Must-Have Cult Product: Fresh’s Sugar Lip, Face, and Body Polishes 

A spoonful of sugar may make the medicine go down, but it can also enhance your skincare efforts. The Sugar Collection by Fresh, including products for the face, body, and lips, is an amazing addition to both a professional makeup kit and an everyday makeup regime. Sugar (and brown sugar) exfoliates and prepares the skin to soak up moisture and makes any area appear refreshed.

The inspiration for the line dates back to childhood for Fresh co-founders Lev Glazman and Alina Roytberg. After starting the brand, the pair later discovered that both of their grandmothers used sugar as a go-to home remedy—to heal their scrapes and save skin from infection or scarring. So centering products around this therapeutic, natural ingredient just made sense. Sugar is a natural antiseptic and aids in removing dead skin, stimulating circulation, and leaving behind an even base for moisturizer, primer, or makeup. Here are my three favorites from this classic line.

Fresh Sugar Lip Polish

Sugar Lip Polish is a great first step toward the perfect pout. The product removes dead skin that can occur from seasonal changes, dehydration, and flakes that build up overnight just from sleeping. Use a dab to stimulate circulation and leave lips velvety soft, so that lipstick or gloss goes on more evenly. Throw one in your purse and keep another by your bathroom sink for quick exfoliation morning, midday, or evening.

Fresh Sugar Face Polish

Nourishing and refining, Sugar Face Polish removes the top layers of dead cells and reveals the healthy glow that’s below. Makeup artists can keep it in their kit to take a client’s complexion from grey or dull to clear and healthy. If you want to give skin a sun-kissed, fresh look, take a touch of the product and a warm wash cloth and buff it in circles along the apple of the cheek (as well as anywhere where else the sun naturally hits the face). After, you’ll need less foundation, and the base you do apply will appear more even, and more like actual skin.

Fresh Brown Sugar Body Polish

As we head into summer, all around you’ll see a winter’s worth of dead skin: ashy elbows and grey-ish knees that need a little exfoliation. Fresh’s Brown Sugar Body Polish sloughs away the flakiness and leaves skin primed for sunblock, after-sun lotion, and self-tanner: and if those products go on more evenly, you’re tan will will be more even and natural-looking. Makeup artists, keep this in your kit for male clients: rough and dry hands and elbows photograph better on the manliest of men after a scrub.

As Director of Artistry for The Makeup Show, The Powder Group and On Makeup Magazine, makeup artist James Vincent has touched every facet of the industry with his talent. With specialties in film and theatre, television and celebrity work, editorial and runway work, James is foremast a passionate educator, training for brands such as MAC, Stila, CNN and Lancome. He continues to inspire the next wave of artists with his beauty expertise. Follow James on Twitter @JVincentmakeup.