if I have the courage to make this my normal routine. It’s like becoming a delicate flower stuck in a pile of dung.

Pros: one of the best, most immediately effective masks I’ve ever tried.

Cons: DID I MENTION THE SMELL??!!

Second opinion: Angela here. So Renee insisted that I try the mask ($64 for 3.4 oz. at Vicki Morav salon) right after she did, like out of solidarity.

To my admittedly insensitive nose, it smells like an intense ramen seasoning packet gone funky. Ironically, I can’t do durian and stinky tofu, yet I found the mask’s odor completely bearable and non-offensive for the 20 minutes that I had it on. I actually find the vomiting vinegar smell of Biologique Recherché P50V lotion–which I smoothed onto my face before applying the mask–a lot worse (though also bearable).

As for the results, skin was brighter, smoother, and tighter immediately afterwards but not so much that I was ready to anoint the mask as HG. (The brightening effect didn’t last through the next day.)

What really impressed me was that (1) it didn’t dry out my skin despite being targeted for oily skins and in fact my skin felt a little more hydrated than normal (e.g., my skin didn’t crack like normal during the 5 minutes I spent taking selfies after washing the mask off and having no skincare on) and (2) pimples were flatter and seemed on their way out, even more so the next morning (I’d had them for a couple of days and they definitely didn’t feel like they were on their way out before the mask).

Because this really gave zits a kick in the pants (What kind of pants do zits wear? Skin-ny jeans!), I’ll conserve my remaining samples to use as a spot treatment or just on problem areas.

Ingredients:

Yeast Extract (Faex Extract), Water (Aqua), Propylene Glycol, Bentonite, Kaolin, Alcohol Denat., Cucumis Sativus (Cucumber) Fruit Extract, Glycerin, Vinegar, Lactic Acid, Hamamelis Virginiana Bark/Leaf/Twig Extract, Hypericum Perforatum Flower/Leaf/Stem Extract, Acacia Senegal Gum, Xanthan Gum.