Using essential oil that is drawn painstakingly from the company's own green tea fields in Korea and blended with "100 of the world's most healing botanicals," this light, perfumed cream packs an antioxidant punch that sells for $265 per ounce. Popular with smooth-skinned stars such as Selma Blair, Amore Pacific is also known for its extravagant gold packaging and exclusivity at stores like Neiman Marcus. Oh, and their tea is pretty darn delicious, too.
Guerlain's fancy moisturizer, about $284 per ounce, also relies on an extract derived from the seemingly magical fountain of youth that is the orchid. (Boy, that orchid sure is under a lot of pressure!) Guerlain promises that the cream will address "all signs of aging" and transform the skin into a plumper, more radiant surface after just one month. Big promise? Yes. But Guerlain did spend 15 years researching this little guy so there must be something that works in there... right?
Clocking in at $350 per ounce, this water-based cream centers around 3Lab's Marine Repair Complex, a specially made blend of marine ingredients, designed to balance the skin while decreasing the signs of aging.
Orlane Creme Royale, one of Orlane's most expensive products at $382 per ounce, also contains gold, which continues to be a trendy skin care ingredient for its antioxidant and skin-firming properties even though it was named "allergen of the year" in 2001 by the American Contact Dermatitis Society (go figure!). And oh yeah, about that royal jelly? It's essentially the secretion of honey bees that is fed to bee larvae — a little gross, but hey, if it works, we're game.
Kanebo's cult-favorite moisturizer runs about $496 per ounce — but there's a good reason: Sensai claims it is the first line to introduce super-fine Koishimaru silk, once "reserved exclusively for the Japanese Royal Family's use," into its skin care. Extract from the silk supposedly hydrates skin and promotes hyaluronic acid synthesis, along with the other cell-renewing stimulants in the cream (Japanese seaweed extract, beta-carotene, and so on). So, essentially, you're getting the royal treatment.
Designer lipstick? $29. Top-of-the-line eyelash curler? $19. Eternal youth in a jar? Evidently, the sky's the limit. While beauty and skin care secrets go from today's obsessions with Botox and sunscreen all the way back to Cleopatra's milk-and-honey baths, maintaining a youthful appearance has always involved smooth, hydrated skin. That said, although the world's most legendary beauties regularly get expensive facials and splurge on high-tech treatments, we bet even they think twice about dropping an entire grand on a palm-sized tub of anti-aging moisturizer. (You read that right; we said "an entire grand.")
So what makes skin care so ridiculously expensive? Well, aside from the selling power behind a luxury brand name or celebrity spokesperson, trendy ingredients such as gold, platinum and caviar, time-intensive research, and impressive packaging are some of the main contributors to the whopping prices of face cream. And while many of these pricey products seem to work according to their fans, resentment over high prices can sometimes undermine their success. For example, Chanel's much-hyped Sublimage Essential Regenerating Cream was once called "a waste of time" that was "most certainly not worth even close to the price" despite pleasant reviews that called it a "miracle cream." Ouch.
While you need not be a Kardashian to afford effective, sans frills skin care), you can still get a kick out of these freakishly expensive anti-aging skin care creams — and the key (ingredients) to their success. Let your eyes do all the splurging on this one.
