lancome vissionaireBack in September we learned that Kate Middleton, sister Pippa, and Harry Potter star Emma Watson had been sent a bottle of Lancome's Visionnaire serum to try out. The serum, which retails for $84, is supposedly the latest and greatest in skincare -- it corrects the appearance of wrinkles and pores and improves texture with some high-tech, plant-based, fancy-pants chemical they developed over 12 years. Lancome claims it's a product so powerful that one out of two women decided to postpone getting Botox or fillers after using Visionnaire for four weeks. Like ... whoa, right? Those are fighting words. Naturally, we had to get our hands on the stuff.

So I gave it a shot for four weeks. Every morning and night, I'd slather the stuff on my face and neck and sort of just pause afterward, motionless on the couch, not wanting to disrupt the elegant chemical reactions that were going to take my skin to a whole new level of amazing.

It ... wasn't what I expected. Can't say I didn't try, though.

Between the regime I followed and my sheer willpower, you'd think I would have observed some changes. Welp! That is a negatory. I didn't see any change in my skin. The wrinkles that I have are still there, the sun spots are all accounted for, and the texture is just the same as it's always been. I feel like I might as well have been spreading salad dressing on my face for a month -- there were no improvements.

Now! Maybe I'm not the perfect candidate. But I'm the same age as Kate Middleton, so if they're sending it to her, I guess that means that Lancome thinks it's useful for the late-20s set. Maybe it's preventative, but they make no such claims. Maybe when I'm 35, I'll have incredible, wrinkle-free skin thanks to their product, buuuut I don't think so. Now that my trial's over, I don't think I'll continue using it.

There were some side effects. After application, I'd get this medicine-y, metallic-tasting post-nasal-drip-thing that was most unpleasant. At first I thought I must have gotten some of the serum on my lips and swallowed a bit of it, but after making sure to avoid my mouth, it was still happening. My theory is that it was being absorbed by my skin and then somehow made its way into my sinuses ... er, something. Not sure how it happened, all I know is that it did. And it was yucky. It made me feel like I was doing something wrong by my body.

There were some good things -- it's super lightweight and very silky. You can put it on before makeup and you won't feel like your face weighs 500 pounds. But besides that ... hmm. The bottle is pretty?

I can't say this is a life-changing product, though I really, really wanted it to be. Thing is, I don't know if any product exists that will ever live up to our expectations. We're gonna get old. And if we don't want to look old, we can inject stuff into our foreheads. And if we don't want to do that, we can live with some wrinkles. Because creams, serums, and liquid squeezed from the most exotic and sexiest of fruits will not keep us young forever, no matter how expensive or how hyped.

Have you tried any anti-aging products that have really, really worked?

 

Photo via Lancome-usa.com