Happy Sunday.

Pinterest tells me the whole country started clicking on masks and peels last month — up nearly a third — and my inbox agrees. So this week is a menu: what each kind does, what it smells and feels like, the ones I keep, and the one I'd leave to someone with a license. Prices move; check before you buy.

Clay draws oil and loosens what's sitting in the pores. My clay is Kiehl's Rare Earth Deep Pore: Amazonian white clay and bentonite, softened with aloe and oat so it doesn't strip. It's thick — you warm it between your fingers to spread it — and it has no fragrance at all, so it smells the way a riverbank smells after rain. Five to ten minutes. It sets fast and pulls tight, and that tightness is your cue to rinse; never wait for it to crack, because dry clay pulls water back out of you. Once a week, and only where you're oily. If you're dry, that means the T-zone and nowhere else. Origins Clear Improvement, the charcoal one, is the other I keep — stronger, better for a breakout week.

This is the one people get wrong, so one sentence on what it is. An enzyme mask uses a fruit protease — papain from papaya, bromelain from pineapple — to digest dead surface cells without the sting of acid. It comes in a buffered, pH-balanced product. It does not come from a pineapple; raw fruit on your face is an acid burn with extra steps.

The one that's lived in my drawer the longest — longer than anything else on this list — is IMAGE Vital C Hydrating Enzyme Masque, from a professional line I trust. It's a cool, smooth cream that smells bright and citrusy — orange peel, not perfume — and it tingles for about thirty seconds, then settles. Papaya and pineapple enzymes do the work; vitamin C and hyaluronic do the glow. Warm, damp skin after the shower makes it work harder. Five to ten minutes, or twenty in the bath. Skin comes out plump and polished, not sanded. If you only buy one thing from this letter, it's this.

A sheet mask is a hydration hold: fifteen minutes of water pressed against the skin so it has nowhere to go but in. The ingredient list matters less than the lying down. The one on my face last night was Tatcha's Luminous Deep Hydration Lifting Mask — not a paper sheet but a coconut biocellulose one, cool and slightly heavy, that seals to the face like a second skin and doesn't slide when you sit up. The gel underneath is hyaluronic acid and Okinawan red algae, with the brand's fermented green tea, rice and algae complex to carry it in. The scent is faint and green — bamboo, green tea, cucumber water, a little orange blossom — and it fades before the fifteen minutes are up. Peel it away, press the leftover serum in with your palms, don't rinse. The skin looks plumper and a shade tighter in the morning, and the dew is still there. It's a single-use luxury and priced like one, so it's the Sunday one, not the Tuesday one.

A thick layer on damp skin in the three minutes after the water, then bed. Cheapest visible result on this list, and your night cream counts.

Real-strength chemical peels are the one I'd leave to a licensed professional. Low-percentage at-home pads are fine, once or twice a week, never the same night as the clay. Anything promising to shed your face in three days, I'd walk past.

Cleanse. Enzyme on warm skin, five minutes. Rinse. Clay on the T-zone only, eight minutes. Rinse. Damp skin. Sheet mask or night cream on the face, body oil on everything else — one drop of lavender in the palm first if you want the treatment-room smell. Bed by ten.

All four masks live together on the shelf.

If you're on a GLP-1 and the skin has been changing with the weight, Veraison is the small app I built for exactly those weeks — dose, weight, notes, one clean page for your doctor. Seven days free, then a paid subscription.

That's the letter. Tell me which mask you actually did.

P.S. A reader wrote to say the warming stick from last week lives on reorder in her house, that flavor matters more than I let on, and that peach is the one. Noted. Another said she wanted to call me because she was laughing. This is the most mail one paragraph has ever gotten.

— Luxe & Restore

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