Monday, December 19, 2011

Lancome Visionnaire


The Lancome Visionnaire was launched as a miracle in a gorgeous blue bottle. It made some serious headlines in the beauty world when it first came out, claiming that over half the women who used it chose to delay lasers, fillers and peels. A claim so big and powerful that probably warrants its own shrine with daily offerings of fresh lit candles.

So I got a bottle. How not to? With claims that's very much an exclamation marks galore!!!!!! Its secret sauce is the geeky sounding LR 2414 4% that's dubbed the breakthrough molecule responsible for smoothing wrinkles, refining pores, and correcting sun damage. It supposedly recreates beautiful skin. The product blurb gushes “Much more than a wrinkle-corrector, LancĂ´me's first skincare capable of fundamentally recreating more beautiful skin.”

I've been using this for about 3 weeks now and here's my advice to the  Lancome marketing peeps: Let your product speak for itself and never hype up your products way too much.

As you can deduced, I'm not entirely thrilled. That's the problem with an over-hyped product; it got our expectation way too high. This isn't a horrid product. The texture is comfortable and easily absorbed but I don't see visible improvements or magical results. After 3 weeks (2 pumps every time), my skin doesn't feel much different. It's a little bit more even-toned but that's something many other products can deliver and I've seen better results with other cheaper products. So no, I don't experience much other than a very slight improvement in skin tone and I'm a bit disappointed as I was expecting more from this.

The worst part is that, yes, the skin seems marginally more evenly-toned but I'm breaking out around the chin area and I'm someone who don't normally get zits! And these are deep zits; those painful ones that don't go away easily! I honestly suspect the Visionnaire has something to do with the zits as I googled for some reviews and there are quite a lot of women who got zits from it. Let's hope it isn't the case but if the zits aren't going away, I'm throwing it out of the window and cry blue murder. 

Another thing I really don't like about the product, or most Lancome products for that matter, is the smell. Yes, I love nice smelling things but Visionnaire has a very strong smell reminiscent of men's deodorant that's very artificial. That's my personal preference of course and I'm sure there're other people who would appreciate the scent.

Then it also got me thinking that if this is Lancome's bee's knees of an anti-aging serum, does that render their other magic sauce Genifique Youth Activator not as good? The sales person said to use both. BOTH? Sorry, but I don't think so.

So the verdict is, it's not a bad product but it didn't do magic for me like it claims it would. Perhaps I'm just one of those whose skin didn't benefit from Visionnaire as I've seen quite a lot of positive reviews online. I doubt I'll buy it again unless my skin suddenly got so damn good within the next 2 weeks. iS Clinical Super Serum is still my favourite and once I'm done with Visionnaire, I'm definitely crawling back to iS Clinical with my tail tucked between my legs, all ready for the imaginary "I told you so!".

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

do you have the ingredient list? i suspect it's the alcohol since u said got the "smell"?

B said...

Hi there,

Here's the ingredient list:
LANCOME Visionnaire 1.0oz Ingredients: Aqua/Water, Cyclohexasiloxane, Glycerin, Alcohol Denat., C12-15 Alkyl Benzoate, Sodium Tetrahydrojasmonate, Dipropylene Glycol, Polysilicone-11, Dimethicone, Bis-PEG/PPG-16/16 PEG/PPG-16/16 Dimethicone, Polymethyl Methacrylate, Ammonium Polyacryldimethyltauramide/Ammonium, Polyacryloyldimethyl Taurate, CI 77891/Titanium Dioxide, Mica, Sodium Hyaluronate, Hydroxyethylcellulose, Phenoxyethanol, Adenosine, Argilla/Magnesium Aluminum Silicate, Dimethiconol, Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride, Disodium EDTA, Tetrahydrojasmonic Acid, Citronellol, Inulin Lauryl Carbamate, Parfum/Fragrance.

The smell wasn't alcoholic smell. Just very strong fragrant and I don't like artificially perfumed product. Smell of natural essential oils is lovely but strong artificial perfume isn't, especially for the face.

There's a lot of silicone to make the texture nice. And there's also mineral oil too. Thing with mineral oil is that some say it's really horrible for the skin but others say otherwise. What I know is that it tends to cause break out in some people, so I suspect it's responsible for my chin break out. Damn it. I actually read the ingredient list before I bought but despite the not very good ingredient list, I gave in cos the freaking advertising is so promising. I should have known better!! Especially when I used to write this kind of advertising copy! Serve me right hahaha!

Either way, I don't think I'll buy it again.

Anonymous said...

I agree with you about the scent! For me, the flowery perfume odor makes it unpleasant to use this product. Luckily, I just have a little sample bottle so I didn't spent $80+ on a product with "old lady" smell! :) Putting a moisturizer on over the serum helps eliminate some of that smell, but not all of it. Why don't these companies make unscented products?

B said...

I don't think e it's an old lady scent for this but it's like smearing men's deodorant. That was a small problem compared to the MASSIVE breakout this bottle of rubbish gave me though! I'm not touching it ever. There's mineral oil in it and that probably explains the break outs.

Companies sometimes put in scent and fragrance to mask the smell of chemicals in them. It's easier than deodorizing them. So I use organic products these days with no rubbish in them.

Anonymous said...

You broke out in zits because this product is a toxic bomb. I was going to sign up to apply for Crowdtap sample but now knowing the ingredients I will pass on it. Thanks for listing ingredients.

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