Many of us work very hard to have flawless-looking skin: Every day, we adhere to elaborate skincare regimens, occasionally choosing to use the priciest cleansers and moisturizers for our skin. However, despite the common belief that higher costs equate to better outcomes, one specialist is trying to refute that notion. Cosmetic chemist and certified esthetician Carly Musleh frequently offers beauty tips on her TikTok account, @carlymusleh. Musleh made the decision to test two competing skincare products with wildly disparate pricing points in a TikTok on February 6. See how she proved that a $7 Nivea moisturizer can compete with a $380 Crème de la Mer by reading on.
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Scientist’s Test Confirms $7 Skincare Buy Rivals $380 Crème de la Mer
Annie Mac’s Skincare Revelation
After sharing a video on social media last month about her “holy grail” skincare product, Irish radio DJ Annie Mac generated a lot of discussion. Until recently, Mac acknowledges in her Jan. 17 TikTok, she had never really given skincare or product selection any thought.
“I simply go to bed after washing my face. In the video, she explains, “I use whatever moisturizer is handy.”
Yet the radio personality has been trying with various products now that she is forty-five, despite the fact that she claims she “can never really tell if anything works.”
That is, until she bought the around $7 Nivea Soft Moisturizing Cream, available at Walmart and Target.
“It’s beautiful. It has a beautiful scent. Mac informs the audience, “It continues like a dream.” It keeps your skin incredibly hydrated and supple throughout the day. It really is all I require.”
Mac even went so far as to assert that the inexpensive skincare item is a perfect duplicate of a considerably more costly item. In her video, Mac states, “I believe Nivea is essentially Crème de la Mer, but in a different box.”
The product Crème de La Mer costs about $380 at retail. “It’s funny how a box and marketing can kind of change your mind about something,” she says.
A scientist, in the midst of conjecture, chose to test both.
In response to Mac’s original video, Musleh shared her TikTok on February 6 in an attempt to resolve what she perceives to be one of the most heated discussions on skincare at the moment. The scientist compares the Nivea and Crème de La Mer moisturizing creams in a lab in her film.
“I weighed both the creams and applied them to the squares [on my arm], and after 45 minutes, each were tested,” Musleh explains. “So, the question is, which cream worked best?”
The chemist reports that Nivea had a staffering 95% increase and Crème de La Mer had a 23 percent increase when tested for hydration.
“Note: This high moisture reading could have been a result of the high-water content in Nivea,” Musleh said in a statement.
On both moisturizers, she also performed a trans epidermal water loss (TEWL) test. A higher TEWL correlates with an increased risk of dry or damaged skin, as Musleh elucidates. She conducted tests and discovered that Nivea decreased TEWL by 15% while Crème de La Mer decreased it by 8%.
Thus, she continues, “these were pretty close.”
The two moisturizers’ components are “quite similar.”
Although Nivea was technically superior to Crème de La Mer in the TEWL and hydration tests, Musleh also desired a microscope comparison of the two moisturizers. The product from Crème de La Mer, according to the scientist, has a “tight matrix and closely packed globules,” which “can be an indication of good stability.” The makeup on Nivea was the complete opposite.
Nevertheless, Musleh notes that the contents of both products are “quite similar” overall. The inclusion of algae extracts in Crème de La Mer, which “helps promote collagen that is responsible for maintaining skin elasticity and firmness, thus creating a tighter and smoother appearance,” was the only significant change the chemist saw. This is according to SkinCeuticals.
