Lifting your eyes to the summer sun might make your inner optimist smile, but these five products will keep the rest of your face happy!
Sweet summertime—time for blue skies, sunshine, days at the pool, and everything else under the sun (pardon the pun) to make you smile. But when those UV rays meet the smile lines around your eyes, it’s a surefire recipe for the dreaded “crow’s feet” wrinkles.
Just as dreaded as ants at a picnic, crow’s feet on a face are to be avoided at all costs. How can you keep your face glowing like the sun when the sun is the whole problem to begin with? Don’t lose heart if you peek in the mirror after a day of sunshine, chlorine, and squinty-eye smiles to find a collection of creases at the corners of your eyes—our editors have been there, done that, and they (and their eyes!) have lived to tell the tale.
Give your under-eyes some over-due attention this summer with our editors’ five favorite products for ensuring that some of your most sensitive skin stays smooth and shiny all season long!
But there’s something about our cotton-candy-pink girlhood that beckons to us—that makes us crave a world of artificial colors and flavors, girl-power Barbie music-and-movie montages, and everything else that made growing up in and around the 2000’s amazing. This is our defense of nostalgia. And, while we’re not going to pretend that artificially colored and flavored snack foods or made-in-China plastic shoes are the best investments a girl can make, we’re also going to acknowledge them for what they are—a beautiful representation of a life before social media and adulting and taxes. A life we could all stand to revisit…even if only for a while.
How We Roll
What’s the first step in your skincare routine after toning your face? If it’s not enjoying an ultra-relaxing, cooling, and depuffing under-eye massage, then you’re seriously missing out!
Clinique’s All About Eyes massaging serum applicator has a heavenly cooling effect for tired, stressed-out skin, and the serum keeps your eyes feeling smooth and refreshed all day long. Studies show that it also reduces under-eye darkness over time for an extra glow.
Patch Things Up
You probably won’t hear it here first, but we’re saying it anyway: under-eye patches are heavenly. Available soaked in every serum combination we’ve ever heard of (and plenty we haven’t) there’s an under-eye patch for your every need…and we’d be lying if we didn’t admit our editor-in-chief was wearing a Vitamin E-infused pair while typing out this very article.
If you want to add a bit of youthful sparkle to your skincare routine before you even unveil your new-and-improved under-eye area, you can do that, too. For a dash of nostalgia, we love the Crème x Hello Kitty collection’s Star of My Eye retinol-infused patches—they’re pink, blue, and purple and they even have mini kitty faces printed on the corners! (The results are appropriately stellar, too.)
Night Light
Applying an overnight eye cream is one of the singular best decisions you can make for your face—and there’s something ultra-luxurious about daubing a slightly-more-than-healthy amount of cream beneath each eye before you close them and drift off to dreamland. This summer, don’t stay out so late chasing sunsets that you forget this imperative step for keeping your eyes looking awake and alive!
For an under-eye cream that works overtime while you’re catching some Zzz’s, don’t sleep on the Estēe Lauder Advanced Night Repair Gel-Crème. It’s thick and luscious and practically bounces from your fingertip to the skin beneath your eyes, and you’ll be able to see the difference in only a few days. Get ready to wake up looking and feeling refreshed!
Daily Dazzler
If we’ve learned one thing in our search for smoother under-eyes, it’s this: shining eyes are worth the splurge. For a product that will turn your everyday look into a glam equivalent of the “starry eyes” emoji, then you can’t expect to get away with drugstore products. So, if you’re ready to sparkle and shine like never before, there’s only one brand that will do it: Chanel.
For an opulent under-eye option for your daytime skincare needs, we can’t get enough of their no.1 under-eye cream. Yes, its worth the splurge—only a single dot beneath each eye will give you an almost iridescent glow that looks a little bit like magic…and feels like it, too! We aren’t suggesting that you turn Chanel products into your daily drivers, but this Chanel is well worth canceling your Netflix subscription to afford.
Get a Little Shady
Okay, so this final step in our under-eye routine isn’t actually a cosmetic product at all—but it will save you plenty of stress and squint lines. A pair of oversized quality sunglasses (look for ones with polarized lenses!) can save you literal years of premature aging by keeping you wide-eyed even in the midst of that harsh summer glare.
Our go-to? Tiffany & Co! Not only do we love making our inner Holly Golightly smile, but we can also confirm that they’re some of the best sunnies we’ve had the pleasure of wearing. Gucci? Ray Ban? Been there, done that—and Tiffany reigns supreme. Match our vibe with this pair on sale at Solstice and prepare to see la vie en Tiffany Blue.
Final Thoughts
We’re all for fun in the sun, but, when that fun turns to furrows at the corners of our eyes, we know it’s time to step up our skincare routine. Incorporate just one or two of our under-eye-care steps into your daily routine…your face will thank you!