If you follow my blog, you'll know I'm a big fan of natural, ethical skincare products! And like Oscar Wilde,
"I have simple tastes- I only like the best." It's important to me to have bright, youthful eyes for photo shoots and to feel confident at go-sees, so I'm always looking to improve my skincare regimen.
In this blog, I'm going to compare my old eye cream,
Dr Organic Virgin Coconut Oil Eye Perfect, with my new eye cream,
Bareskin Beauty Illuminating Eye Serum.
Looks life-size on my screen!
I should declare a potential conflict of interests from the start- I'm sponsored by BsB and so the Eye Serum was a gift- but I will still try to be as honest as possible with my review here. As they say, the proof is in the pudding- if you're not convinced by what I'm about to say, please do put me to the test by trying out the creams yourself! :)
Test 1: Price
Let's cut straight to the chase! Great skincare is never going to be hiding in the 99p bin at Superdrug, sadly, but how much do these eye creams retail at?
- Bareskin Beauty: £19
- Dr Organic: £8.99
Winner: Dr Organic, a whole tenner cheaper per 15ml than BsB!
Test 2: Ingredients
It's what's inside that counts! Bareskin Beauty Illuminating Eye Serum has the full ingredients listed on the jar itself:
Aloe Barbensis Leaf Juice, Butyrospermum Parkii Butter*, Glycerine, Glycerine Aqua Sucrose Laurate, Ribes Nigrum, Tocopherols, Mauritia Flexuosa Oil*, Argania Spinosa Oil*, Daucus Carota Fruit Oil, Geraniol, Limonene, Linalool
* organically sourced
The full ingredients aren't listed on the
Dr Organic Eye Perfect, either on the tube itself or online. Maybe it was on the cardboard packaging it came in, which has long since been recycled. It
does say that ingredients include:
Organic Virgin Coconut Oil enriched with Coconut Fruit Extract, Aloe
Vera Leaf Juice, Sea Plankton, Papaya Fruit Extract, Mango Fruit
Extract, Cocoa Seed Extract, Mangosteen Fruit Extract, Fig Fruit
Extract, Orange Fruit Extract, Bergamot Oil, Lemon Peel Oil and Vitamin C
Frankly, I don't know which list ought to be superior for eye care as I'm not an expert, but the fact that I am actually
able to see everything in the Illuminating Eye Serum makes Bareskin Beauty a clear winner for me.
Winner: Bareskin Beauty, simply because Dr Organic don't provide a comprehensive ingredients list, for some reason.
Test 3: Packaging
... seeing as I mentioned packaging in the last paragraph! Here's that picture again so you don't have to scroll up.
- Bareskin Beauty: Recyclable glass jar with white plastic lid. The lid has a cardboard seal inside, so the cream never actually comes into contact with plastic, and has a soft pink and white Bareskin Beauty sticker on it, with the cherry blossom logo. Clean design, quite simple but pretty, and reasonably environmentally friendly. The jar could also be upcycled into a "small things" storage facility if you washed it once it was empty (I think mine might become a travel antihistamines pot, boo hayfever). If I blob a bit too much out onto my finger, I can scrape it back off into the jar, and I can wipe every last drop out with my finger, so there's no wastage.
- Dr Organic: Non-recyclable plastic tube which came in recyclable but unnecessary throwaway cardboard packaging. The shape is convenient for storing in the tooth mug if bathroom shelf space is severely limited with all your other products, but unfortunately means that if you accidentally squeeze too much out, you can't get it back in again, and you can't get the last of it out unless you cut the whole thing up with scissors, making the tube run out faster than it probably should do. The shiny silver lid was pretty initially (shiny shiny!) but rubbed off over time, so it looked a bit scruffy:
Winner: Bareskin Beauty. Jars are better than tubes!
4. Scent & appearance
- Bareskin Beauty: natural creamy colour cream with a slippery texture,
leaving a soft oiliness on the skin after being rubbed in. My sense of
smell admittedly isn't great, but I would call it fragrance-free.
- Dr Organic: bright ice white cream with a slippery texture, becoming slightly sticky after being rubbed in. Smells of coconut, which is always a plus, in my book!
Winner: Bareskin Beauty. Might not smell of much, but looks and feels more inviting.
5. Efficacy
Which one was better for filling out my fine lines?
- Bareskin Beauty: slight results visible immediately, improving with twice daily use.
- Dr Organic: I will probably always have a soft spot for Dr Organic because it was the first natural skincare product I ever bought. I bought the eye cream to replace evil Clinique, and sadly, the results just weren't as good as evil Clinique, much as I wanted them to be :(
Winner: Bareskin Beauty. It seems you get what you pay for.
Conclusion
Bareskin Beauty Illuminating Eye Serum is the overall winner for me, beating
Dr Organic Virgin Coconut Oil Eye Perfect with four advantages to one. I love a bargain as much as the next girl, but even for
£8.99, I think you could possibly get a better eye cream than Dr Organic.
Bareskin Beauty might be a well-kept secret among models and celebrities atm but I would rather spend the extra £10 every other month (or however long it takes you to completely use up a whole tub of eye cream) and get something that actually works, not to mention the detox aspect of the cream not coming into contact with plastic, and the environmental impact of less wastage.
Where to go from here?
To learn how to eat for bright, beautiful eyes, I recommend reading Kimberly Snyder's new book,
The Beauty Detox Foods, and booking a
holistic facial with Juliette Scarfe at
Bareskin Beauty, London.
Stay beautiful!
Anita x
