Creme de la mer

56 femail MAGAZINE
Page 56
Daily Mail, Thursday, January 14, 2010
Can a haircut make you look younger?
STYLE-SAVVY women know
that the secret to looking
youthful isn’t surgery or
the gym. The fastest shortcut to appearing ten years
younger is with a hair
‘youth-over’.
Linda Leach (right), 58,
from Sevenoaks, Kent, has
sported the same hairstyle
for 20 years. ‘I’m the first
to admit I could do with a
style update after so long!’
Elliott Bute, a stylist at
Daniel Hersheson (daniel
hersheson.com)
took
matters in hand. He says:
‘Linda has great hair, but
the wrong cut, so I took off
some
length
and
graduated the back and
sides, cutting in a side
fringe to frame Linda’s
face. By taking the weight
out of the hair, it has got its
bounce back.’
Linda is delighted with
her new style: ‘Let alone
looking ten years younger,
this haircut has made me
feel ten years younger! It
looks fresh and youthful.’
KATE MELHUISH
F
OR years, it’s been one of the world’s most
talked about and sought-after anti-ageing
creams. Women around the world swear by
its powers and are happy to splash out £530
for just 250ml of this potent elixir. In these
circles of well-heeled and image-conscious
women, Crème de la Mer is more than just a face
cream — it’s virtually a religion.
AFTER
It is stocked only in the most exclusive department stores, and
these women seem happy to pay whatever it costs in their bid to
halt the ageing process.
But what would they say if they knew that the ingredients in
their £530 pot of cream cost — as the Daily Mail discovered — no
more than £25?
After a month-long investigation
into the iconic beauty cream,
cosmetic chemist Will Buchanan,
who has spent years creating topical
treatments for skin and hair, was
able to deduce that of the hundreds
[a natural chemical process that
of thousands of pounds spent each
breaks down a plant, for example,
year on the cream, no more than
and allows chemists to make more
about 5 per cent is accounted for by
concentrated versions of the active
the ingredients.
ingredients it contains], blending a
Creme de la Mer — the name
mix of sea kelp with an array of vitaliterally means ‘cream of the sea’ —
mins and minerals, oils of citrus,
have done their best to shroud their
eucalyptus, wheat germ, alfalfa and
product in a veil of mystery. The
sunflower.
company’s website not only refers to
‘Just as Dr Huber hoped,’ the
a ‘heritage’ that is ‘inspired by the
website continues, ‘skin appeared
sea’, but also devotes entire sections
dramatically
smoother
and
to what it calls ‘The Miracle’ and
miraculously improved. Even the
‘The Secret.’
driest complexions were soothed
In fact, the cream is actually a
on contact.’
very simple and ordinary cosmetic
While these days it is commonformula.
place to add vitamins and minerals
Under European law, every
to skincare, in the 1970s, Huber’s
cosmetic and toiletry product
concoction might well have
must display a full list of
been considered revoluingredients, in descendtionary. And although
ing order of weight.
he originally develUsing the ingredients
oped it for perlisted on a pot of
sonal use, as
Crème de la Mer,
word spread, he
alongside
his
began to sell it
knowledge
of
in small quantiproduct formulaties.
tions,
Will
After Huber’s
Buchanan was
The average woman
death, Estee
able to suggest
Lauder, which
how much of
spends around
owns Creme de
each ingredient
la Mer, bought
was likely to be in
£8,500 on make-up
the rights to it
a jar.
over
her
lifetime
from
Huber’s
He then sourced
daughter,
and
prices for all the
began developing
individual
compothe brand.
nents. Some of the
However, over recent
ingredients, such as petroyears, some beauty experts
latum (the contents of Vasehave started to question whether
line), glycerine and eucalyptus leaf
the astronomical price tag is
oil are widely available from beauty
justified. While other, newer
supply websites. Other chemicals
products have proved their efficacy
need to be bought in bulk directly
in clinical trials, Crème de la Mer
from industrial chemical suppliers.
appears to trade more on its reputaAccording to Will’s calculations,
tion than on hard science.
recreating 100ml of a copycat Crème
Paula Begoun, a beauty expert who
de la Mer cream from readily availis renowned for her in-depth
able ingredients is likely to cost no
research of cosmetic products and
more than £9.71. A 100ml pot of
their ingredients, reviews thousands
Crème de la Mer retails for £160.
of products — and she is scathing in
‘This is a variation on a basic
her assessment of Crème de la Mer.
water-in-oil formula,’ says Will.
‘It’s just a really dated formula,’
‘What I’ve done is, of course, only an
she says. ‘Something straight out of
estimate. To give the benefit of the
the Seventies.
doubt, I’ve been very generous in my
‘Product
formulations
have
pricing of the sea kelp, which is the
become much more sophisticated
main ingredient.
since then. Estee Lauder itself has
‘Ultimately, of course, only the
gone on to develop skincare that is
manufacturers know exactly what
far better than Crème de la Mer, and
the recipe is, and how much their
doesn’t cost as much.’
ingredients cost.’
So just how does Estee Lauder
justify the price? Cynics might
suggest it’s simply marketing
trickery. After all, making something
EVERTHELESS, it is a
‘reassuringly expensive’ automatistartling discovery —
cally confers on it a sense of
especially considering
that part of the selling
desirability and exclusivity.
point of the cream is its
Will Buchanan points out that the
unique and hallowed origins.
cost of a beauty product is about
The makers of the ‘miracle’ cream,
more than just its contents.
Estee Lauder, claim that its formula
‘Looking at the raw ingredients
was discovered in the 1970s by
doesn’t take into account the cost of
NASA scientist Dr Max Huber.
manufacturing or packaging,’ he
An aerospace physicist, Huber was
explains. ‘Or the costs of transport,
badly injured when a routine
marketing and PR — all of which, of
experiment to develop rocket fuel
course, you’re paying for when you
went wrong, and an explosion left
shell out for your skincare.’
him with severe burns on his hands
The brand’s global president,
and face. Huber then set about
Maureen Case, is at pains to point
developing a product that would
out that La Mer uses nothing but
improve his scarring.
‘superb quality ingredients, and, in
Over a 12-year period, he conthe case of the sea kelp, the cost
ducted thousands of experiments
reflects not only the raw materials
until he managed — according to the
but also the costs of helping mainCrème de la Mer website — to
tain the ecosystem from which it
‘perfect the art of bio-fermentation
comes by harvesting sustainably’.
by Claire Coleman
Who
knew?
N
femail MAGAZINE 57
Page 57
It costs £530 a
pot — but the
ingredients cost
just £25. The
brow-furrowing
truth about the S
stars’ favourite
wrinkle cream
seem to imbue a basic chemical
process with magical properties
when talking about the four-month
bio-fermentation method that
transforms these unremarkable
ingredients into the trademarked
‘Miracle Broth’.
Andrew Bevacqua, now vicepresident of research and development for the Max Huber Research
Labs, was the man tasked with
producing Huber’s magic potion on
a grand scale. Initial attempts to
create the cream produced something similar, but not as effective,
so Bevacqua went back to the
drawing board.
The only part of Huber’s process
that he’d initially ignored was an
aspect inspired by sonochemistry
— which looks at how sonic waves
affect chemical processes. Put simply, Huber had recorded the sound
of a batch of sea kelp fermenting
and used to play this tape to the
new batches while they fermented.
The story goes that when
Bevacqua reluctantly agreed to try
what he called ‘hocus pocus’, the
result was a cream that apparently
had three times the potency of his
earlier attempts.
Bevacqua also continued Huber’s
tradition of ‘seeding’ — putting a
tiny amount of the existing batch
into each successive batch, ensuring that every pot contains an infinitesimal fraction of the original.
Quite why this is important, or
whether the opal glass jars
really need to be filled by hand,
rather than by machine, to — as
the company claim — sustain the
cream’s ‘delicate balance’, is anyone’s guess.
Seaweed and algae are frequently
used in cosmetic preparations as they
have a high mineral content and are
thought to be rich in antioxidants.
They also contain compounds which
can have a temporary tightening
effect on the skin.
While La Mer uses a special form of
Californian sea kelp that is harvested
just twice a year when it is at its most
nutrient-rich, then shipped on ice to
the Estee Lauder labs on the other
side of the U.S., suppliers of skincare
ingredients sell bio-fermented sea
kelp for around £65 a litre.
Maureen Case argues that it is the
long and labour-intensive production
method that bumps up the price of
Crème de la Mer. Indeed, the company make much of the process
which, to this day, is true to Huber’s
original design.
‘We are always looking for ways to
make things more efficient,’ says Maureen Case, ‘but there is simply no way
to replicate Crème de la Mer by modernising it into a mass-produced item.’
Even apparently hard-nosed
scientists, who should know better,
CEPTICS might say
these little touches of
quackery are all about
justifying the exorbitant
price. Ultimately, though,
if it works, who cares if you can’t
explain why?
Unfortunately, while the company
literature boasts of impressive
results, the sort of data that
impress scientists and sceptics,
like large-scale, peer-reviewed,
double blind clinical trials, are
notably absent.
We live in an age when we can
actually test the claims made by
products. Technology exists that
can objectively evaluate whether
some £160 ‘Miracle Broth’ is going
to work any more effectively than a
£3 pot of Nivea — yet such tests
have never been done.
Real ‘facts’ and quantifiable
‘proof ’ might help Estee
Lauder justify the exorbitant
prices that a pot of Crème
de la Mer commands. But
without them, the legend
of the cream starts to
sound like little more
than a money-spinning
fairytale.
‘As enticing as this dramatic story sounds, the
reality is that this very
basic cream doesn’t contain anything particularly
extraordinary or unique,’
says Paula Begoun.
But Maureen Case reiterates that you can’t just
look at the ingredients.
‘I believe that Crème de
la Mer offers value for
money because it is a
luxury product made in
artisanal fashion that
performs brilliantly and
delivers what it promises,’
she says.
‘Do we make money from
Crème de la Mer? Of course
— we’re a business. But do
we gouge the consumer?
Absolutely not.’
Devotees and those won
over by her words might
think they’re going to find
the secret of eternal youth
at the bottom of a pot of
Crème de la Mer. But I’m
afraid I’m not convinced.
Keep cosy
Bobble hats
Cream cable knit, £8,
www.asos.com
Red and cream, £20,
topshop.com
Multicolour pattern, £10,
marksandspencer.com
Red chunky knit, £30,
freemans.com
Black and white £9.99,
riverisland.co.uk
Barts grey knit, £15,
johnlewis.com
Styling: ELIZA SCARBOROUGH
Daily Mail, Thursday, January 14, 2010