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[ comfort zone ]

Who and What are [ comfort zone ]?

[ comfort zone ] is a luxury Italian spa brand, developed in 1993 by a team of spa professionals and dermatologists, headed by Italian pharmacist, David Bollati.

Their beautifully packaged products include face and body care, a range for men, suncare, and "ambience" (candles, scents and teas). [ comfort zone ] are big on ambience, aiming to create "unforgettable sensorial journeys" with their products and spa treatments.

They say:

"The Mediterranean roots of [ comfort zone ] merge with its international soul to deliver formulations rooted in phytotherapy for its vitamins and enzymes, aromatherapy for its nourishment and nutrients, and lastly the most advanced biochemistry to take advantage of the intelligence of science- a marriage of nature and science. An Italian elegance is reflected within the irresistible products, including the minimalist packaging."

We have to ask... why the [ brackets ]?

"The logo illustrates a cocooning interval in the frenzy of everyday life, with the brackets symbolising two hands gently protecting and treating the skin."

We say:

Ah... we get it now. We think.

[ comfort zone ]'s packaging is pure, chic minimalist style. Each product is housed in a simple, coloured cardboard box but, oh, what cardboard, and oh, what colours. Someone has clearly whiled away many a happy afternoon with their Pantone books to find the exact, most harmonious colour matches. These products are designed to sit beautifully together on a spa shelf.

Aesthetics aside, we found the range to be effective and easy to use once the frustratingly vague instructions had been interpreted correctly. Maybe because the range is aimed at spa professionals rather than the home user, the product instructions are as minimalist as the packaging, with no further information available on the [ comfort zone ] website.

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[ comfort zone ] products - What have we tried?

[ comfort zone ] skin defender cream

comfort zone skin defender cream Shy Spy:

Unless you have a penchant for ultra-girlie or eco-friendly packaging, then there isn't much to dislike about the look of these products. This Skin Defender Cream comes encased in a sleek transparent and metallic silver tub that wouldn't look out of place on the most stylish of bathroom shelves - all of the Spa Spies admired the design, almost forgetting that there was a moisturiser inside! The product itself is a fairly thick white cream that has quite a subtle, fresh scent, and on application feels silky-soft.

It left my skin feeling plumped and moisturised without leaving any stickiness or shiny residue, and worked well under make-up. I have combination skin, and the cream may be a little heavy on my t-zone during the summer months, but it's just about perfect for moisturising winter-worn skin.

The only criticism I would have of this product is with regard to the information and instructions provided. The packaging does not say whether the cream is a day or night cream - or both - (I assume as it is designed to protect against UV rays and environmental stress, it is a day cream) and some of the ingredients have an unfathomable title. What exactly is Smartvector? And does the product have UV protection, as it doesn't have an SPF, but does contain something called Helioguard...

RRP £56 - 50ml

[ comfort zone ] eye supreme extra cream

comfort zone eye supreme cream Single Spy:

I am very wary of anything that goes near my eyes. They tend to the teary at the drop of a hat. Not to mention the stinging.

But this neat pump-action cream in its silver tube and understated blue packaging met the tear-test: with application after application, it caused no adverse reaction around my sensitive eye-zone. But did it have any good effects? It's marketed as an "intensive anti-ageing eye care" cream that I was meant to massage in morning and evening to "a well-cleansed eye contour" (bit ambitious already). What's more, I was meant to tap it in after application "to favour a complete absorption". Can I tell you something? Any product that needs tapping into my skin doesn't win any brownie points for me. This is meant to be a "silkening" eye cream, so why do I have to tap the silk in to my well-cleansed eye contour? Can't it just, you know, absorb?

Never mind the tapping, did the Collaxyl, Oxy, green tea and jaluronic acid visibly smooth my eye contour for a luminous, younger look? There are places in this world where you can pay good money to have intradermic implants of jaluronic acid to fill out the indentations in your facial skin (and improve acne, scars, and fine wrinkles), so this soft white cream seemed like a tapping bargain, especially as I could do the tapping in the comfort of my own bathroom.

Well, I can't say it made a huge amount of visible difference in a couple of weeks, TBH. My skin definitely felt softer, and I was so pleased with this, I started dabbing and tapping on my upper lip as well. But I'm not sure anything can truly fight against many years of Life except the knife or an accepting and equable disposition. But for those who can't run to either, this cream will keep your eye contour plumped as well as any cream can. And it doesn't make you cry.

RRP £38.95 - 15ml

[ comfort zone ] hydramemory mask

comfort zone hydramemory mask

Sybaritic Spy:

This is a good texture and goes onto my skin easily. It's not too strongly perfumed and is a green/blue colour when you squeeze it out of the tube. It sinks into the skin well. You are supposed to leave it on the skin for 10-15 minutes. The first couple of times I used it I found it sank in after a couple of minutes. I used rather more the next time and found that it stayed on my skin for longer by using a more generous amount.

I like the fact that this mask does not dry hard -- it soaks into the skin and you then wash it off with a warm flannel. My skin feels soft after using it, and the skin on my neck is noticeably brighter.

I don't think it is a miracle cure for wrinkles or dryness, but it is pleasant to use. It's gentle on my skin and I found I used it two or three times a week. It doesn't drip or crack and flake while you have it on, so I could put it on when I got out of the shower and let it soak in while I sorted my clothes for the day.

RRP £21.95 - 50ml

[ comfort zone ] lushly floral hand balm

comfort zone lushly Sensitive Spy:

Unlike its cardboard-clad cousins, this hand balm is presented in a translucent plastic box, housing a tube of floral hand cream, which smells prettily of tiare flowers. The heady scent lingers as this easily absorbed cream sinks into the skin.

It's a little runnier than you would expect from a hand cream, which led to a few comedic incidents caused by over-zealous squirting.

One question: why is this product grey? It's a boring putty grey, an undercoat paint grey. Looking at the ingredients I can see it took a combination of three colourings to achieve this desired shade of grey. I appreciate the effort but it doesn't sit well with the pretty, girlie scent.

Colour-related gripe aside, I have very dry skin on my hands and this balm worked a treat, leaving my skin soft, moisturised and happy.

RRP £11.95 - 50ml

[ comfort zone ] man space hydra performer

comfort zone man space Suave Spy:

I thought that "man space" was a description for the area within arm's reach of the sofa where all the tools for a manly night in were kept: beer, snacks and tv remote controls; or alternatively a shed at the bottom of the garden where I could retire to smoke a pipe, listen to the cricket and read a copy of AutoCar Trader. Apparently not. It is a collection of products for the dynamic go-ahead male. To emphasise this special dynamism, "man phrases" adorn the packaging such as "Mind at rest, skin in action". I quite liked the sound of my mind being at rest, but was slightly less sure whether I wanted my skin to be in action, but he who dares wins. It was time to delve deeper within the classy olive green textured cardboard exterior.

The sleek plastic bottle had the slight air of up-market pump-action soap-dispenser, which was re-affirmed by the somewhat unnatural egg shell blue cream that appeared. I don't know what it was that gave the cream that colour - maybe the Ethylparaben or the PPG-26-Butheth-26, the Phenoxyethanol or the Cl 42090. Mistakenly, I thought that the earthy colours and texture of the packaging was going to mean a more natural product. Maybe men don't want that. We want performance, we want innovation, we want action!

Being someone who doesn't often dabble in the world of skin products, it took a couple of applications before I got out of the habit of putting it around the area where I had just shaved, and rubbing it onto the whole of my face instead. A delicate fragrance with a very subtle citrus tone eased concerns that I might smell like a softy, and it did have an immediate freshening effect.

My wife did comment that I had a "Radiant Glow" which I think is a good thing, providing you don't work in the nuclear power industry, and my skin did feel slightly softer. As for the zen-like properties that were suggested, I sadly didn't experience my mind at rest and my skin in action.

A good pampering gift option, though.

RRP £33 - 50ml

[ comfort zone ] man space shower performer

[ comfort zone ] man space shower performer

Steady spy:

Packaged in a smart green box, the shower performer (aka hair and body shampoo) promises to be a total body revitalizing shower gel. It comes in a good looking dark grey tube and the gel itself is a very pale straw colour. At first I was slightly underwhelmed by the product but as my shower went on I started to appreciated the subtly masculine fragrance. Several showers later, I'm quite converted. Much less overpowering than many of the cheaper products aimed at the male market, this shower gel is refreshing and effective and I like not having to faff around with a separate shampoo.

RRP £18.95 - 200ml

[ comfort zone ] everyday milk

[ comfort zone ] everyday milk

Salubrious spy:

I have to confess that I wasn't particularly excited about the prospect of reviewing a cleanser, but changed my view slightly when a classy matt dusky pink box arrived on my desk.

The cleanser itself comes in a smart tapered pump bottle and is a white lotion, that looks pretty much like any other cleansing lotion. The scent is light and pleasant and the lotion feels good on the skin - like a cross between a cleansing milk and a moisturiser. But best of all, I applied it all over my face and eye area and it didn't sting at all. This gets the thumbs up from me as I don't like having to use a separate eye make-up remover. The lotion left my skin feeling smooth and supple and I decided to leave it on rather than rinse it off, which was the other option they gave in the product directions. Overall a pleasant and effective product in a smart box that raised the tone of my bathroom shelf.

RRP £22.95 - 200ml

[ comfort zone ] monticelli spa mud

comfort zone monticelli mud Salubrious spy:

Monticelli spa mud - remodelling mud with thermal water... to apply at home. An interesting concept. Don't get me wrong, I'm as keen on a good mud wrap as the next person, but there's a lot to be said for having it applied, and more importantly, taken off, on someone else's premises.

But I had been given the task of testing it as a home spa product so that's what I did. Having appreciated the smart moss-coloured packaging, my first challenge was to identify the "spa pants", enclosed in the box with the four large sachets of mud. I found what looked like a large polythene bin liner, but nothing that resembled pants. I queried this with our Product Manager and finally the penny dropped: the packaging referred to US pants, ie. spa trousers. That made a little more sense. The spa pants were huge - two wide legs that went on and on. Great if you're 6 feet tall.

Pant mystery solved, I prepared my bathroom by removing everything white, warmed the mud in hot water then started to apply the mud to my skin. The directions advise it to be smoothed over stomach, buttocks, hips and thighs so I dutifully obliged then slipped, literally, into the polythene "comfortsauna" trousers. This was quite a tricky manoeuvre, without getting the dark green/brown mud paste everywhere. Next came the most challenging part - leaving the mud on for 15-30 minutes. I opted for 15, and spent most of the time willing the doorbell not to ring. The smell of the mud was musty, but not unpleasant. The paste felt quite nice on the skin, though the plastic wrap was less so and I was quite glad when the 15 minutes were up and it was time to shower off. I managed to do this without too much mess (though I did have to give the grouting a good scrub afterwards) and towelled off to check out the results.

My skin was certainly soft but I couldn't see any evidence of cellulite reduction or "remodelling". The product was nice enough and my skin felt good afterwards, but in my opinion the treatment wasn't worth the effort or mess.

RRP £27.95 - 4 x 100ml

[ comfort zone ] fruity peel body scrub

comfort zone fruity peel Shy spy:

While the packaging of this product - a transparent tube with silver lid - looks quite stylish, the lime-green gel inside really did remind me of ectoplasm (if you've ever seen Ghostbusters, you'll know what I mean).

On first attempt, I think I got the application a bit wrong, as I'm used to using body scrubs in the shower on wet skin. After reading the instructions properly, I gathered that this was supposed to be applied to dry skin, then rinsed off (although the instructions do say that you can also just rub off with a towel, I'm not sure that I'd want to leave any residue on...)

The scrub is actually less of a "scrub" and more of an "exfoliator" - the gel isn't very abrasive, with a few gentle exfoliating beads, but the main action comes from the fruit acids (AHAs) that get to work on your skin. My skin felt very smooth and soft, and the effects lasted a good few days, without any dryness or irritation whatsoever. In fact, this "fruity peel" worked as well as my favourite scrub, so I suppose I can forgive the ectoplasm look for the sake of the rather good results!

RRP £26.50 - 150ml

Where can I try [ comfort zone ] products?

You can try [ comfort zone ] products at these spas:

Where can I buy [ comfort zone ] products?

Feelunique.com

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