A possibly little known fact, I work for Lancome. Well for Macy's technically but I work for Lancome through them, which gives me many opportunities to try out a ton of their products. This fall/winter I've gotten my hands on quite a few so I thought I'd just do a roundup and let you know my thoughts on what I've used so far.
Bi-Facil eye makeup remover- A bi-phase formula eye makeup remover, you shake it up and it's good to go. This can remove even the most stubborn waterproof makeup (or lip stain) with relative ease and will still leave the skin feeling refreshed and non-greasy. I've used a handful of various bi-phase removers and this is by far my favorite, as it leaves my relatively sensitive skin feeling clean and doesn't sting my eyes in the slightest. Will definitely be using this product well pass my time with Lancome.
Eau Fraiche Douceur Micellar Water- This is a product I still haven't brought home but use multiple times daily at work, on myself and clients. This micellar is not the first I've used, though I haven't played with as many as I have eye makeup removers, I can say this is so far my favorite I've used. Even if I douse my cotton rounds in this it doesn't leave the skin feeling soapy, or leave a light foam on the skin (my cheaper ones at home do tend to do this) and I know it can take off the stubborn long lasting makeup I get all over my hands all day, while using it multiple times in a day never leaves my skin raw or dry feeling, which is a major benefit as I'm a dry skinned person and it's a cold winter here right now. This product is even approved for use in the eye area if you aren't the type to want to by two makeup removers, and it will work well for the driest to the oiliest of skin types. All the girls at my work love this one.
Creme Mousse Confort Cream Cleanser- As a 23 (nearing 24) year old, you can imagine I've had my hands on many different cleansers in my life. But within the last year I realized my skin type is actually dry, sensitive, and (surprise bonus) acne prone. So I've said goodbye to things targeted for getting rid of acne as it was all just drying me out more, and once I even had skin flaking off for a week from a bad reaction! So my first step into the dry skin cleanser world has amazed to say the least. This cream cleanser can refresh the skin after a long day of work and wake me up after a night with not nearly enough sleep. Lancome cleansers are all designed to remove all makeup as well (even that waterproof stuff) so if you are at the end of a long day and can't be bothered with an extra step this will be a dream product. It cleansers wonderfully, I never feel the want to cleanse a second time after this, but it never leaves me feeling dry or tight skinned. And as a great bonus to the driest of dry skinned people out there this is formulated to help strengthen the skins moisture barrier! Seriously I don't know what I will do if I run out of this stuff without a back up on hand.
Tonique Confort Rehydrating Toner- Toner and I have always had an on-again off-again relationship before. I love seeing the extra gunk removed from my skin, but at times I couldn't help but feel it really wasn't doing anything beneficial for me. And after my last one that helped in my skin flaking off I was wary to try more. But in stepped this, a toner made specifically to hydrate you . It has honey and sweet almond extract in it to give you skin a soft clean comfortable feeling. Gone are the days of me skipping the toning step, because this just feels too good on my skin to ever want to skip it. Honestly if you are dry and want my top recommendation this is it, since it can rehydrate you if you feel to dried out from your cleanser.
Advanced Genifique pre-serum- Serums are a step that have alluded me for awhile. I knew they were a step in skin care but I figured it was unnecessary for me as I was younger. Well at my training for Lancome I used this in class, and was pretty hooked right away. They call this a "Youth Activating Concentrate Serum" but what I would say is it's a miracle worker. Lancome has many skin care lines, all targeted at different needs or different people, but something we recommend to everyone is Advanced Genifique. It boosts the power of any serums you use and also helps give you more radiant smoother skin in as little as 7 days of regular use. And I mean it seriously does this. I don't have major skin texture issues, but I have problem spots, a few wrinkles under my eyes are popping in, and acne leaves me bumpy in various places and my forehead is literally just bumpy, acne breakout around or not. And within the first days of using this at class morning and night by my flight home I felt like my skin looked so much better. It does even more than just that, the claims on the Lancome website are long, and to be honest totally accurate. (helps with elasticity, firmness, sagginess, clarity, etc.) Now what really nice about this, as long as you get above the travel size this comes with a self-loading dropper. You will always get the right amount to get your face and neck covered. Use this stuff morning and night for the recommended week and you'll be hooked too.
Visionnaire texture correcting serum- Now I must admit, even after returning from training and using (and loving) my Genifique twice daily, I just felt like it was doing enough so I didn't think about a secondary serum for awhile. Then about a month ago my skins improvement seemed to plateau. It was looking better than say last year yes, but I was still having some issues, the fine lines under my eyes were still a bit too noticeable to me (aging and getting lines in general is really bothering me sadly) and my forehead was less weird feeling you could still see the bumpiness when I had makeup on and my bangs pushed to the side. So I tried out a sample of Visionnaire. This entire line is designed to help with various texture issues, including wrinkles and pore problems. All the other lines seemed a bit to “anti-aging” for me to want to go to at my age. So I brought some home and used it morning and night for about a week and bam, that's all it took. So the good stuff this can do? Well it literally instantly makes my skin look better, I have no idea how to be honest but it just does. And in less than a week it can make pores less visible (not really my problem area but I know it is for a lot of people) and improves overall texture of the skin. So after just this quick result I have picked up a full sized product and am loving how smooth it leaves my skin. I haven't hit the 4 week mark on use but they claim by then wrinkles will appear “visibly reduced” so I'll have to let you know about my eye lines then. This product is also proven to not cause acne and works well for all skin types, including those with sensitive skin issues.
Visionnaire Yeux Eye Cream- Eye cream, I've been trying to find one that felt like it was doing something for me for a few years now. Some have been alright, others made my eyes burn and water. Visionnaire Yeux is the newest edition to the Visionnaire line, and the entire Lancome skin care lineup. I got a sneak peak of this in training as well and from putting it just on my hand at first I was in love. It's wonderfully rich and silky, but not overly heavy on the eye skin. This product does just about everything I could want an eye cream to do. It helps with puffiness, the look of fatigue (hello sleepless nights during the holidays) and laugh lines, and it has blurring properties to make your under eyes look photo ready even without makeup. And after 4 weeks, again haven't hit that time stamp yet, it is said to diminish dark circles and wrinkles around the entire eye. I haven't brought this up before, but I have genetic dark circles. I can sleep 12 hours and look like I haven't slept in a decade, so this claim is the biggest attraction to this product I have. Even if my skin was acne/acne-scar free I would still feel uncomfortable walking around without makeup because of my dark circles. So far I can't tell it's it's done a ton for those, but it's helped my eye skin feel nourished and I do think they small lines underneath the eyes are looking a bit more blurred/unnoticeable so so far so good. Also handy is the cream is in a pump tube so like Genifique you get just the right amount every time, 1 pump is more than enough for both eyes every time.
Visionnaire cream/Visionnaire Nuit night cream- After just finishing up the last of my fist Lancome moisturizer (sadly being reformulated at the moment or I would sing the praises of it as well) I decided to give another shot to the Visionnaire line and picked up a sample of both day and night creams. Now I haven't used these too many times as of writing this, but both of these at the very least feel phenomenal on my skin and leave it hydrated, soft, and just the right amount of radiant. I'm lumping these together as they both do about the same thing, fight against wrinkles, pores, and general texture, and help the skin look more radiant. The night cream packs a bigger punch so they say, and comes in quite an interesting formula. It's a “gel-to-oil” so as you scoop it out it is a firm gel, but as you rub it between your fingers and onto the skin it goes to a very moisturizing oil. It doesn't leave you greasy or sticky though, as some oils can. Both of these work great for my dry/sensitive skin and leave me properly hydrated and wonderfully glow-y for the start or end of the day.
Some bonus, less than skin care, but still sort of, reviews. Including 2 Clinique products I tested out as well.
Absolue Precious Cells Lip Balm- Sometimes at work I still see the price of a few products and am dumbfounded. When I saw this $50 lip balm it was one of those moments. And I just had to use it, I needed to know both what does a $50 lip balm feel like, and is it really worth that price tag. So I waited for my lips to get ridiculously dry, like they do everyday. And instead of grabbing my tried-and-true Burt’s Bees I went over to the tester of this and gave it a go. Now this lip balm has very few ingredients in it, but one of them is Rosehip Seed Oil. I am not a big rose fan so when I put this on the first two things I noticed was it smelled very rose-y and tasted just as rose-y. A bit of a turn off for me, but I'm sure it's a huge plus to others. I overlooked it though, because I wanted to see if this would make my lips feel like a new set of lips. With the other few ingredients in this balm being vitamin E, Acacia Honey, Beeswax and Pro-Xylane (an ingredient developed by Lancome, it stimulates the molecules in your skin that defend against water loss) this lip balm works amazingly. I am not going to lie I was so sad when this worked so well, because this is a luxury product I just can't really see myself, at this point in my life, giving the cash for. If it wasn't so damn rose-y maybe, but still probably not. In the future when I am financially stable and living my life though, I can see myself going up to the counter and buying this and never turning back to another lip balm again. If you want a luxury balm that will do as much as the price tag suggests it will, I'd honestly start here.
Nutrix Royal Body body butter- By now you've probably caught on, but in case you didn't, I'm dry skinned. Always, everywhere, and it's amplified by living in nearly Canada and it being winter. (It has been -20 Fahrenheit here already for this winter, that's almost -29 Celsius to the rest of you, and this doesn't factor in windchill) So I care about a good moisturizer for the rest of my body as much, if not more honestly, as my face moisturizer. So I took notice of this tub of moisturizer we have behind our counter, it's there to give hand massages, and I thought why not give it a try. With a name like Nutrix Royal Body it sounds hydrating, hell the packaging says its for dry to very dry skin, so it can't be bad right? Right, like every other Lancome product this one has not disappointed me at all. This body cream has Shea Butter, like most of my favorite ones do, but also has chestnut peptides (which increase skins lipid production) and Royal Lipidéum™ Complex of Lipidéum and Royal Jelly (which help retain moisture with their own natural lipids) This stuff works wonders on dry cracked cuticles, scale-y joints, you name it and this will pack the hydrating punch you need. Plus even with all the hydration it doesn't leave me feeling greasy or slippery at all. And an effect I've noticed is even after it soaks in entirely, after washing my hands it almost revitalizes the hydration I feel, like after drying my hands they feel like I've given them a light does of moisturizer again without having done so. So that's a nice perk since I am constantly washing my hands these days too.
Clinique Moisture Surge Overnight Mask- A Clinique gift with purchase I got way back in the day, I'm talking like 11/12 year old me, is what got me into makeup. A Clinique fan-girl I was for years, I lived on 3 step throughout high school, my all time favorite single eyeshadow is Clinique Lucky Penny (I think it's been renamed now but it's still around) My first venture into the beauty world was lead by my mother giving me her GWP's throughout my younger days and to say it's been hard to leave behind most of their products now that I work for a competitor may be an understatement. So I still dabble, I try to stick to things my own company doesn't sell though, for the sake of keeping my Lancome supervisors happy. So after eying up this product, a lover of moisture surge I always was for obvious reasons, I grabbed a sample when a new tester came in. I felt little guilt as we don't really have any overnight masks at my specific counter, though I'm sure somewhere in the world Lancome sells them. I took it home, did my usual face routine and slapped this on and went to sleep. Easy-peasy, with the hope of waking up to, as they claim, soft, dewy, glowing skin I was pumped to wake up and see what my skin had to offer me. I got up, washed my face and I was pleased. My face did look more glowing than usual, it felt a bit softer too. I played around after looking online, some girls used this morning and night, before makeup, with or without using regular moisturizer, so I tried them all. I loved it at night after my regular Lancome moisturizer, my skin was even better the morning after that. It was pretty good with my usual moisturizer in the morning, using it before makeup. This one did leave me with one slight issue, it seemed to make my mascara smudge under my eyes, I was using my normal makeup routine so I know it shouldn't have done that. Realistically though, they don't say “Hey use this all the time with everything” so it did what I had hoped and then some. I would just be wary using it in all the possible ways you may hear. It turns out my under eyes can be a bit to moisturized.
Clinique City Block Purifying Charcoal Clay Mask + Scrub- After a bad breakout (got sick, got lazy and didn't wash my face properly, I know better yet I still let it happen) I needed something to try to clear it up ASAP, and this was before my love with Visionnaire had started, so I was a bit textured and thinking a good scrub could possibly help out with that. This mask/scrub had been the fan favorite at the Clinique counter since it came out, and when I was talking with the counter manager about what I was hoping to get out of any product really, she told me this should do just about it all and got me some to try out. This mask is probably one of the more unique ones I've tried, it starts off a deeper grey color, you apply a decent layer onto clean skin and let it sit. You can leave it there for a while, but at least wait until the mask is entirely pale blue, I usually leave it on 10 minutes. Then you get your fingers a bit damp and massage like you would a normal exfoliant, and the mask becomes a scrub, it has silica beads in it to help out with that. The Charcoal and clay in it helps draw out all the nasty stuff that causes breakouts (be warned if you have a lot of stuff in your pores you might get a pretty nasty breakout when first using this but it will go away I promise!) and scrubs away all the extra dead skin cells and leaves your skin feeling a deep, super clean feeling. Seriously a true love, I am going to pick up a tube of this (and probably the overnight mask) in February when the counter at my store has gift with purchase, because I am still addicted to the free gift after all these years.
Overall as you can see, I haven't really used anything that hasn't wowed me in the last few months, skin care wise. I probably raved on a bit too much, so if you scrolled down hoping to find a brief summary here it is: Lancome skin care is amazing and I do think worth the higher price tag than some other companies. I am in love with the entire Visionnaire line, and sing high praises of the Confort skin care for those with a dry skin. Also Clinique has a few gems I've tried and would recommend for most people as well, the overnight mask might be great for all in the cold months, and I think just about everyone who tries the mask/scrub falls in love with it. I will be getting and trying more new products pretty often, so I'm thinking of doing this at least once a season, or if you would like it better I can do more in-depth individual reviews, just let me know what you prefer! And if you have any recommendations, or products you think I should go for please let me know as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment