The Big Chill.(skin care products)

Byline: editor: Sarah Brown

Megan O'Grady searches the globe for the latest supercharged remedies to soothe winter skin dilemmas.

With four seasons blurring into two and polar bears fighting for their lives, it's all too easy to give winter skin little thought--until after the damage is done: Snowy moraines of peeling brow. Lips cracking like late-season glaciers. Floes of striated redness that refuse to dissipate. "The wind literally tears away the skin's moisture, and with that combination of whipping wind and cold dry air, skin really takes a beating," says Laurie Polis, M.D., of New York's SoHo Skin and Laser Dermatology. "The biggest myth is that drinking a lot of water will keep your skin moist. If your skin is already flaking, you have to approach the problem from the outside in."

That in mind, I embarked on a head-to-toe investigation into the best ways to ease the winter of my skin's profound discontent. Thankfully, there are new alternatives to heavy, pore-clogging creams of yore, the cosmetic equivalent of scratchy woolen underwear. The latest moisturizers are intensely hydrating without being greasy, and contain supercharged ingredients and targeted delivery systems--beauty-speak for the method by which those ingredients are deployed to layers of the dermis--that protect over extended periods of time.

My first stop: Skyn Iceland, where company founder Sarah Kugelman sizes up the patchy, blotchy evidence: "You're thin-skinned like me," she deduces, laughing sympathetically. Inspired by Kugelman's 2005 trip to the nation of crystalline waters, fjords, and Bjork-beautiful complexions, Skyn Iceland targets environmental and emotional skin stressors. Pure Cloud Cream, the newest addition to the paraben- and irritant-free line, is designed to help us oversensitive types brave the elements. The high concentration of hyaluronic acid, a molecule capable of attracting 1,000 times its weight in water, makes the product deceptively cumulus-light to the touch and still lushly lubricating on the face. Last spring, Skyn Iceland sponsored Polar Challenge competitor Gabrielle Finn, who took the moisturizer on the 23-day, 350-mile sled race to the North Pole. The cream froze en route, but upon Finn's return, it restored her windburned skin to its former suppleness within days.

"When you heat the air in your house without adding moisture, it's like being in a desert"

It doesn't take much sleuthing to detect a Scandinavian moment in skin care, one that emphasizes ingredients that were once more at home in a martini glass than in the medicine chest. Arctic berries such as the rare cloudberry, a key component of Skyn Iceland products, are veritable powerhouses of antioxidants and a source of the inflammation-fighting essential fatty acids omega-6 and omega-3. The Finnish line Lumene takes advantage of tundra-hardy fruits--its Vitamin C + Radiant Dual Serum is a potent double-shot cocktail of skin-brightening cloudberry for day and wrinkle-smoothing blueberry for night. Even the French are on the Nordic trail: Orlane's Hypnotherapy Anti-Age Eye Contour is full of red tocol Arctic cranberry, a fruit that flourishes under the northern wilderness's midnight sun. "If these botanicals can survive the long Arctic winter," says Kugelman, "imagine what they can do for your skin."