I have read nothing but rave reviews about Creme de la Mer, an A-list moisturiser with an A-list price tag attached. Magazines are forever gushing about this product, associating words such as 'miracle' and 'extraordinary' to it so naturally curiosity got the better of me. Now although I can be somewhat of a beauty product victim and quite impulsive, even I know that forking out around eighty-eight quid for an itsy tub (30ml!) of this wonder is just plain ridiculous. So I sought to foreign lands, the U S of A to be precise, with hope that I could purchase the product for a fraction of the price - this was roughly about a year ago folks, before recession, when the value of the pound was almost two dollars, and so I managed to get hold of it at just over a hundred dollars with postage and packaging which luckily worked out no more than sixty pounds, and that too for a 60ml tub, naturally I was mega chuffed with my purchase and almost had to pinch myself to believe my luck. Unfortunately, once the cream had crossed all borders into the UK I had to pay custom charges, another twenty pounds but even so that made it around eighty pounds for a 60ml tub - still a bargain!

The cream itself is thick in texture and cannot be directly applied to your face (otherwise it just sits there stubbornly, refusing to be absorbed), before applying it you are supposed to 'warm' it on the palm of your hand by gently rubbing it until it 'melts', it does eventually become softer and so can then be applied much easily to the face. Apparently this process releases or rather activates the key, magical ingredients as well. To be honest, at this stage I was not all that amused, firstly I don't like to work this hard for a moisturiser, I expect to just bung it out of the tub and slap it on my face without all this heating malarkey. Secondly, my skin just looked absolutely greasy - Creme de la Mer takes a while to be absorbed so prepare to apply it way before you plan to leave the house. Unimpressed, I slung the tub in my discarded beauty products draw until recently...

I won't bang on about how the face cream is highly expensive as that would be stating the obvious but the fact that it only lasted about a month for that price is not what I would call good value for money, I mean at that rate there's no way I could make Creme de la Mer a permanent fixture in my skincare regime, the only way I could purchase a pot per month is if I skimped on food, and survived on beans on toast for the rest of my life! Although, I must stress that I do have dry skin and used the cream very generously so perhaps you could make it stretch to longer than a month if you use it sparingly and also if your skin is anything other than dry. Also, another reason as to why it didn't last long is because Creme de la Mer, as far I know, don't do a night version of the face cream as the idea is to use the same moisturiser for during the day as well as the night which in turn means that you get through the pot twice as fast. As for the results, has my skin visibly improved? To be completely honest, a month later my skin does seem to have a more healthy glow to it and fine lines do appear to be less prominent so it's fair to say that the cream does brighten your complexion and minimise fine lines. Who knows how much further my skin would have been enriched had I continued using Creme de la Mer for longer, unfortunately I will never find out. Another dilemma is in that your skincare routine should ideally feature products from the same brand as they compliment each other but after purchasing the face cream can you also splurge out on the cleanser, the serum, the eye cream, the lip balm?