Long time readers are probably going to see this title and be quite surprised – Montagne Jeunesse aren’t you allergic? There’s a bit of a story attached to this one I’m afraid. When I was in university I tried their Dead Sea Salt and Spearmint Face Mask and it was horrendous, it made my face swell, left my Skin bright red, tight, sore and swollen and I think I got a chemical burn as well from it. I vowed never to use the brand again until my sister gave me a a Chocolate mask from the brand and my skin seemed to really get on with it. I was also hoping that 7th Heaven used slightly different ingredients so when my skin broke out I tentatively picked up the Charcoal mask to try.

Starting with the packaging, it’s pretty simple, I like how the black matches the charcoal ingredient and I also like the rainbow lettering of the letters 7th Heaven. This is also very affordable at £1.00.

Montagne Jeunesse describe this face mask as the following:
“Montagne Jeunesse Charcoal Masque detoxes away oils and impurities giving you healthy, glowing skin. 2-in-1 Mud Mask with purifying natural Charcoal and exfoliating Walnut Shell works double time to help detox skin. Charcoal helps absorb oil and impurities.”

When you first open this the smell of charcoal is immediately apparent, although this contains charcoal I didn’t expect it to be so strong, I also felt like the brand had tried to use fragrance to tone it down but it hadn’t worked out too well.

Before I get onto how this was on my skin I’m going to share an ingredients list as I feel it’s important since I’ve reacted to the brand previously.

Aqua(purified water) , Bentonite(Natural clay), Kaolin (Natural clay), Juglans regia (Walnut) shell powder, Illite(Mediterranean clay), Glycerin (Plant origin), Sodium citrate (Plant origin), Charcoal powder, Pumice(Natural exfoliator), Phenoxyethanol, Cetyl alcohol (Plant origin), Glyceryl stearate(Plant origin), Parfum (Fragrance), Citric acid(Plant origin), Propylene glycol, Sucrose tristearate (Sugar origin), Sucrose stearate(Sugar origin). Xanthan gum (Natural thickener). Caprylyl glycol, Panax ginseng root extract, *Amyl cinnamal, Ficus carica (Fig) fruit extract, Potassium sorbate, Sodium benzoate.

Looking at the ingredients list I think it’s not too surprising that I reacted, this does contain pumice, sugars and walnut shell powder all of which exfoliate the skin but together I imagine that they are quite aggressive! There’s also the present of fragrance as well as alcohol, the only thing this cocktail of bad ingredients doesn’t have is parabens!

By this point my tone of voice in this post is probably giving this away but I did have an allergic reaction to this. In fact I started to apply this and instantly felt really cold and the suddenly my face felt like it was burning, I didn’t even both applying this to the rest of my face before removing this. When I did remove it, I’d done it quick enough to avoid swelling but my skin was still incredibly red and blotchy almost like I had sunburn.

I think it goes without saying but I really hated this and to be honest 2/3 is too high an allergy rate to use this brand so I’m just going to avoid (and all sub brands!) going forwards from this experience. If you do have sensitive skin I would avoid this and if you don’t have sensitive skin maybe just check the ingredients and see if you want to use them – or just use it (I’m very biased here!).

Overall, not a fan, won’t be using the brand again and I wouldn’t recommend this, I can’t fully blame the brand for my own allergy but I do think they bear in mind that the amount of bad ingredients they using could trigger allergies in a lot of people.

The Montagne Jeunesse 7th Heaven Face Mask is available from Boots for £1.00.

I hope that you enjoyed this post and if you did please hit the like button and let me know in the comments if you have tried this mask and how you get on with Montagne Jeunesse as a brand.

Thanks for reading!