Fashion Quarterly | Tried and tested: Shiseido White Lucent All Day Brightener

FQ’s digital editor Kelly McAuliffe decides enough is enough when it comes to hyper-pigmentation.

For some, the summer months marks the beginning of a healthy, sunkissed glow. For others, it is when pesky pigmentation and a dull complexion comes to the fore, prompting you to hide your face under layers of makeup.

If you are someone who battles against pigmentation and dark spots, it can be challenging to let your skin ‘breathe’ for fear of revealing all your skin imperfections to the world. I speak from experience here, having been prone to freckles my entire life. However, it wasn’t until recent years that this turned into a proper hyper-pigmentation problem, with contrasting dark spots and pale patchy areas mainly across my forehead and nose.

I’m a huge fan of letting my ‘natural glow’ shine through tinted moisturiser during summer, so as the pigmentation worsened, so too did my confidence – I even started to avoid going swimming as it would mean revealing all that lay beneath my carefully-constructed makeup. Avoiding the beach or pool is NOT what you want to be doing on a hot New Zealand summer’s day!

The ‘problem’ hasn’t been such a bugbear that I felt I needed to seek non-invasive skin treatments such as laser or peels, but the blotchy patches and dullness was in-my-face for a good few months of the year and I was getting sick of it. Surely, there had to be something I could do to minimise it?

Cue Shiseido’s White Lucent All Day Brightener N SPF50+, which conveniently landed on my desk a few weeks ago. Let’s just say I moved as swiftly as the wind we’ve been experiencing in recent days, to try it. Among the key ingredients is the pale pinkish-white Japanese cherry blossom, which helps to suppress the skin’s signals for pigment production, meaning it not only corrects and resists existing dark spots and pigmentation, but helps to build up your skin’s resistance to dark spot formation. Bingo!

The product has a two-pronged approach, and the second part might be an even bigger treat; a ‘light-transform powder’ which helps to reflect light and a Multi-Target Vitamin C and a Vitamin C & E derivative, which in combination, works to instantly brighten the skin and give you a luminous glow. No complaints here.

While the All Day Brightener is good for adding overall radiance and ‘brightness’ to your complexion, the MicroTargeting Spot Corrector and Spot Correcting Serum are both concentrated on targeting specific problem areas and all products can be used in conjunction with one another.

The All Day Brightener also contains a SPF 50+ which will help you to stay protected against New Zealand’s harsh sun and prevent further dark spots and pigmentation from occurring.

A few weeks’ in, and although not completely gone, the darker patches on my forehead are now more even. It is recommended that with any brightening products, you should also avoid spending too much time in direct sunlight and if you have to spend some time outdoors, layer on a high SPF and cover up with a hat – a recommendation I’m taking very seriously!