Liz Earle Cleanse & Polish For Men

Here’s to me finally cracking on to another bestseller cleanser, this time around it’s by Liz Earle and after winning multiple awards over the years, also high time I got my hands on it to try myself. Not a newbie with cream cleansers anymore for a while now, I knew what to expect from the whole muslin cloth action and thicker cream cleanser. I did my research and the one for men is actually exactly the same as for women, just the packaging is in a brown/gray tube this time around.

The product itself is a cocoa butter based cream cleanser with eucalyptus and rosemary essential oils. There’s a lot more in here than just these three, but they give us a fair indication of what to expect. It’s a thick product that needs some warming up on the skin and it has a strong fresh smell due to the eucalyptus. When I say strong, I do mean strong enough to open up a clogged nose and it took me back a bit when I first used it. How was this going to be good for my skin, if it was this heavily scented?

Well you never know from just one try so I did the usual trial and stuck with it for quite a while. Massaging the product in on dry skin, really working it so that it would warm up a but, otherwise it would just sit there and look like white gunk. Sometimes my face is just cold and it took ages to get the product to disappear. You finish off by running the muslin cloth under warm water, I did the hot version a few times but found it irritated my skin and I didn’t quite get the ‘steam of essential oils to uplift’. All I got was a hot cloth on my face and my cheeks turning red. Personal preference no doubt so I stuck to warm water and some scrubbing action with the cloth. You get a cloth with purchase, sometimes more if you buy a set, but I didn’t really fancy these cloths. They’re so incredibly gentle and fine that they barely did anything except smear the product around. I grabbed my Pai ones or just a regular washcloth for some quick swipes and remove it all.

Removal is very easy compared to working it in and having it dissolve all the makeup/grime/sunscreen. The warm water just melts it all away and skin is left non stripped, ready for whatever you want to do next. I did notice however that after a while I was getting clogged pores around my nose. Now this can be from the combination of this cleanser and the then heavy moisturizer, the fact that I didn’t use chemical exfoliants at the time and I was getting a bit sick. It’s a rich cleanser so keep  that in mind when you want to purchase this. It doesn’t moisturize but it’s possible that you’ll get some residue on the skin from improper removal -follow up with a regular cleanser if you like- and that might cause clogged pores. It’s cocoa butter after all, doesn’t agree with everyone’s skin.

All things considered I quite like this cleanser, especially if you heed the warnings of it’s usage and get enough exfoliation in there, plus it’s suited for your skintype. Just make sure you’re ready to give this a go and you like a fresh smelling cleanser. The scent is quite powerful and even near the end of my pump bottle, it was still as potent as when first used.

Phil