Sunday 18 January 2009

Relastin Eye Silk review

During my ongoing search for the perfect eyecream I stumbled on a brand called Relastin Eye Silk. It was one of the winners of this year's Allure's Best of Beauty in eyecreams, and it was also 'pimped' on ABC network and gotten some reasonable reviews on skinstore.com (here) so I took the plunge and bought it to see if it would be really this good.



The eyecream comes in a hygienic pump and has 15ml or 0.15 fl.oz of product inside. I consider it on the expensive side, if you think I paid $69 for it. The bottle is made of matte plastic and has a relative large cap.



The box has some information about the ingredient and how to apply the product.






Mmm, I am always a bit wary when companies are trying to convince you that something REALLY works. I notice the threefold RRR-technique which is probably thought over and over again at the advertisement department of Revance: shortly, to repeat a word three times with the same beginning letter has proven to linger longer in the consumers mind (ha ha, that explains why I called my blog BirkinBagBeauty...ya see)...

Ok,lets zoom in on the ingredients. The first ingredient listed is known to be the most important one of the entire product. The order of the ingredient list is NEVER random, which is important to know if you want to be a real beauty insider and check if your lovely product would be truelly effective.

Anyway, I should have done that before buying this, because I am not really fond of the listing.



The main ingredient is cyclopentasiloxane, which is a sort of silicone used for haircare and skin products (more accurate information over here and here).

That would be completely ok with me, but the second and third ingredients are dimeticones (silicones) as well. Dimeticones, according to skinmdnatural.com, "Dimethicones stay on or near the surface of the skin without getting below it". It is one of the main ingredients for primers such as Smashbox primer and its lesser known primer siblings, for it stays on the skin and optically smooths out lines and pores.

Phenoxyethanol, The fourth ingredient is a beautiful difficult name for a perservative (more info here). The only ingredient that could actually do something about your wrinkles is the fifth one: Zinc complex.


Ok, I am going to look at the product itself. I swatched a bit on my pulse.



I want to show you the close-up. I hope that it is visible over here, but if you are familiar with primer based products such as Smashbox, you might recognize the texture. Oh yikes, I did not spend $69 on a teeny bit of primer with a hint of Zinc complex inside?



Birkinbagsbeauty's worst suspicion comes true when she rubs out the 'eyecream'. It is not only a simple primer, it is even a bad primer which balls up on the skin...


I feel completely fooled and misleaded. Actually, I feel really stupid for not investigating the ingredient list beforehand. Anyway, should we all become cosmetic experts in order to buy products??? Only to know if you are not being set up??

Normally, I would rate this 'eyecream' one bag. However, I will give it two bags because it has no perfumes and did not irritate my eyes. It could still function as a face or eye primer, which reflects some light away from my wrinkles. On the other hand, I think you can better buy Monistat for about $60 less if you want to have a primer, only it would not have the micro-drop of Zinc Complex inside.

7 comments:

fuzkittie said...

Aw I'm sorry that this purchase isn't exactly what you hoped for! But it is seriously terrible that it balls up.... LOL @ the "Really" from the 3 Rs, haha..

cheryl said...

hey how's it going helen? have u gotten my mailing yet? I'm still waiting for yours, but it hasn't been a full week yet :-)
hmm yea when i saw the ingredients i had doubts for a moment. do u think u can use this as a face primer though?

Mona said...

LOL, they put REALLY as one of the three Rs?

I hate that you've been tricked feeling!

Galina said...

I hate that when you invest into a product and then sit there thinking: what can I use it for? Perhaps... a moisturizer for my shoes?! When I was looking for the best eye cream I also failed a couple times. Got really upset with wasting the money... Then I sat down and started reading forums, blogs, reviews etc. on eye creams.. Made a big word file, selected several leaders and finally decided on THE ONE. For me, it was Guerlain Happylogy Glowing Eye Care. I use it for a several years aleady! BTW, It does not have perfume either... I actually reviewed it on my blog, there is also ingrdient list if you want to know the details.

Inspiring Beauty Creator: said...

You are so right the product is a joke! I am studying to be a cosmetic chemist and the chemicals in are nothing more than like you said a primer! Keep telling your readers about whats in the products! Its great that some girls are educating themselves about products like you are!

birkinbagbeauty said...

Hi Fuzkitti, Yeh...I realise that the 'Really' part is even more ridiculous after reading all of the comments from you sweet guys. Actually, bad marketing for a even worse product...LOL

Hi Cheryl, I can use this as a face primer, but as I said in the blogpost, it is one of those primers that 'balls up', which means that it forms small heaps of product on the skin (aka, does not glide smoothly over the skin). So it is actually a crappy primer as well.

Hi M, Ugh...I hate being tricked but I am glad to warn some of my readers for this worthless product...which makes it a bit less bad.

Hi Beauty Talk, Thank you for visiting my blog :D. I agree that doing a bit of research can have great benefits when looking for a HG product. However, it is sad that we have to spend so much time in filtering the good from the bad. Thank you for the tip: I am going to find a sample of the Guerlain and see if it agrees with my skin.

Hi Inspiring Beauty Creator, thank you for visiting my blog! I love your reviews a lot (on your blog). Wow, so you are studying to become a cosmetic chemist...That is awesome and a very rewarding profession in a era with millions of beauty products and an ever growing market in that field. Thank you for the heads up on my post..he he, I thought it would be too boring but I wanted to share my finding about my misstep, so others can avoid them.

MiuMiu said...

i'm sorry it didn't work out for you. all those ingredients sound so complex XD